The Full Picture (Top of Swiss Nisei BLM Tournament)

In a meta with only one Chronos Protocol, I was bound to be the top placed Chronos player!

^^ I wrote this after round 2. Reminder to self to write this kind of thing more often.

Runner deck here

As tradition befits, I went undefeated until someone actually started watching, and then I crashed and burned on stream :) I blame the fact that it was 12:45am, but mainly that I'd run out of luck for the day.

Luck is an extremely important factor in this deck. It's about making sure that your Complete Image is ready to go as soon as the runner hits a 3-pointer, and that they don't get back up after. All 6 wins in swiss were flatlines (4 Complete Image, 2 double-Neural), I don't think I ever got past 4 points.

Kakugo was a major loss for this deck, and I was tentative about playing Jinteki at all without it. Adding the Fundraisers meant I could leverage much bigger ICE, which kept most runners docile. If they're scared to run, you score. If they're scared you'll score, they die. Jinteki 101.

I'd tested a little during the week, and saw a lot of 419, which pretty much dominated the swiss; I played against 3 419, 1 Leela, 1 CT and 1 Sunny. The solo Psychic Field sadly never got installed against 419, but that didn't stop me saving a few credits to not exposing things.

The main lesson I learned with this deck: no 241s; I did offer but in hindsight that was a mistake. A runner with 65 minutes to work out how to solve the Chronos puzzle will probably get there; but when they think they've got less time or a second game to play, they will make more mistakes.

There's a lot of Hunting Grounds going around, so the ICE suite will likely change around a bit (there's 8 huntable ICE, for those who don't want to count). Engram Flush is a LOT worse without the encounter ability.

Watched the stream back this morning, genuinely lol'd when I heard "I'm not sure what ICE Chronos is running." If anyone actually called Mausolus, I'll eat my hat.