"What Does That Card Do?" - GenCon (23rd Place)

This is the Runner deck I piloted at the North American Championships this past weekend. I ended day 1 at 43rd place, at an even 5-5, and with a poor enough SoS that I don't think I could have made the cut if I'd swept both additional rounds of Swiss on day 2. On day 2, I went 3/4 (winning both Whizzard games), and ended up finishing in 23rd place (out of 103 players).

The basic idea is the same as all of these decks. Accrue tags, drop a Dean Lister and a Counter Surveillance, and dig like crazy using God of War tokens or regular heap breakers to get in. Then Mars For Martians to recover, and do it again.

I played a grand total of zero games with this deck before the tournament. But it's pretty straightforward -- it's a variation on the newest tag-me hotness in Anarch, using Siphons, Counter Surveillance, Jarogniew Mercs, Mars For Martians, etc. I tweaked it a little with @dien's help the morning of, putting in redundant breakers, Bloo Moose, and a singleton John Masanori. The Masanori did zero work on the day -- it was there as a "just in case" draw or self-tagging option, but I never needed it. The Bloo Moose helped a ton in one game, but was not impactful beyond about 4-8 credits of value in other games, so I'd likely cut it for Day Jobs instead. The Employee Strikes were very helpful (see below) and the Rebirth only a little.

A few memorable games with the deck:

• Round 2, vs. Austin M. on Jinteki: PU . I lucked my way into 5 points very early (I think a Nisei, a Fetal I took out of hand, and a House of Knives I grabbed out of R&D). I decided, with about 30 cards in my stack, to just go for it and try to snag that last two points before he bled me dry, which were mostly from single accesses. Didn't work -- this was the stupidest I played the deck all day, and should have stuck to the gameplan.

• Round 4, vs. Graham B. on AgInfusion. My only AgInfusion opponent of the day -- I was fearing this matchup, so I made sure I had two Employee Strikes. I mulliganed into one, then just kept it on the board all game. Estrike! The card for when you don't know how to legitimately beat someone's Corp ability! Won via a series of Counter Surveillance digs on R&D for about 8-9 cards each time.

• Round 5, vs. Alec A. Hey, guess what? Self-tagging is a bad idea versus Sync if you don't know what you're doing. I died pretty quickly!

• Round 6, vs. G. Michael B. on Builder of Nations (!). I figured this was going to be a Red Planet Couriers deck and, yep, it was. He tipped me off to having multiple RPCs in hand through a couple of plays -- e.g, playing a Dedication Ceremony to put tokens on my Obelus (!?!), which I called a judge over for, but was totally legal (I'd just never seen it before). Dumping lots of advancement tokens on the board and somewhat more intensely defending HQ, I was pretty sure he had a Government Takeover in hand, so even though I only had accrued four tags, I decided to Legwork+ his hand with a Counter Surveillance run. I got the Takeover, and the winning agenda soon after.

• Round 7, vs. Sarah L. on Palana. Two really fun, tight games. She'd just beaten my Corp in a nailbiter, and I was fearful of dealing with Caprice, Obokatas, etc. I repeatedly felt like my best line was going to be the Counter Surveillance dig of R&D. I installed Jarogniew Mercs early (to her apparent confusion, given she was obviously not playing a meat damage deck), and then slowly got 10 tags on myself with Siphons and God of War. Final turn, I decided to go for it, running R&D. She had tons of money and rezzed a Chiyashi, which with God of War installed would have been painful; I popped out a Paperclip from the trash, trashing the God of War (and hampering my future tagging/breaking plan), broke, got in and saw 10 cards. Got a Nisei first, then a GFI, then an Obokata, with four cards in my hand. 7 points in one run for the win.

So, it's not much different from what other people are playing, and I benefitted a fair amount from people not fully realizing what the combo was. I got a lot of "Can I read that card, please?" I'd swap out the Bloo Mooses for some other money, and the Masanori for something else (dunno what -- the deck has plenty of other ways to self-tag, so I don't think it needs Joshua B).

Not the best finish, of course, but it was pretty good for me. And good enough to get to the second day (just barely), earning some MU tokens as well as a nice deck box. I'm happy to have gone to the tournament, and had a great time! Thanks again to @dien for all the help tweaking the deck (and for loaning me a Black Orchestra and a Masanori).