It's Business Time! 1st Place Aldershot STARTUP Circuit Open

Could everyone just CALM DOWN A LITTLE BIT!

Yes - The big Boat in the room is that there is now a Big Boat in the room, but you know what - the titanic was a big boat - ya'll just need to stop looking for ICE and start looking for some icebergs!

Credit for the initial idea for this deck goes to Rob (a.k.a. Mendax). Whilst we do have some differing opinions when it comes to deck building, if he tells me something is strong and I agree, it's usually a good sign.

Also big shout out to NBKelly for some thoughts on tweaks and lines of play.

Card Choices:

San San City Grid: Your main win condition - An absolute MUST Trash for the runner

Bladderwort: A key card in this deck - not in a 'Prison style - keep yourself under 4c every turn way' but in the fact it is a better Pad Campaign that becomes a MUST trash if allowed to get multiple out,

Daily Business show: Probably the second most powerful card in this deck (after San San) - These should be trashed on sight, but the runner is now poor after trashing your bladderworts and San San's so can't afford to.

Marilyn Campaign: Gets a special shout out as being the perfect thing to stick in the remote to fake an agenda/San San as well as being a great source of income AND a way to shuffle you deck when you've bottomed all your agendas early on.

1x Reversed Accounts: Last minute include (Thanks NBKelly!) Perfect way to force a clot pop or fake a Bellona - this 1 card way super relevant in every game I played.

Public Trail + Backroom: Scoring a second License Acquisition could sometimes feel a bit pointless unless you can also score the third - Backroom Machinations deals with this (+ Public Trail can dunk on decks running The Twinning)

Mavirus: The Midnight Sun card that makes this deck even possible to play in the first place as without it any Shaper/Anarch with Clot and Chips can pretty much eat you for breakfast.

ICE: Pretty much all the ice here is either taxing EVEN for boat (Goldfarmer/Tollbooth) or forces out a breaker/boat counters (drafter/enigma/F2P - to a point) Funhouse is the weak point here as the tag punishment isn't really there but unless its open decklists you can stick it on R&D and make those stargate runs cost an extra click and 2 credits)

A remote of simple Goldfarmer into Tollbooth is not runnable every turn, even with ludicrous drip!

Agenda suite: Stuff you can San San + Bellona... simple

Games on the day:

Round 1 - Win vs Dave a.k.a. Rotage a.k.a definitely NOT Roatge1 on Lat.

I can't remember too much of this game now, being a little tilted after Dave drew the absolute PD nuts in our first game - pretty sure I ended up with a San San behind a Gold Farmer and a very poor lat who just didn't have the money to deal with it.

Round 2

Win Vs Swiftie, a.k.a The Peoples Champ, a.k.a The Scourge of Aldershot on Tao

Swiftie bought a pretty spicy Tao deck with a sneakdoor (that got trashed by a bladderwort) and multiple tranquilizers. Diligently checking the top of R&D for agendas I felt surprisingly safe as 4 of them were in hand/archives from turn 2 :\

With an SMC down early I was concerned but eventually with Tao being too poor to even afford a clot (if he had one) and 2 Mavirus's installed on the board I could score out.

Round 3 Win Vs Aaryn a.k.a. Darren on Ken

DBS rules!!! - With time on the round closing in they played to their outs using bypass events to check the top of R&D and sneakdoor to check the hand - Missing on R&D 3 times in a row, whilst a single DBS drew me into a 'second card down agenda' 3 turns in a row to chain 5 points for the win.

Round 4 Win Vs Steff a.k.a Steffmonkey on Tao

An absolute epic beast of a game - This one went about 40-45 minutes - a real back and forward game of 'I install San San - You pay to trash San San' I think we worked out that Steff trashed 5-6 San Sans across the whole game - most of them behind a Tollbooth and/or Gold Farmer - Steff had managed to pack a fair bit of econ in his deck but it still finally got to the point where I could confidently install and double advance a Bellona in the remote for the eventual win.

Big thanks to all my opponents from the day (especially Steff as due to time issues we couldn't play a cut and he agreed to call it at the end of Swiss), to Rotage for organising, and to NBKelly for playing some last minute games on Friday to test out my Kit Deck!