Hello, sicko department? (1st & undefeated @ NYC CO)

All I wanted to do the past week has been to play PE. Unfortunately, it's just not a functional ID this point. I also have been feeling pretty sad during deckbuilding, almost like I've mixed and matched all sorts of decks and there's nothing new to explore (besides shaper, I do not touch that).

I simply wanted a functional but fun deck for the CO, expecting a bunch of sharks to come, I wasn't hoping to do too well. Played too much outfit this year and do not want to touch that for a bit, I do not understand HB so that is out of the option. Jinteki isn't real, I don't like azmari glacier, R+ is dead to all the imps running around. Went to the weekly meetup without any decks of my own as I was looking for some inspiration, but nothing really stuck.

2 days before the CO, as I was digging through random jnet decks, I came across an old Mwanza R+ that Dan from the Boston meta had played for a janks event last year. Who knew he was actually cooking gas. Made quite some changes to it, was fun to play on the ~30 jnet games I managed to grind out so sent it. It's not PE but it sure has the soul of it.

Massive thanks to the Boston meta and gg,gg for bouncing ideas, games and pointers off of! And of course to Radiant & Kysra for running the CO.

How to play

Now to the actual strategy and how to play the deck, or at least how I play it: Stop being passive! Jam early agendas. This is a deck that is rushing, or at least making the runner think you are rushing. In reality you want to actively force the runner through a taggy remote knowing full well that they must do it lest you win the game (aka score out). And if they do run through it, you win anyway by flatlines or sinking the runner's econ into tags. Have you played beale or no beale? How about behold or (hold my) agenda? Anything is a behold (or more) if it's attached to an amaze. Beale? Behold. Oracle? Behold. Behold? Behold.

Expecting the runner to make mistakes is a losing line. That is not what the PE ideology is. You need to force the runner to make bad decisions in a way that they know it is a bad decision but they have no choice. What are they going to do when you're on 5 points and install a card in a remote? Be forced to run it. Knowing that more than 20% of your accesses will be messed up is huge. They're losing tempo on every access and you're going to push them further down the hole until the line ends.

Some very very useful tips: No value end of the lines, no scoring oracles unless you're planning to score out.

P.S. How to PD?!?!