Vinegary CTM - GNK winner

3-0 in a GNK (and the same on jinteki.net) to "win" on SoS. Better lucky than good.

I saw @vinegarymink playing CTM with MCA Austerity Policy, Team Sponsorship and AR-Enhanced Security on jinteki.net and thought "that's disgusting. I want to play it." The Quantum Predictive Model were also "inspired" (stolen) from the matches I watched and then I threw in a bunch of cards that are good in CTM.

I saw a couple of people talking about similar lists in Slack, then watched @JackMade come second at Euregio with the same concept (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/46353/2nd-place-euregio-vii-und-nuutzen-ctm) so thought there might just be something in it.

This list isn't optimised by any means. The operation and ice suite could definitely be fiddled with. I do like the agenda suite, though, particularly 15 Minutes; if it was any other one pointer I'd have lost two games at the GNK, and it's a great Team Sponsorship enabler and Exchange of Information target.

GNK games:

Game 1 vs Chaos Theory

I bled agendas in the early game, then got an AR-Enhanced Security sniped from behind a Tollbooth with SMC into Femme, to put my opponent on five points. Whelp. That let me land a Hard-Hitting News at least, which lead to scoring a Quantum Predictive Model and Exchange of Information for Project Beale (urgh) to take some pressure off, followed by a Closed Accounts. Things got better from there, but if my opponent had seen their R&D pressure earlier I'd have been toast. Better lucky than good.

Game 2 vs Adam

An Adam mirror!

I bled agendas early as Adam did Adam things to my centrals, but I did land a Hard-Hitting News quite early. I didn't have any means to capitalise on the tags, though, and Adam got to match point before I could stabilise. Best Defense taking out the turtle gave me a little bit of breathing space, but it was definitely squeaky bum time.

Then things got... weird. I spent at least five turns clicking for credits and trashing his board, then clicked for credits while setting up a lock-out on centrals. Once I had a rezzed Tollbooth on HQ, a rezzed IP Block on R&D and an Archangel on Archives, he couldn't get turtle tokens any more. I'd been planning to Psychographics out a Global Food Initiative in hand then the 15 Minutes, but top decked a Project Beale so I scored that for the win instead, from 7 credits exactly.

Had my opponent done a #yolo ABR run through the HQ Tollbooth it's very likely he'd have won. Better lucky than good.

Game 3 vs Ken Tenma

I bled agendas early. At this point I began to notice a pattern. I don't remember much from this, except that the MCA Austerity Policy did its thing and let me score out an AR-Enhanced Security then a small Project Beale then a big Project Beale. I think it was 7-6 (maybe 7-5?) in the end and R&D was very kind to me after the early bleed, even though he could waltz through the Resistor on there. Better lucky than good.