Running It Back 1812 (1st US Nationals 2019)

Heading into US Nationals, I wasn’t expecting much. I had prepared a lot more for worlds and had only broken even. Being down on myself, I felt kinda washed up. I was excited to visit friends in San Francisco, but I didn’t test a ton. Argus on corp side seemed generically strong, but instead of bringing an apoc val like I thought was good, I decided to tune up a liza list I had played in side events at worlds. Patrick Burke had suggested a revolutionary change: dropping the breaker suite for 3 aumakua, 3 femme fatale. All in on the Counter Surveillance plan, I tested further, eventually I cut my film critics for more draw in the form of street peddlers, smoothed out the consistency by going to more copies of class act, and went to 3x hot pursuit. I was skeptical at first, but the raw burst econ was too valuable to leave out.

The broad gameplan of the deck is to gather money via rogue trading/paragon/hot pursuit and convert that into a double digits counter surveillance on RnD. You have the dummy box/paparazzi combo to grind out kill decks and avoid meat damage.

Day 1: I showed up with Joseki to the event on Saturday, hung out with my friends, and got ready to play the tournament..

Round 1: Bye, 2-0

Round 2: Joe Schupp (Liza-Argus) 3-1

I was terrified to play Joe. Not only did I know he was excellent, we were on same decks. His liza was on obelus stargate, mine counter surveillance. Before the tournament began he confided in me at asked “does your deck have the liza tech”. He then explained to me that all of the Anti testing house was on some amount of anti liza tech in the form of self growth program, to bounce paparazzi back to hand and then high profile target. I got an early paparazzi dummy box set up and rushed to 3, but then Joe consulted for Self Growth Program and HPT’d me. I won my Argus game.

Round 3: Alexis Spicer (Hayley-Argus) 5-1

Alexis was very pleasant to play against. I hung back for a few turns as I struggled to draw into my combo, but a street peddler into a street peddler set me up. After that I could run hq through a maus to be able to land doof and hot pursuit. I converted into a counter surveillance and won. I think she did not have enough etr ice/border controls to lock me out of the remote.

Round 4: Californian (419-PE) 7-1

I’m sorry for forgetting your name, but I played a very kind Californian in the 4th round. I got lucky and stole an early Obokata on HQ off of a hot pursuit run. I cooled down for a while and made money to set up for Counter Surveillance. I installed a class act, and next turn with a class act trigger, drug dealer trigger, 2 clicks to draw and a liza trigger Counter Surveillance’d him for 12 cards, and won.

Round 5: ID

Round 6: ID

Day 2: I played a sick game of Arkham horror with my friends, then got ready for the cut. All the remaining Liza games I played were played on stream, so I’m not going to detail them. Tldr is I went undefeated with Liza in the cut, and eventually came up from losers to win US Nats.

Specific card choices:

The most cuttable cards in this list are Drug Dealer and Baklan. I think as more people play hard ETR effects to counter this list, you probably want a second lucky charm. I wouldn’t change the breaker suite, and it’s quite possibly correct to cut the special order. With this deck now being a known quantity, I would make space for 2x or 3x corporate grant for all the scarcity people are going to play. Polop should not be cut.

Lastly, I want to shout out all the people who supported me or hung out with me, in no specific order:

Spags, Cranked, Cavis, Jesse, Joe, Jason, Austin, Wes, Joseki, Issac, Eric, CTZ, Brian, Stephen, Timmy, Dien, Samrs, Ran, Rotage, Alexis, Jakuza, Justin, Bruno, Melissia, Gerry and the Kitchen Table Podcast.

Additionally, I want to offer a deeper thank you to Ajar, Cat and Pat. These people provided a pillar of not only emotional, but also financial support. You all made the weekend very special, and I’m deeply humbled to be your friend.