Sync Refresh (SOCR2) - Top Cut

Along with Steve Cambridge, this deck came 4th in Swiss, and 6th overall in the cut in the recent Stimhack Online Cache Refresh Tournament (about 53 players).

It went 4-0 (all flatlines) until the last Swiss round, then lost to a Frantic MaxX in a close game, in which Maw did more work than I've seen in any game, ruining all of my plans. The release of AR-Enhanced Security mid-tournament was a big improvement over Improved Tracers (as I was able to score it most games), which greatly slows the runner down when trashing Booms and with all the ICE destruction around. Turns out it does not, unfortunately, synergize with Maw, as the corp technically trashes a card from HQ, not the runner.

Going into the cut, I added 3 News Teams, dropping Psycho, Data Ward, and a Preemptive Action, as the previous MaxX game was really close, and they might have made the difference. In round one though, Gabe got an Aaron down turn one, then Medium locked me for a really early win (I had one piece of ICE in about the top 12 cards or so, which I put on HQ turn one cause it was Gabe). We went on to play two more games (best two out of three) as Steve vs ETF, winning the first against Moons/Sandburg, and losing the second in a heartbreaking 8-6 final score, with the last 4/2 agenda being double-Biotic Labored for the win.

The fact that Plascrete was not valid for this tournament made Sync a fairly clear choice for me, and I'd also played it in a real-life Cache Refresh tournament and played Sync in Regionals season, so was pretty comfortable with the ID. Exchange of Information not being valid in this format is probably the largest drawback, but GFI is still good regardless (though they're not easy to score unless you can Psycho it).

I had a great time playing in this tournament, with some of the most tense games I've had in recent memory. There was an awesome Slack thread for this tournament as well. Thanks to all who played, and to @Fightingwalloon for organizing!