Top 8 ECC- Hedge Fund Is Wrong

Round Reports:

1: Opponent was too slow, combo'd out

2: Opponent was too slow

3: Opponent was too slow, combo'd out

4: Flooded, scrub deck

5: Opponent was too slow, combo'd out

Cut: Opponent was too scared and dropped

This deck went 4-1 at Fake Nats (East Coast Championship), and carried my sorry butt to the top 8 (by 0.1 SOS). This is only the second time I've placed in the top half of a >30 person tournament, so it was pretty great to sneak into the top 8 on a technicality. I'll be sad to see this go (RIP Efficiency Committee), it's probably the first non-Argus list I put real reps in and felt like I understood some of the lines in the deck.

This is just Pinsel's list but I took out the hedge funds for Red Level Clearance. Initially I did this while trying to learn the deck, because it made the combo turns a little bit easier (clickless install of a four card combo is pretty nice). And the more i played the more I seemed to like it. The first RLC was 90% of the time just a Green Level Clearance, but having the flexibility was super useful. It also means you're running 5 Biotic labors, and most of them are extremely discounted. I think it opens up the combo space pretty significantly (allowing easier scores after firing a Fully Operational) and I was basically never sad to see it.

I also did the 5 point turn in only about half of my games. The deck is pretty resilient and able to score GFI's with 2 credits and the right cards (RLC & Jeeves/Eff Comm Counter+ combo pieces). My first biotic labor was generally saved for Eff Comm (provided there was a Jeeves on the table), and once that was scored the game was often effectively over. Getting 3 counters on Vitrivius is super valuable, and I think did that every game this tournament.

The money loss from not having hedge fund is a big deal, and a lot of the time you have to not rez your ice unless it's punishing the runner in a relevant way. I thought the field would be pretty Turtle heavy, so I felt CVS was pretty crucial, but it never cleared a virus all day. That was mostly because my opponents decks were a little too slow, and running 6 face-check punishing ice generally meant they were afraid to go for single accesses. Having a second Lakshmi Smartfabrics would probably have been better in that slot. The other change people have made is swapping 1 Archived Memories for a Restore, but with RLCs, Restore isn't saving clicks in the same, and the only time I tested it, it felt actively worse, because getting back Fully Op is incredibly powerful, or pulling a combo piece a turn early to save clicks.

I ran a Reg Ass Val with no practice because I'd been tooling around with Hayley. Val did fine, but was essentially all of my losses on the day.

Short round summary (I wasn't good about getting handles, apologies) Round 1: Faced Dan A. from NYC (?) running PE and Freedom. Freedom can be tricky, and generally I ice HQ first, and know I'm going to bleed off R&D for a few turns. But generally once you find an ice, they have to slow down, and that's what happened this game, and I was able to combo out 5 points in a turn.

Round 2: Kevin M. on Apoc Val. This was an interesting game, Kevin was able to get a paperclip down and was Stargating through a Vanilla for free, but I had ~4 assets out and iced, so he decided to Apoc. This ended up being incorrect, because with a 9 card hand it's relatively easy to recover from Apoc. After resetting the board, Val could find paperclip 2 for a little while, and I was able to score out relatively easily over 3 turns.

Round 3: Ben M. on 419. 419 couldn't find a breaker (Ben said he was not running special orders), and I had a VLC in the opening hand. He also played 2 Fisk Investment Seminars which sped me up a lot.

Round 4: Laura (osclate) on Val. I drew 7/9 agendas in the top 20 cards. Was trying to play out dumping some things in Archives, but some single access on HQ were able to make that a mistake. We ended up playing it again because our rounds was fast, and I was able to win through an apoc.

Round 5: 2-for-1'd as Val and won because Mike D. got incredibly flooded as Sports. We played the other side, and his Val was not co-operating to get him breakers fast enough.

A little bummed I didn't get test this against Liza, or in the cut, but I really enjoyed playing this deck.