Turtle Power (1st Place - Undefeated - SC)

I have been playing some form of this deck, online, for a month or so. I've been pretty successful with it, even beating a Whizzard Destruction deck that was touted as being able to "crush" this deck (shoutout to Andrew :P). I didn't keep great stats, but I think out of the ~30 games I played with it online, I only lost a couple of times.

The morning of the 3/19 Store Championship, at CheckMate Games & Hobbies in Toledo, I decided to just sleeve it up and give it a whirl at a "big event." I knew it was kind of gimmicky. I knew it would probably not see the success it did online. But it was the only corp deck I really felt like I knew well. For my runner, I took my latest build of Leela. I'll post that decklist, as well.

20 Players -- 4 Rounds of Swiss -- Top 4 Cut

Round 1 vs. Nick (Ken "Express" Tenma) -- The game went pretty well, for me. I drew Turtlebacks in one of my first couple of turns, and he never went to trash it. Eventually found a second, and the rest was kind of a blur. He was digging to find his Public Terminals, which were all seemingly on the bottom half/third of his deck. This kept him pretty far behind, credit-wise, and I couldn't stop earning money, from installing multiple cards a turn. I think this was also the only game in which I rezzed a Museum of History. I also spent a good portion of the match digging through my deck, but for agendas, not economy. (Also, won with Leela.) -- 2-0

Round 2 vs. Paul (Sunny) -- I honestly hadn't seen much Sunny, online or in person, so I wasn't quite sure how it would go. Nothing too fancy went on in this game. It took him a while to really get his econ engine going, and by that time, I had already scored a couple of Astros, and cruised the rest of the way. (Again, won with Leela.) -- 4-0

Round 3 vs. Andrew (Kate) -- One of the people I did NOT want to face. Andrew is a close friend, and I knew he had solid decks (ApocaKate and Glacier ETF). Andrew was one of the people responsible for defeating this Corp Deck online, and it was with this ApocaKate deck, too. Once again, the Turtlebacks came early enough, and I was able to roll out the remote servers like nobody's business. Andrew did a REALLY good job at trashing my SanSan City Grids though. Two were in the trash, when I was finally able to get my Astro-train going. I think towards the end of the game, he was just a credit short of being able to Apocalypse me. That would have hurt quite a bit, because I wasn't quite on game point, then. However, like I said, he was short, so I finished it off with a 15 Minutes score. (Leela won again, with some really lucky Gang Sign pulls.) -- 6-0

Round 4 vs. Ryan (MaxX) -- We decided to follow the new Tournament Rules, for this Store Championship, so Ryan and I agreed to just split this last round, not playing, but giving each other Corp Wins. -- 7-1

T4 Round 1 vs. Ed (Spark) -- I chose to play the Runner side vs. Ed, as I knew he had Whizzard, which I was pretty afraid of. Won the game, luckily, as I had 8+ tags, but two mediums on the board, allowing me to dig deep. -- 8-1 (0 losses in Cut)

T4 Round 2 vs. Ryan (MaxX) -- Another Anarch for me to be afraid of, but this time, I couldn't choose to run. I hunkered down, and built up a pretty good wall of defense. Swordsman over R&D trashed his Faust mid-game, and I kept on doing my Turtlebacks shenanigans over in the remotes. Two Daily Business Shows and two Turtlebacks kept me flowing through my deck pretty successfully, not having to worry about econ. After losing his Faust, he had a hard time with R&D pressure. Late game, he used Deja Vu a couple of times to get stuff back, but I don't remember ever seeing a Levy, to help him cycle back through his deck. He couldn't do much at that point, so I scored out on a rezzed SanSan swiftly. -- 9-1 (0 losses in Cut)

T4 Round 3 vs. Andrew (HB:ETF) -- I ran. I lost. Didn't get my Gang Sign/HQI out quickly enough, and he didn't have as bad of luck with his draws. I regret trying to drop 2 Mediums on one turn. Money was hard to come by, after that. Meanwhile, he's winning 2 Psi games on a Caprice server, protected by two Turings. Just not a good match. -- 9-2 (1 loss in Cut)

T4 Round 4 vs. Andrew (Kate) -- I felt MORE comfortable about running against him, than I did corping. I didn't want to see his Apocalypse destroy all of my remotes that I planned on setting up. Turns out, I didn't see it again. Had some really good draw timing, finding Astros when I needed to, finding Breaking News and 15 Minutes when I needed to. His Indexings only ended up only netting him an Explode-a-palooza and a 15 Minutes. Both aren't necessarily great for him to find. He stole the Explode-a, after an early Indexing, but left the 15 Minutes after a late Indexing. Turns out, the 15 minutes was what I needed to win the game. -- 10-2 (1 loss in Cut)

And that wraps up my first tournament win, ever. Crazy, after not playing in-person for ~4 months. Against Andrew, I felt like a couple of the games could have gone either way. I know he wasn't especially fond of how I won with Leela in Swiss. I'm sure if I were to play him 100 more times, he'd beat me 90 of them.

Cards that didn't see play, and I would consider swapping out:

• The All-Seeing I
• Little Engine