WorkHardPlayHard

I played this deck at a beginners' tournament in London, along with my Argus deck. The deck-building restriction was a single core set and single deluxe box of each player's choice, so I plumped for Order & Chaos. With Argus, I had gone for basically a core-set Weyland build with only minor changes. Looking at Order & Chaos with my orange goggles on, I wondered if I could make an ID that wasn't Noise work. This was what I came up with.

I've played a bit of MaxX, and without Clone Chip & Levy AR Lab Access, let alone Same Old Thing, I figured getting 13 cards and watching the rest end up in the heap was a no-go. I toyed with the idea of Edward Kim, particularly because there is so little recursion available for corporations if you're only building with one deluxe and one core set (Archived Memories, anyone?). But then I thought about what I was good at as a runner and a Valencia idea started to form. No Blackmail, so what are my other options?

I love the fixed-strength breakers from core-set Anarch, and I feel I've had a fair bit of experience getting that sort of rig, plus Datasucker, Parasite and Medium, up and running. So that became a skeleton for the deck, with the addition of Day Job, Sure Gamble and Armitage Codebusting for economy. I've Had Worse was a no-brainer, and I plumped for Diesel too, so I had 6 cards in the deck that I could turn into 18 (I think that's a bit of a bogus way of thinking of it, but hey, it made me feel comfortable with the deck size). I added two Special Order, too, because tutoring is a cool thing, right? (I should note at this point: not including Wyldside was a deliberate choice. I felt like it was anti-synergistic with running often to make the most of the bad publicity. It worked out for me on the day. A sample turn might be draw, hit R&D, hit HQ, credit. There were also turns when the corp dipped to safe low-levels of cash and I would go rampant killing Adonis campaigns, PADs and other things. I liked those four clicks!)

Then I started looking for synergistic combinations that might work. In went Amped Up and Wanton Destruction as a pair, and then Vigil, Investigative Journalism and Itinerant Protesters. I have to say, I loved the squeeze that that trio could put on a corp, particularly if I'd taken a turn to get the bad publicity to two. Their handsize is 3, I'm drawing if they stay at that size, and it also makes playing Wanton Destruction all that much easier. I know, I know, playing Wanton turns off Vigil.... but it didn't seem to matter.

On the day, we played 4 rounds of swiss, and the deck went 4-0. I played against three Titan decks and one core-set HB. Game one came down to a late-game Medium. He had 5 points and a double-advanced card behind a hefty three-ice deep defence, and I had 6 points. I got in, saw two cards with Medium, and clinched a 1-pointer to win. Against HB, it was all about economy: I ran and ran (thank you, bad publicity, for incentivising so) and trashed any econ he brought up. He managed to get some points out but I had the board-lead and the muscle to carry on.

My final two Titan opponents both played with the constellation ice and were looking to get a train of Firmware Updates going. Money was crucial here, as were Datasucker (ugh those big constellation ice sap your tokens) and restricting their options with the aforementioned Vigil-InvestigativeJournalism-ItinerantProtesters plays. When they only have two cards in hand (thank you Hostile Takeover for adding to the bad publicity pool), which are both agendas, they won't rez ice on R&D because their HQ is so vital. Cue star of the day, Medium, and nod to Forged Activation Orders doing great work. Likewise with constellation ice: once that first advancement lands, if the corp doesn't have 6 credits in store, they are prime targets.

Things that didn't really work: Human First was great playing online but I never saw it. I never played the Amped Up + Wanton combo, really. Showing Off was there as a joke include and I drew into it first game, binned it, and smiled, saying something about how I was that kind of bonkers player (I'm not). It seemed to give me an edge though. #disgustinghipstermoi If you have any suggestions about what might have filled some of those slots (maybe the cutlery events?), please let me know!

Thanks again to my excellent opponents, to Dark Sphere and to Tagore for organising. Ps not sure if this should be tagged as placing highly in a GNK but I've done it and you can shout me down!