Classic Penguins - So Pure (3rd Place German Nationals)

This Hasty deck took me to 3rd place in the German Nationals, going 3-1 in Swiss and 0-2 in the cut (my Runner deck).

I played this exact list in Enschede (I forgot to swap Loki and Rototurret when posting that list), at the Dutch Nationals two weeks before, going 1-5 (with the closest win possible, against Noise on 6 points and with 0 cards left in R&D). Still, I was quite confident in my choice, since I lost once to Dyper (a bad matchup I didn't expect much of in Germany), once to a big misplay, twice to opponents stealing six points in the first two turns (one of them additionally Siphoned me twice, to add insult to injury) and once to an opponent who scored six points in the first round, which is all not really the deck's fault.

Going into Nationals, I thought hard about playing Gauss Rifle, the Hasty-Railgun-NEH, but testing showed that it is too inconsistent for my taste. It can definitely assemble the combo very quickly, but also gets a lot of agendas into circulation, while playing porous ice and needing most of HQ for combo pieces. This would mean quite some losses against aggressive runners, while it was still very much possible to beat the deck with things like enough damage protection (a combination of some of Plascrete, Obelus, Jarogniew Mercs, I've Had Worse, Aaron Marrón and Citadel Sanctuary) or a New Angeles City Hall. Because of these reasons, I decided to stick to what I know and play Hasty CI.

It turned out that it was a great metacall. Although it went 3-3, the 3 wins were all pretty safe, two of the losses were quite unlucky and the matches in which I ID'd were also very good matchups. When most of the field is made up of Non-Siphon-Whizzards with lots of Moon hate, CI is happy. Below you'll find a summary of the tournament (apologies if I mixed up details of the 3 Whizzard games in Swiss, they blurred a little in my memory).

Game 1 against Dani with Maw Whizzard - Win: This game was definitely the closest of the three Whizzard games, since Maw is really annyoing, even for CI, and Dani played it well. In the end I won, but I had only 4 cards left in R&D and he was on four points, so it was definitely not an easy game.

Game 2 against Chris with ParaSifr-Whizzard - Win: Against Chris I lacked my advance operations for quite some time, but when the Runner's only way through Mother Goddess and Loki is Parasiting them, you have the time to wait for them. Not much Chris could have done in this match.

Game 3 against Dome with ParaSifr-Whizzard - ID: We sat down to play, then saw that Chrispother and Timo on the next table ID'd, looked at each other's IDs and knew that both were basically 90-10 matchups (this deck would stomp his Whizzard, while his Moons with Executive Boot Camp needs an absolutely horrible draw to lose against Dyper), so we decided to ID too and relax outside. We played the matchups twice for fun and all four games went exactly as expected.

Game 4 against Jörg with Apocalypse Steve Cambridge - Loss: Jörg played really funky decks. Congratulations for doing so well with them! Yes, he was really playing Frank Bradford with Apocalypse. He did his best to keep me down with a combination of Strikes, Siphons and an Apocalypse to destroy my Mother Goddess. In the end I lost the game because I decked myself (I guess), just a couple of credits short of winning the turn before. If I hadn't rezzed the Mother Goddess on his runs for the Apocalypse, I could have won. But fair game, very nice play to Apocalypse an unsuspecting CI player, especially with Jack Exeter.

Game 5 against Dag with ParaSifr-Whizzard - Win: The game against Dag went even better than the one against Chris. I drew a really nice curve of Ice to shore up my centrals, got extremely rich off Targeted Marketing for Parasite (which didn't even help that much, so good call from Dag to just give me the money), found my combo pieces in quick succession and scored out.

Game 6 against Timo with Moons - ID: We were the same four guys from round 3, with Dominic paired against Chrispother and me getting paired with Timo. Since we would all be at 27 points after an ID and only four more people could theoretically reach 27 points, we decided to ID again and get some sun and oxygen while the others were struggling for the remaining places in the cut. Was a great time with you, guys!

Cut Game 1 against Philipp with Run-based Andy - Loss: I was soaring through the cut until this point, winning my first two games, and now playing CI against a Run-based Andy, which is a good matchup. The ensuing game was hilarious in hindsight. Philipp managed to Strike me at an inopportune time and I just could not find one of my Targeted Marketings to remove it. Although I managed to lock him out of HQ and R&D with Mother Goddess and Loki, I had to ditch all my combo pieces since I drew lots of agendas and could not stabilize again, when I finally removed the Strike. In the end, I had three lines of play and ultimately chose one that did not work out, although I don't remember all the details to determine whether one of the other ones would have won me the game.

Cut Game 2 against Chrispother with Vampire Hunter Hayley - Loss: Before the game between Velotrampler and Chrispother was over, I already knew I had to play against Lock Hayley, which is a terrible Matchup. I had the nuts draw and near-perfect first three turns, of Hedge Fund and Blue Level Clearance, install Efficiency Committee, advance it and protect it with Mother Goddess to score it turn three. But still, it wasn't enough as he managed to grab one Vitruvius with a well-timed Legwork and break into my scoring remote to steal the second one I drew the turn after. Could I have scored one of those, I think it could have become an interesting game, this way it was basically over and just me drawing frantically for my singleton Best Defense, while Chrispother calmly took two more Agendas off of R&D to win the game.

All in all, the deck performed really well and was a good metacall. Unfortunately it will rotate out. You will be missed, Penguins.