Tao ❤️ Juli (2nd @ Toronto GNK)

Tāo and Juli sitting in a tree...

A small deck with big heart

For day 2 of NANPC Toronto, on the off chance that people wanted to play more Standard after the cut, I sleeved up something without too much card overlap with my tournament runner. I wanted a change and was happy to run something brand new. As it turned out, the organizers spun up a small, short GNK and I took this deck to 2nd place.

TAIBs have been experimenting with various "girlfriend tribal" decks since the set dropped. I picked this one by IonFox as something I could sleeve up and run without much practice. With so much expensive or punishing ice, Tāo and Hermes are ideal for arranging a cheap R&D instead of having to overwhelm the corp by setting up an economic engine. Instead, it uses Juli for clickless tempo, letting Tāo draw the rig or money up, while still having clicks to install or make high-value runs.

Matchup report (2-1)

• Round 1: loss vs tag & bag Azmari. IIRC, 2 of the 3 SMC were in the bottom 5 cards of the deck. So I was installing breakers without the benefit of Overclock or Trick Shot money, and was too poor at key points to stop them scoring out for the win.

• Round 2: win vs Venti Ob. This was a rough match without Bones or a way to efficiently clear tags. I was on the losing end and just barely hanging on, but my opponent baited me into a naked SAM+Holo to get the last ice rez needed for a kill. But it was at time and they needed two turns: one for MAD and another for EOL, so I won 3-0.

• Round 3: win vs Neurospike Azmari. Sniped a Reeducation early, didn't die when they scored a Bellona, stole a Bellona myself, then finally had the cheap ice lined up on R&D and multi-accessed for the win.

Reflections on the card choices

Juli -- not essential enough to mulligan for as she doesn't add value until the resources arrive. But then she's the tempo engine of the deck.

Trick Shot -- this is the multi-tool of the deck. It's the 4th-6th copy of Overclock to combo with SMC, it gives multi-access until Conduit comes down, and it even helps deal with assets or pop a pesky Spin Doctor as a side effect.

Liberated Account -- expensive to get down, but with Juli it drips 4 per turn, or gives you an 8 burst for a single click.

Contaminate -- when you've lined up the ice just right, this helps get the deep Conduit dig before any more ice goes on top.

Appreciation

❤️👔🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 -- it's much more fun doing this together!

Thank you again to the NANPC Toronto organizers and meta members for a fun time!