Brain Cells Are A Crutch: CO Vengeance MaxX (First in Swiss)

Leading up to our final official Colorado regional, I went back to Leela. Criminal received some great new cards in the last pack of this cycle. However, we also got the Red Tree. In testing, I settled on the conclusion that any criminal list should likely be on Employee Strike (or Corporate Grant based on your build). As Colorado players also love to kill runners, I decided to go back to MaxX which I played the Turbobird version in multiple Store Championships including winning me one.

Then about a week ago, Matt (CrimsonWraith) shared neuropantser's Zer0 CV list. We made some changes from the MaxX from our lessons of piloting Turbobird, but were quickly impressed with the speed and economy that our list could do. This list is what we eventually settled on as Matt has been on 3x breakers for a long time and Rebirth being a meta call against Skorp and the red menace threats.

NOTE: for those that don't know already, Colorado players don't have a real meta and usually don't follow most trends in other areas, but you can see the tournament IDs on ABR and match-ups on Cobr.ai.

I was in Ogden, UT for the prior 10 days before our regional and had the pleasure of driving back along I-80 on Friday, only to wake up and register for this regional. First round was a bye from a Store Championship. Then I was paired against Aaron on stream vs his Haley and PU decks. Both games were nerve wrecking but fun great games. We've played in a lot of tournaments and always corp split with each other. However, I managed to pull the sweep and get paired against Jordan Peters for Round 3. We quickly decided on the ID as there were 5 of us that could make the cut the cut by doing IDs the rest of the day, but we also wanted to conserve our energy for the finals as our match-ups could go either way. Round 4 was against Spenser who was paired up and needed a sweep to have a chance for the cut. After some very wacky, weird, and fun games on stream (remember that when Mti throws you into a Chiyashi that you don't break it does ETR) I was able to sweep and get to top of swiss with points. Round 5 I was paired against Rick where we quickly did an ID to have a longer dinner break before the cut.

As top seed I decided to go with my Skorp against 419. However, my deck decided to flood me after a mulligan with 7 agendas in the first 13 cards and only 3 pieces of ICE. I did manager to HS both breakers Jibran had installed with the steals, but an Inside Job and my remote when I had 3 credits allow him to get past Archer and win. In hindsight, I should have probably ran as this list has a decent match up against Titan FA as long as you see Turntable and/or steal an Atlas before the train gets going.

Rick who is also a testing buddy and I got paired up in the lower bracket. He installed ICE and a face-down card in a remote server. I installed a DDoS and steal his Atlas. The ICE was a MoGo so he was able to score a couple of agendas, but I stole his other two Atlas before he could score him allowing me time to build up a board state to eventually close out the game.

I then went against Ryan's EdTech, which is a very good deck, but we both agreed that the Clanarch match-up is a great combo with Zer0. Similar to my first match in the cut, my deck decided to remind me of variance by pitching all Clan Vengeance into the bin, including two at once. I managed to get a GFI and Beale, but a 6 ICE remote was too expensive to run with Scarcity hurting my economy. What sealed the game in Ryan's favor was the two Indexing runs I made where I saw no agendas. I did have Zer0 from turn 1, but without CV it wasn't as valuable as run as I would have preferred.

The day was a great end to A:NR official OP tournaments in Colorado. I had a lot of fun and enjoyed seeing everyone that could attend yesterday’s event. All games played, displayed while this is a fun game, it is our community is awesome and what I truly enjoy about running. Until next time, remember run last click!