Update: MCA Still Legal [2nd Salford CO]

A tweak of my nats deck for the Salford CO, with some changes stolen from Baa Ram Wu.

The CO ran Single-Sided Swiss, which was very fun! Big thanks to @mcg for running a lovely event :D

Games

Some notes on the games - my memory is terrible so I can't promise these are entirely accurate.

Round 1 - Runner loss vs. Pauly's Precision Design

Round 2 - Corp loss vs. MattOhNo's Loup Unfortunately, this game went to time, but a well deserved win to Loup. It would have been interesting to play out! I felt that MirrorMorph was close to stabilising, but Loup was fully set up with Buffer Drive shenanigans. Felt like a tight game all the way through!

Round 3 - Corp win vs. Nick's Sable Pretty run-away game for MirrorMorph: got MCA up early and Sable had some rough draws, econ wise.

Round 4 - Runner win vs. Haway's Precision Deisign

Round 5 - Runner win vs. MattOhNo's R+

Round 6 - Corped vs. Phil's Arissana - win Some real shenanigans this game. Got to 4 points fairly quickly, but Arissana got Turbine and breakers up and it was a struggle to get the last 3 points! I managed to push out the Ikawah by popping an MCA and threatening fast advance, then when clotted installing and clicking a second MCA with a MIC on the remote. Pretty gross. The wildest line by far though was the turn where I used my bonus MirrorMorph action to purge 2 counters off Conduit (thanks Bass!).

Cut game 1 - Corp win vs. Pauly's Hoshiko Very tight game against Hoshiko, got lucky with Maw triggers allowing me to Audacity out the last two points.

Cut game 2 - Corp loss vs. sauc3's Hoshiko In hindsight a hand I should have mulled I think. Did ok playing to my outs while slightly agenda flooded, but in the end we were 5 all and I had to pop the 2 MICs protecting a Vitruvius in the remote, going down to 1 credit. Calving next turn did not give me the Spin Doctor I so desperately needed (and Audacity was already in the bin), so that was the game!

Changes

• Send a Message for Offworld Office: full credit to Baa Ram Wu for this change. I am in two minds about this over Send a Message - it was good in my Round 6 game against Arissana - helped keep up the tempo while setting up the MCA for the win. On the other hand, there were definitely a few games where I had an Offworld stuck in hand that I didn't want alongside the agendas I actually cared about. My current feeling is that Send a Message isn't that much worse to score if you have a 6-cost target (there are a lot of them in the deck), and quite a bit better to have stolen.

• Regolith for NGO: another Baa Ram Wu special, liked it a lot. NGO is much better with the flow of the deck, decent money and use of a MirrorMorph click, sometimes lets you drag the runner through a server. Good stuff.

• No Biotic: well I had to cut something for the Offworld slot! One of the more suspect slots in the original list I think, many games you can't afford it. Does enable shenanigans though.

Ice

I am not 100% sold on this suite to be honest.

All the 6 costs are great, but we can't really afford this many I think. M.I.C. is amazing and should almost certainly stay as a 3-of.

Gatekeeper is... fine? It basically does two things - protect early Rashidas and, occasionally, help you fire MCA, if the runner runs it the turn before it was going to pop. After the turn you rez it though it's basically a liability. I think going to 2 was right.

Ablative is occasionally game-winning but not actually a good ice.

Honestly, if I could just run 2 Bran, 3 M.I.C. and 9 Drafter I would. I quite liked Eli 1.0 on the day as a generic 3 cost that costs around 3+ to break. Previously the list ran Magnet, but it melts too hard to Buzzsaw. Maybe now that there's Eli in there Ravana is playable?

Closing thoughts

The deck is definitely strong, but it runs a bit poor. I would like to tweak the Ice suite a bit and maybe find some cuts for econ (what econ though?).