The Gist

This is the deck I play when I'm not really sure what's going on, and the meta is a weird, scary place these days. After Surveyor broke free from the restricted list, I abandoned all notions of playing something fresh and exciting, and settled in to play jammy NBN all day.

Ice up centrals with anything taxing (favouring R&D), get a Jinja down and start pushing whatever you draw into the remote. Agendas, Rashidas, NGOs, upgrades... in it goes! Get Scarcity up and keep naming events with Azmari, and even spammed econ denial has trouble keeping up. Attitude Adjustment helps keep HQ clear and Jinja fed. That's really all there is to it. It loses to Apocalypse, and to anything which can deal with a big fat server once per turn, like Smoke.

The Day

This performed better than my runner deck at the York Regional, but still went down hard to teched-up Shapers.

Round 1 - Hayley (Win) - My opponent played a very gracious game, coughing up handfuls of credits the couple of times they hadn't accounted for Scarcity when making a play. I was set up by turn 3 or 4, and had to wait nervously for agendas to start showing up as green spread across Ian's playmat. I drew bait and agendas in the right order, and managed to tax Ian enough to score out.

Round 2 - Freedom (Win) - Some Stargate-y, Consume-y shenanigans kept plenty of pressure up on me, but R&D stayed loyal to me. Another game of near-constant Scarcity (although Dave later confessed he was pretty light on resources) and a swiftly-constructed Jinja remote. Dave opted against trashing the naked Jinja on turn 1, and we made some interesting speculations about how things could have gone otherwise if he had.

Round 3 - Wu (Loss) - I'd love to pretend this game ended with a noble harakiri, but honestly I just didn't think to count the cards I had left. Andrew's Laamb/Surfer Wu absolutely laughed at my remote, cruising in happily every time something got installed. I was determined to tax them out, and ended up with a 10-stacked remote. Unfortunately, the last couple of pieces of ice came from an Attitude Adjustment, leaving only one card left in R&D. Andrew prompty Stargated that, and that was it. There were about six different ways he could have won at that point, though (I tell myself, lying awake at night).

Round 4 - Reina (Win) - I was under a lot of pressure from Elia early in the game, as all sorts of lovely cards were Stargated away from me. A couple of News Hounds managed to make R&D unappealing enough to keep Eater out, and I finally got Scarcity to stick. This allowed me to score out before a Stimhack could ruin my day.

Round 5 - Hayley (Loss) - Nemo played a consummate Hayley game while agendas built up in HQ. As I sat on match point to Nemo's 2, I heard the dreaded words:

"Click one, I'll run HQ."

2 points gone. But not the Beale, which I can jam next turn!

"Click two... HQ again."

Uh oh.

The third HQ run hit the only non-agenda (an NGO), but that seemed to have slaked the thirst for HQ. I could possibly have drawn up and tried to tax Hayley out, but with all the Beales and NGOs now out the game I would have to advance something sooner or later. I hastily installed-advanced my 4/2, and lived to regret it.

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Thank you to all of my opponents for tolerating the sad eyes I make when Scarcity gets wiped, and for not Apocalypsing me. Another big thanks to Akira, Organiser of Many Events and Maker of Sweet Alt-Art Prize Party Bags.

Iterating

Jua just doesn't seem such a thang any more now that Crowdfunding is out. I'd LOVE to have a Bio Vault in here, and I might try that out in place of the Ash.