TGTBT: Top Seed Australian Nationals, 2nd place

firesa 676

So nothing too original here. Butchershop, you know how it works, and learning how to play against it was much more important for me than learning to play it.

Nonetheless, went undefeated day 1 to take me to top seed in prep for day 2. On day 2 it fared less well, going 2-2 in elims (16 player double elim, I played 9 games of double elim after dropping a game with this deck early on).

Nothing too interesting, two sansan to improve scoring out and also kill opportunities, and tax credits and imp tokens. 12 agendas to maximise opportunities for midseasons, breaking news kills etc. Snare did tons of work on the day, same with closed accounts and cyberdex.

Beat a bunch of whizzards, bunch of noise, bunch of prepaid kates, lost to an Andy in top 16, and then to Whizzard in the last game of the event (insert salt here).

If nationals were next weekend I'd take this deck again without changes.

8 comments
21 Aug 2015 SizemattersHS

Hey @firesa, i'm really thinking of piloting your deck in my Regionals soon, this will be my very first time using Butcher Shop, which honestly saying I'm not very good at it.

Been play-testing this deck a lot of times and out of 10 games, I only won once. Perhaps I just do not know the right way of playing this deck. Any tips for a new player to this, especially me.

21 Aug 2015 SizemattersHS

@firesa Just to added, I was thinking of -1 SanSan City Grid +1 PAD Campaign, What do u think about that? and do this deck really need TGTBT?

21 Aug 2015 HexNet

@AcidBurn Most Butchershop decks would be -1 BNews, -1 TGTBT, +1 Beale. OP named the deck after the card, so must've felt it was an important change.

The SanSan's are vital for pressuring via Fast Advancing. The deck has enough economy.

If you're having trouble with the deck, it's probably due to using the ICE wrong. This list in particular is super-sparse on ICE, so even harder to play than other Butchershop decks. Try a game where you only install on HQ and R&D. Maybe one piece (Wraparound or Quandry) on a remote to get an early score.

21 Aug 2015 SizemattersHS

@HexNetThanks , I will make some changes to the agenda and perhaps take yur advice on place ICE on HQ and R&D for now. Will have some playtest later in the day.

22 Aug 2015 firesa

Hi Acidburn, if Film Critic is legal for your regionals I would think long and hard about playing this deck. The deck is already not easy to play, and when you throw in that film critic kills part of your win con, it can get silly hard. As you can see the deck plays a lot of etr ice. This is to give you time to find your kill pieces (midseasons, traffic accident, scorch), and to give you ways to score out, especially early astros. The deck is about recognizing which path is more viable, but staying on high money is important to keep the runner scared if they know what deck you are playing. You also need to know when to put etr ice on hq first, and when to put it on R&D first. You don't want to lose to R&D digs late for example, but siphons and imps can suck early when hitting your hand. The 12 agendas give you a lot more chances to kill, and sometimes your opponent will need to steal 5 of your 12 agendas to beat you, which can buy you a lot of time. Naked breaking news in a remote for a while can be good sometimes, so that you can click 1 2 advance, score, click 3 closed accounts, or trash one of their econ cards, or scorch if they have less than 4 in hand.

All in all this deck is really really really strong. But it takes a weird playstyle and a bit of practice to get the hang of. I played probably about 60 or so games with it in the lead up to nats, and won something like 55 of them (and the 5 losses were 4 leela and 1 ian stirling).

As Hexnet said another sansan is much better than a pad, pads suck to rez, sansans give you another path to victory, or to kill via breaking news kill (get used to trying to kill people by playing breaking news in a remote, advancing it once, and putting a wraparound or quandary in front of it, with TA an scorch in hand). On the other hand the TGTBT deck name is more of a joke about coming second, rather than first :P But yes. If film critic is legal, and you are already not comfortable with this deck, I suggest you play something like blue sun kill. If you want to play this deck despite film critic, cut a midseasons and use the 11 agenda suite to make room for 2 sea sources, which can really catch the runner off guard, but requires double scorch to kill

22 Aug 2015 SizemattersHS

@firesa Thanks for the advice. Old Hollywood has not arrived yet where I live, so I guess im fine. Today I did some play-test with the deck. I lose horribly to Whizzard.

22 Aug 2015 SizemattersHS

@firesa I still dunno if this deck suits my play-style. I play many TCG in the past and mostly Im a veru heavy control deck player. Im not too sure if there are such things as a control deck in Netrunner. Previously I use to play HB heavy taxation deck (aka Red Coats) but thats was like 1.5 years ago and now im back into the game.

23 Aug 2015 firesa

yeah heavy control decks are more the RP decks or the glacier HB decks. NEH, both fastro and butcher, are more of a risky aggro style of corp deck, if that comparison can be made. Whizzard should be a good matchup, most of your economy is operation based, and so you just need to look out for imps and stay ahead on money for the most part