Mabwe (highest SSO at Euros)

“Stones” in the dialect of the people who built Great Zimbabwe, as the plan is to build a hefty wall and then throw it at people. Came 44th going 4-4.

Mainly posting it for ABR but i also made some choices i dont think other SSOs made. I think SSO is a very fun id thats just slightly not good enough, but the multiple routes to turn 4 scoring out made it seem a good choice for the 8 round slog at Euros...then i got matched vs smoke with indexing/fc round 1 and 2. Its worth revisiting once too big to fail turbo charges your econ.

-Cortex Lock to keep the ice curve low and nasty as colossus often feels unweildy, goes great on centrals t1 or protecting a city works. Did get one kill from an advanced lock.

-Masvingo because sometimes you dont keep the 5/3 on the board long or get striked so self advancing in the rush to 5counters is good. I also liked being able to drop excess hollywood counters somewhere they’d get value (fire wall is too pricy and both it and ice wall are sad vs D4 and bitey bois)

-3 Red Planet Couriers: you need to triple up on at least one of your scoring cards and i felt rpc was less inf and more flexible (as you can slam a 5/3 in the remote during a scoring window and then rpc it next turn).

-Popup could prob be anything but i wanted something to get value from turning wheel farming.

-3 hostiles. You need these for that 7th point and i tried all kinds of thing in its place that just cost tempo rather than accelerating it so screw it -> 21 points it is. Both routes to very early score outs want a hollywood advancing a hostile as well.

Memorable losses:

-@twisty_b’s wanton out of Maxx to stop my t5 win made me very sad.

-@3n1gm4 indexing lock over what felt like 20 turns whilst I was on match point.

-Drawing no ice on the mull so just start advancing a city works naked and getting to 6 points with the fear.

Memorable wins:

-Total bad plays in round 8 seeing me get a punitive kill I didn’t deserve.

-a pirates hayley who hadn’t seen the RPC score out before.