A Little Help From My Friends 1st at Asgard Games SC Jan15

This deck finished top of Swiss at the 17 person Asgard Games Store Championship. It went undefeated in the Swiss and dropped one game in the cut to 2015 National UK Champ David Hoyland. You generally win through Fast Advance, but its important to spot situations where you can reliably bluff or score off the table. In the finals vs Hoyland I scored a Food behind two Fairchild 3s and a Next Silver.

Credit to Spags for the original build of this deck, and to lpoulter for tweaking it and sending me the list. This is card for card Laurie's list, posted with his permission. I couldn't really find a deck I wanted to play for SC's, but my Friends ended up coming through for me.

I'd consider Criminal a good matchup, Shaper, Reg Whizz and Hatebear/Miffed Val even matchups, and Dumblefork a bad matchup.

Quick blow by blow of the day:

R1: Siphon Whizzard. I was able to get a campaign protected and slowly rez a bunch of Fairchilds and Next ice. I eventually won by Fast advancing agendas with SanSan and Biotic Labor. R2: Dumblefork. I didn't get an early campaign so instead I rushed a Corporate Sales Team behind an Architect and a Next Silver. My opponent didn't find Mimic for most of the game and so I was able to protect Campaigns in this server going forward, and Friends in High Places Ice that got Cutleryd back. It was still a close game, but I closed it out with Biotic Labor just as Medium was becoming a threat. R3: David Hoyland on Andromeda. I only bled 4 points to early aggression and soon made every server incredibly taxing. I won by Fast Advancing most of my points fron SanSan, R4: I IDd into 1st in Swiss

I played this deck once against Dave in the finals and lost to a final turn mistake. I installed the sixth piece of Ice on RnD, and the install costs meant I could only rez 2 of the currently 3 pieces of ice there. Had I not done this and rezzed them during his last ditch run I would have won the game.

Your primary approach to winning games with this deck is to get a campaign protected and money rolling in. Do this and you can fund the installing and rezzing of big pieces of Ice, and start to assemble that Next synergy. As long as you have money Friends in High Places can keep your Ice in play against Anarchs. This avoids the old problem of HB getting rich but just running out of Ice, and it particularly useful when you have Next ice in your deck.

Marcus Batty, Cyberdex Virus Suite and SanSancity Grid are all fine as one ofs. You tend to go pretty long and will find them, and they're all excellent with Friends in High Places. In one testing game against Temujin Whizzard I kept Friendsing CVS into my Breaker Bay server and stopping them from running safely against Fairchild 3, and in another game I won by using Marcus Batty three times to trash their rig.

I've never been a big fan of Next Ice but here it was excellent. I was able to install more Ice than they could kill with friends, and I'd end up with 5 or so rezzed Next a lot of the time. Mother Goddess does double duty in this list - the fact that regular breakers cannot break it early is excellent for getting your Campaigns rolling.

Unique Fairchild was excellent for me on the day. Its taxing no matter how they deal with it, and while they can get through once with a D4v1d they cannot blow it up with Spooned unless they have help. I'd recommend keeping one. I tend to put it on the most vulnerable Central Server, depending on the matchup.

If you can't protect an early campaign, particularly against Dumblefork, you will have a very hard time, and sometimes this will happen without you being able to do much about it. Every Corp in ANR in 2017 is like this. You're not as bad against Dumbles as CTM is against Power Tap Andy.

Don't be afraid to rez Eve campaigns without Breaker Bay. The funding they give you will still be vital.