Hold my berry wine (Apoc 419) - 1st @Domecon 2020 (5 - 1)

This is the Apoc 419 deck that helped me winning this year's Domecon's main event, placing 1st out of 34. Well, this and a good portion of luck, I'd argue. While I wasn't sure which Corp to play at Domecon (until I decided to take my homebrew Gagarin), I was pretty sure I was bringing some ICE destruction Anarch to the event. I played a toned-down version of @Pinsel's/@Saan's Hoshiko deck recently at a Core + Ashes event, and I thought of something along those lines. But people kept telling me how absolutely broken Spombo Asa is, so I expected to see it a lot. As I spent the little testing time I had available already on Gagarin, I couldn't practice the match-up from either side. So the morning of the tournament, I decided to just side-step the issue and play Apoc.

This deck is obviously based on @spags Sweet Berry Wine Me, which in turn is based on Dave Hoyland's Wine Me, Dine Me, 419 Me. I mostly just took out rotated cards and replaced them with interesting cards from Uprising. I honestly think Apoc Maxx is the stronger deck, but I have never played it and at least I played the spags version of Apoc 419 a couple of times, so I decided to bring this. Also, similar to Valencia last year, people do not immediately expect the Apocalypse as soon as you sit down and reveal your ID. The first few turns you can go undercover - Bravado, Aumakua, Daily Casts, The Class Act, nothing of this will raise any suspicion. Usually people will suspect something a turn or two before they get actually hit by the Apocalypse, but then it's often too late already.

My match-ups during Domecon proved to be pretty lucky for this deck. My first round was Titan, where you can just pretend to be a regular Crim deck, put down Aumakua, find some agendas, embezzle the fast advance tools and win by single accesses. Second round was against SSO, which is a pretty good match-up for about any Apoc deck, I think. Then I played three Asa decks in a row, where the deck did what it was supposed to do. Asa is kinda strange as I feel you sometimes need to burn an Inside Job or use a Boomerang to contest a remote, even though you will blow the while thing up eventually, just to buy you crucial time. Also it happened twice to me that I accessed a Game Changer in HQ during the Apoc turn and could not afford to trash it, which tells you how tight money is in this match-up. All three games I found at least one Vacheron, and blowing up the board once or twice bought me enough time for it to tick out. I talked a bit with @JackMade after the tournament and he thinks Asa should be able to beat Apoc decks if they know from the get-go it's coming, so maybe the surprise factor did something here. Although I did beat @Vaclav in the third round with this, and he knew about the Apocalypse before the game, so ...

Finally, in the last round of Swiss I faced Earth Station, and that's a match-up you probably can't win, unless they have a really bad draw. @5N00P1 had far from it, making me eat three Economic Warfare and a Hard-Hitting News in the first five turns, while also casually scoring five points already ...

So can I recommand to play this? I tend to say: Not really. However, what I can say: If you do play this deck, I would advise you some changes. First, cut the Femmes. They are way too expensive for this deck, and Boomerang does their job better most of the time. Speaking of, you can probably also cut the third Boomerang. Some cards I wish I had instead in the deck are: Sneakdoor Beta, Special Order, Drive By and about anything that gives you money. PAD Taps seems like a valid choice, but I'd also take Dirty Laundries. Also, this deck plays no unicorn, so maaaaybe you could add a single Mad Dash - but I don't think that's the best choice.

I wrote this already in my Corp write-up, but I will repeat it here: Domecon was a blast, as always. I don't find much time to play Netrunner these days, so playing six rounds of Swiss was awesome, and the extra game in the top3 cut was just icing on the cake. All my opponents were super nice, I enjoyed seeing old faces again and meeting some new ones. I actually took a screenshot from the standings round two, because I expected to drop from the top every round, but somehow I kept winning. Huge thanks to everybody at the event and especially @dome_ for organizing it. I would tell you to come next year, but there might not be a Domecon next year, so maybe you missed your chance.