Birmingham was a really fun tournament and despite the arctic tundra that was the outer atrium where some of the games were played, I ended up having a great time and a decent showing in the tournament :)

Inspiration

Chris Dyer - that guy is pretty good at Netrunner, right? This is a fairly close match for the Death Rattle deck that he took to the Reading SC and that I have been piloting for a couple of tournaments now. A bunch of people (myself included) sounded the death knell for CTM when Aaron Maron was printed, but I have had some really solid performances with the deck and have enjoyed playing it a bunch.

Y u be a try hard?

The basic CTM shell has been around for ages and while bankers is a good card and having money is sweet, I still prefer the Biotic version. Not only does it give you an out in matches where you lose your SanSan, it can also mean that you can guarantee you score your Astro or land punishment immediately after scoring a Breaking News from hand. I played with 2 Pads for ages and never really hurt for money, but the addition of NASX over turnpike has helped a lot.

Of course it is important to mention the elephant in the room - Aaron Maron. Surprisingly, I have yet to lose to a criminal deck that is running Aaron. As it turns out, the Temujian contract is not infinite and you can use MVTs and other shenanigans involving taxing remotes to bring them into HHN range and trash him. The bigger problem I have found has been Temujian Whizzard with Slums and Aaron. That combination is particularly brutal if it is assembled quickly, as it chokes off your ability to windmill out (which is really your only out). Biotic labor has been super clutch in some of those matches and has helped me snatch victory from fairly implausible situations.

So basically CTM is still good, and Whizz with slums is still the strongest counter. Who knew?

Tournament Performance

The deck went 3-1 over the four rounds of swiss, losing to a slums-temujin-frantic-magnum opus whizz list that was running both keyhole and medium (what a monster!). What was remarkable about that game was that had any of 4 agendas I had in hand on the penultimate turn (or indeed any of the 5 I had in hand when he began keyholing me), been the last remaining Beale, I would have been able to close it. Wins came against Frantic Whizz with Maron, the Sorcerer Supreme Professor, and Temujian Slums Whizz.

After the cut I played one corp game against a run based Gabe. It was a great match where he controlled the early game very well and raced to 6-0 very quickly. But he then allowed me to bait him too many times into expensive runs and bluff out a breaking news to get off an EoI before Maron was down and that started the snowball into a 7-5 win.

The deck is now 20-9 over the variants I have played, and notably the losses include: Laurie Poulter (twice with powertap Andy), Dave Culeman (Temujin Whizz), Dave Hoyland (Siphon Whizz), and Tim Fowler (Temujin Whizz). So hardly a particularly bad bunch to have dropped games to and I imagine in one of their hands it could have gone a bit better.

Changes

Given the prevalence of Maron and the difficulty of landing tags, I am finding that EoI shows up in my hand far too frequently. While it is important, I think potentially dropping one to add in something like the Sync BRE might be worth while. I might also consider a Data Raven - one of the previous versions of the deck ran it and I found it a handy way to hoover up Aaron counters and set up a HHN opportunity. It also pairs well with Data Ward for decks that aren't prepared to deal with tags on the fly.

Obviously, any and all suggestions are welcome :)