Team whale Palana (2nd NZ Nationals; 7-1)

Swordsman is a whale card!!!

Team whale represent!!!!

This list went 7-1 at NZ nationals. It beat Smoke, Combo Wu (from the champ), Geist, Geist, Geist in Swiss rounds, leaving me at first in Swiss, and beat Pirate Hayley and Counter-Surveillance Omar. The only loss was the finals round against Combo Wu again. This list was what carried me to victory, as my mostly bog-standard Val list went 4-4 due to a mix of misplays, misreads and one case of bad luck.

The original shell of this list came to me via divadus, who I believe got it off Tugtetgut. Although, the core idea of Obokata Protocol + Data loop (+ Kakugo) was around since Data Loop was spoiled, but people were trying it out of PE or PU or even AgInf and it took a bit of time before a refined list was actually good.

Divadus is my local testing hero and took a list just like this to world's at 23rd place. In the end its record was much more impressive than his runner. I have been testing it a bit and liked it a lot, especially where its situated in this runner dominated meta.

Ironically, in testing, Data Loop ended up feeling like a "bad draw" most of the time. 7c is just too much to spend for this effect, The release of NGO means that the "Nisei or Obokata" remote bluff is even worse for the runner to choose, and then Anansi came out as a solid high cost punishment ice.

Coming in to NZ nationals, I was feeling under prepared and under confident that I would do well. All of my testing was on Easter weekend and many of those games had weird draw where its difficult to get any feel for improvements you could make. I'd managed to settle on the decks I thought were best (which I still stick by) but overall I'm very happy and surprised with my result.

The core idea of this deck is to keep the runner under Scarcity lock as much as possible. You want to ideally score a Nisei Mk2 as early as possible, by some mix of Bluff; reading your opponent's tempo; Rush; and using Marcus Batty as a one-shot Caprice Nisei. With a nisei scored you have a lot of flexibility to score either a Nisei and 5/3 next, or follow it it with an Obokata and then maybe bluff a Philotic as a Marcus Batty.

The agenda suite is bog standard, maybe the best in the game.

3x Scarcity of Resources is basically every good corp deck in the game right now.

IMO 2x Special Report and 2x Snare! are non-negotiable for the HQ protection. Special report also acts a bit like the Fast Track, letting you find the agendas you do want (Nisei Mk 2).

Going down to 2x NGO Front kinda of feels bad but their threat is often more important than the power they actually have. In the whole tournament I only played 1 NGO (instead scoring agendas) and the bluff was ignored.

Biased Reporting was put in as a Geist tech card and often did a LOT of work.

3x News Hound has been pretty common in Glacier Palana now. Great against most decks.

Enforced Curfew is just there as current #4 to keep the news hounds powerful.

Swordsman was a card I initially put in to the list during the April Fools weekend as a Team whale member, but in testing it was actually doing a lot of work. All the Geist lists I was playing against were using Aumakua + Dean Lister as their primary method of rush, and they often had outs against IP Block but not against Swordsman. Swordsman is obviously a lot worse against Anarch but still has value.

2x Preemptive Action just so important in general for adding your pieces together.

3/1 as DNA Tracker + Anansi could be any ratio really. They both have advantages over the other (Anansi wrecks the Combo Wu which relies on Grappling Hook there, for example). I eventually went DNA tracker because a) the deck often relies on credit punishment for its taxation, and because its 1 more strength against Aumakua reliant runners.

Cobra allows Marcus Batty to be used for more than just ETR if the situation is preferable.

Mirāju is nice anti-indexing, which was useless all day. It was my very last change to the deck to remove the 2nd one. The felt like its moving from Indexing a bit, and its placement as anti-flood wasn't great either, especially with 2x Special Report already.

I think the rest of the deck is pretty self explanatory.