Minh MaxX (1st seed / 2nd overall of 46 @ FFG SC)

tl;dr: This deck is still good. Mimic is a meta call.

Having already won an SC, I decided to play the silliest, least interactive decks I could think of at this one -- Minh Maxx and 7-point Shutdown CI. The plan was to drink beer, lose quickly, and go have dinner with my wife, her family, and a visiting friend. Instead, I won my way to first seed in Swiss and fought back from a game loss ruling in the first round of elims to make the finals, winning the first game but losing the second.

Minh MaxX was 4-1 in Swiss and 3-1 in the cut, with the loss being a game loss ruling from Lukas because I flipped over a card I was trashing with Utopia Shard and saw it before I thought about what I was doing (illegal game state). It was the first game of elims, too, so that sent me to the lower bracket. Whoops. Not a mistake I've made before, nor will I ever make it again! I managed to fight my way back to the finals, but I ran out of gas mentally and misplayed badly with my Corp in the second and deciding game, ending up second to @Fictional.

This deck has almost disappeared since Worlds, but I took it for a spin in the jinteki.net Stimhack league and realized that people don't play it because it makes their opponents hate them, not because it's a bad deck. I had more than one opponent complain about my deck choice, win or lose. I used those games to learn how to pilot the deck, learn the matchups, and test card tweaks.

Changes to Minh's list:

-2x Day Job

+1x DLR +1x Mimic

No one was expecting this beast at Worlds, but the cat is out of the bag on AI breakers now thanks to Dumblefork, and a lot of people around here are running Swordsman. Accordingly, I slotted a Mimic. It was useful in the Stimhack League, but I didn't install it once in this tournament, and never saw a Swordsman. It's a meta call, slot it or a Day Job (or the third Laundry) as you like.

I wanted the third DLR for consistency's sake. It might not be strictly necessary with the amount of recursion, but I found I was able to set DLR up extremely consistently with all of the draw, getting it down with Fall Guy and WNP before the Corp was fully set up and before taking any tags, then turning it on a the time of my choosing (generally after a Siphon).

Swiss wins were over Bootcamp Blue Sun, 24/7 Haarp (first full mill win!), PE (although he had an awful mulligan), and 24/7 NEH. The loss was to a well-piloted Foodcoats with 8 cards left in R&D when he IAA'd the winning Food. Mill 3 check Archives with 40% of R&D face down in there yielded only 4 points, so he won. Close one.

One of the wins was also close - I happened to see 24/7 on R&D in the NEH game click 1 when running to install DLR. I had 3 tags from Siphons, so I spent the rest of my turn clearing them (I'd been playing my IHW and pitched Paparazzi, thinking it was Fastro). He later said that he'd had Traffic + Scorch in hand, so I was dead if I didn't clear tags. After seeing 24/7, though, I stayed at 1 tag, kept him poor, and milled enough of R&D to win on an Archives run.

I faced the same 24/7 Haarp in game 1 of the cut, and had the DLR lock set up when I inadvertently flipped a card faceup when trashing with Utopia, getting a game loss (Lukas was standing right behind me, so we just consulted him and he ruled right away). Otherwise, I think that game was in my favour, and I showed it when I faced the same player in the same matchup again in the lower bracket and milled him out for the second time that day. I also faced an NEH Fastro in the lower bracket semifinal and won with DLR lock and an Archives run after stealing 2 early Astros from an open R&D.

I made it back to the Finals and faced @Fictional's winning EtF. He left R&D open early, so I took 4 free points while he was setting up. I also got a Siphon off the turn before he drew and installed Caprice on HQ. I had WNP and 3x Fall Guy out, but I went through the whole deck without getting a DLR. Should have Deja'd for it, but I was playing sloppy, even forgetting to activate my installed Josh B for 3 consecutive turns before finally putting it next to my deck so I'd remember to activate it when doing my MaxX trigger. I managed to win on R&D accesses after the Levy, but this win was basically luck saving me from my own bad play.

Mental exhaustion caught up to me in the second Finals game where I played Corp (7-point shutdown CI), and I got Vamped and lost, having played my Vamp tech (Reuse) prematurely.

Minh MaxX is a great counter to all of the yellow decks floating around. Murder just doesn't work against you between IHW and Paparazzi, and their econ is light enough that if they're trashing your DLR rig, they have no money for anything else. No one is running All-Seeing I (yet). Foodcoats is the most even matchup I've faced so far, with both wins and losses between the Stimhack League and this tournament. Blue Sun seems like it should be challenging with their ice ability to trash resources (Elizabeth Mills trashed WNP on me at this tournament), but so far I've only lost to @bblum when I let him get a protected Corp Town (after I saw him Bootcamp it, whoops).

This is a great deck to keep in your back pocket when either you sense that the meta is right or you just don't give a crap and want to play MaxX without having to mess around playing actual Netrunner. Turns out that when you don't care, you can win a lot of games.