Norcal Regionals 1st Place - Whizzard

While I've made top 8 at several tournaments, including Regionals last year, I'd never actually won a Store Championship, let alone a Regionals Championship, so I was really happy to end up winning the Norcal Regionals on 04/09/16. I was actually surprised to do so well since I hadn't played in about a month due to a combination of work and the X-wing store championship season, and I haven't even gotten around to buying latest two datapacks yet. I almost didn't get out of bed because I stayed up late the night before, slept through my alarm and my ride called and was like "Uh, where are you?" But I made it, and it was all worth it :)

This is a variant of Dumblefork, which has been pretty popular recently. My main tweaks are the Nerve Agent, which adds some nice HQ pressure that most Dumblefork decks lack, Archives Interface, which I added after some friends told me about the predicted IG meta, and Hades Shard, which I added because I was afraid of the bad CI matchup, though I never faced it. I also run E3 because it is really good against Bioroids and helps extend D4vid and Faust against glaciery decks, but depending on the meta, I'd trade it and Hades for another Clone Chip.

Whizzard went 5-0 in Swiss, while my NEH corp deck went 2-3, which put me at 5th seed out of 56 players. In the cut, Whizzard went 2-1, while NEH went 3-0.

I don't remember all the details of my matches, but I do remember facing IG, PE, Palana, ETF, NEH, MaxX, Whizzard, Noise, and Haley. But here are some of the highlights from Swiss that I do remember:

--Archives Interface was a boss. This is a card that I've seriously underestimated and I want to keep a copy even if/when the IG storm blows over. It removed Snares, Shocks, Shi-Kyu, CVS, Bioethics, Ashe, Caprice, and Jackson Howard throughout the day. It was to the point where IG players were pitching their Museums in the bin because they simply weren't that good anymore. It also meant I had pressure on all 3 central servers, which was invaluable.

--I won 3 psi games in a row against Palana, burning the Nisei token, trashing Caprice, stealing the Nisei, and later stealing TFP from R&D for the win.

--I almost died to Jamie's iceless IG deck. Bioethics hit me down to 4 cards, Neural down to 3, Neural again hit my one I've Had Worse in hand. On top of that, this gave away that the scary advanced card was a Ronin and not a Junebug, which I was able to trash the following turn and then AI everything scary out of the deck.

I'll go into more detail on the games in the cut since I remember those better:

1. First game was against Jon, playing Noise. It was a tense game, where Team Sponsorship saved my butt by allowing me to install Jackson from Archives to shuffle back what would have been the winning agendas for Jon back into R&D, and I was able to score out shortly afterwards.

2. Next up I was against Adam's Psycho NEH deck, which was a super close game. He landed 6 tags on me with midseasons, with an Astro already scored. I was running really poor, but saw an NAPD in archives, moneyed up, and turntabled it for his Astro. He had Psycho in hand, but not enough credits and I burned down his HQ ice and went in with Nerve Agent. He tried to dig for ice for HQ, but instead drew a bunch of agendas, which I was able to grab for the win.

3. Next I played against Kris' ETF deck. I was seriously outplayed here; he had way more ice than I could burn down, including Turings and Architects that were difficult for me to deal with, and all the money in the world, and I never saw E3 which I needed for the bioroids and D4vid. I simply got locked out and he scored out. At this point, I was pretty sure I was out for first place since I'd have to win three games in a row, including two against Kris, and his ETF deck seemed very well teched against me.

4. I played against Jon again, the same matchup as before, NEH vs Noise. This game definitely went in my favor, with high strength ice on the centrals that were Parasite resistant, and an overwhelming number of assets. Not only that, but he was checking most of my remotes since I'd scored a naked Astro in our previous game, so he hit CVS, wiping Imp. I scored an Astro and BN early, while he hit an Explodeapalooza I think, which gave me a lot of money to work with. He milled a Beale into Archives while I had drawn Astro the previous turn, so I scored Astro on Sansan, used Team Sponsorship to install the Beale on Sansan, and then use both Astro tokens to score the Beale for the win.

5. I was up against Kris again, NEH vs his Apoc MaxX. I saw the Apoc early from MaxX mill, so I was terrified the entire game of when it would happen and kept two Wraparounds in HQ for that eventuality. But I got Wraparound + Assassin on R&D and Little Engine on HQ, which taxed D4vid enough that he wasn't able to pull it off. That was good for me, since my assets got completely out of control, triple Pad, triple Turtlebacks, DBS, TS, etc., and I was able to keep him out of central servers enough to score out once I drew my agendas.

6. It was on to the final game, Whizzard vs ETF, which matchup I had previously lost. He keeps and I mulligan so I already start off sweating, and he ices HQ, Sure Gambles, and takes a credit. I didn't mull into Wyldside, but with R&D open I hit it instead of digging for it, trash an asset and then score an ABT. He quickly plugs the hole and starts building a remote. At this point I know I need Wyldside ASAP and split my time between trashing econ assets and digging, pitching cards in the bin desperately searching for it. I finally get it, and he scores an ABT out of the remote, which gets him a free Architect for R&D. At this point, he has two ice on R&D, including Architect which I can't easily deal with yet. One unrezzed ice on HQ. Three ice on the remote, Turing innermost and two unrezzed ice in front of it. He hadn't scored in a while, and I had Faust in hand and four credits. He installs in the remote, and I feel it's an agenda, and decide to take my chances, install Faust, and run. First I hit Ichi, which I break with Faust since I only have two clicks left and I'd eat the trace, potentially losing Wyldside. Next, he rezzes Wall of Static, which I break, leaving me with one card, I D4vid through Turing, and get a Vitruvious. At this point, I almost draw up, but then I notice Kris has just two credits left, and an unrezzed ice on HQ, so I waltz in, and hit another Vitruvious. I go in one last time, and hit ABT for the win.

For those of you that are interested, my Corp deck is here.