[TWA] Redback - PU with some Australian Bite

Team TWA Potential Unleashed build for Worlds 2017 (played by Jesse Marshall, Chris "2016 World Champion" Dyer, Dave "Crab Hatamoto" Hoyland and Mark "cacoethesvictor" Mottram)

We (primarily I) spent the couple of weeks before Worlds largely honing this and testing CI to see if this was actually good enough to play instead of CI.

I started out exploring the Data Loop/Obokata synergy, with lots of other support cards like Batty and DNA Tracker out of Biotech, then out of IG with more assets, before I finally ditched the Nisei plan and tried going all in on the synergy between House of Knives, Obokata Protocol, Jinteki: Potential Unleashed and Kakugo.

Dave "Crab Hatamoto" Hoyland played this at KOS and went 5-0. Then we started thinking maybe we were onto something real.

Mark, Dave "Crab Hatamoto" and I played it at icebreaker and went 9-0 in total.

Then we realised we had a deck that had read the meta pretty well.

We all ended up playing it and it performed reasonably well in the main event despite there being a lot more film critic around in one of the other big USA/UK teams because they were also playing a PU variant and teched against their own deck.

I personally went 5-1 in the main event on day 1, but didn't make day 2 due to some less than stellar results on the runner side. Dave "Crab Hatamoto" and Chris "2016 World Champion" both made day 2 and narrowly missed the cut in the final round of swiss.

STRATEGY

Once you get the runner down to less than 4 cards in hand or deck, if they aren't on Film Critic, you get free Obokatas.

It's worth mentioning that the B&R list is one of the big reasons why we ended up pushing this list so far. All of our testing on the runner side showed that if you played Film Critic you largely punted the CI matchup, and we didn't think that decks that would do well could afford to choose Film Critic over Employee Strike, Levy, or Clone Chip. If people hedge and try and play Feedback Filter or other smaller net damage prevention, or if you face Levy, you have plans available to you as well (see below).

The overall idea of the deck is to grind them down, offering them a choice between checking dangerous remotes or allowing you to get Ronin online or agendas scored. Ronin is extremely important here as it is an immediate, non-agenda threat, as well as a key way to get use out of traps that are not run on. Advance your Mushins up to 4 and they are all Ronins from the runner side of the table.

The diversity of threats in the asset slots gives you flexibility, and was also about combating decklist disclosure in the top 16. Your opponent doesn't get much advantage knowing your decklist if you have a range of threats that each remote can be.

PATHS TO GLORIOUS VICTORY

1) Neural/Ronin kills, either they drop slightly in cards themselves (anything less than 5) or you have double Ronin. Can also involve another trap (Snare, Psychic Field, Junebug, Overwriter).

2) Double trap kills (Overwriter early into Overwriter/Junebug later.

3) Running them into one Junebug after being on game point and Mushining

4) Milling them out completely so they can't run through the two-three Kakugo you have set up on R&D, HQ and potentially the remote (the dream, happens very commonly).

5) Milling them to less than 4 cards left and Mushining Obokata Protocol safely onto the board.

6) Scoring out with Mushin'd agendas (not common or recommended)

7) Scoring out with never advanced 5/3s or fast advanced 3/2 & 3/1s

8) Killing the runner with your ice (only really Cortex can do this early to reckless runners.

CHOOSING YOUR PATH

Numbers 4 and 5 are the targets when you sit down to play most of the time, depending on your opponent's playstyle and willingness to run remotes. You can get kills with 1-3 or 8 if the runner is super reckless, and you can get wins with 6 or 7 if they are too cautious. 4 and 5 work best against balanced runner games where they run a fair amount and also dodge some or all of your traps. You have to work for it, you have to play the tempo game and have some fortune in the order you draw threats, but the grinding strategies proved remarkably resilient in testing.

POST WORLDS CHANGES

We would change 1 Archived Memories for a second Whampoa Reclamation.

Good luck!