Mint Julip Adam -- 4-1 at Italian KoS (Top Minifaction!)

This is an amalgamation of a few of my favorite Adam decks, most notably Mimosa Adam from thebigunit3000 (whom I clearly cribbed the deck name from), and Turtle Van Adam from Thike.

I always liked the way that they played, using Aumakua for early pressure, then jumping Femmes out to poke holes in servers. Logic Bomb only improves that aspect. It turns out, there's 3 truths in life. There's Death, there's Taxes, and Adam gets his Accesses.

As with most Adam decks, in 98% of the matches, you don't really want Always Be Running to start, but I did find that I liked it enough to include a single copy, and I often use it late game to poke even more holes in servers. I loved the interaction with Emergent Creativity saccing a Femme to install a Femme for 2 clicks and 2 credits, but I always felt sad about that dead Femme. I added in a Retrieval Run to scoop that Femme back out of the bin to put even more misery on the corp.

I have 2 Turning Wheels, but I honestly didn't end up using them that much. In most of my matches they kinda sat there until I won through other means (or died, the one time I lost). I still think I like it a little, but it might be fine to swap out. Since Mad Dash is MWL'd, I had to include the more costly version in Freedom, and it's still a good card.

Other than that, it's just good cards. It (alongside my Sportsmetal deck) carried me to a 9-1 finish!

Here's a write-up of my matches below.

Match 1 - Adam vs Palana.

Palana got flooded early, but I couldn't find good ways to exploit it. He ICE'd up all his servers pretty quickly, making Aumakua awkward. There was a Bastion on HQ, a Mind Game on R&D, a Anansi on Archives (that was a painful surprise), and a News Hound on the remote. There wasn't any current out, so the remote was useless, but it really wasn't any good for counter farming either. The issue was, when I saw Bastion, my mind read "Guard," so I was looking for Femme to get through. This is dumb because I pitched Clippy to the bin super early, and had a Multithreader out, making Bastion a 1c break once a turn. Oops! He eventually tried to score a Nisei behind some ICE and the News Hound (still no current), but a Logic Bomb stopped that nonsense. I eventually remembered that Bastion is a barrier when I tried to break it with Femme and he told me so, so I got out Clippy and scored a TFP, correctly betting 2. Brain Chip was down, so my hand size was now huge. A few turns later I start hitting HQ again, and nab an Obokata, finishing the game.

Match 2 - Adam vs The Outfit

This was a very, very fast match. He drew into what looked like the nuts, and then things backpedaled very fast. Turn 1 he installs and ICE, installs behind it, and advances once. I'm not dumb, so I just money up. Next turn he scores the Atlas. I Dirty Laundry HQ, and hit a Snare!, which I trash (he's on 1 credit; whew) and an SSL Endorsement. Find The Truth shows me an Atlas on R&D, which I go take as well. He moneys up. I draw a little, and want to use this Dirty Laundry I drew somewhere on click 3. HQ has only 2 cards, so I can see both of them, but hitting another Snare! on 2 cards is one of the only ways I lose this game right now, so I hit Archives with it. FTT shows me another SSL on R&D, which I grab on click 4. It's a sad way to lose a game, but it happens to us all.

Match 3 - Adam vs Titan Transnational

Spoiler: I lose this one. So it's Titan, so they're trying to rush their nether-parts off. I choose Always Be Running in order to make their ICE swiss cheese, putting Safety First away (since I still want to access 2 cards in HQ, and I still want to see what's on top of R&D. Free draws are good too, but I just want to see as many of his cards as possible). It's a hell of a lot of pressure on Titan from the get go. I'm making him rez things, then walking through it. I get an early Food, and all he can find is a Hostile. Then the agendas just... stop. He's been drawing like crazy, slapping down cash cards and pitching random FA tools he can't use, using clicks to draw as well as Arms Factories, which I eventually trash. Now I have 3 BP, Always Be Running, and my breakers are showing up, but are uninstalled as of yet. Things are looking really good for me. I end my turn on 1 credit, but who cares with 3 BP. This is when he hits me with HHN. ...Well shit. I run HQ to try and trash the BOOM! that I suspect, but I have to click through his Hortum on the outside of the server, making me run through the Excalibur on the inside. I miss hitting the BOOM! in his hand, and he did NOT miss playing it first click of the following turn.

Match 4 - Argus

If there's an ID that just says "Hi, I'm here to kill you," it's Argus. I mulligan away a hand full of costly installs into a hand ripe full of cash, which is all I want to see early vs Argus. Avoiding the Econ Warfares and HHNs is crucial. Fortunately, I have a LOT of money on top of my deck, so I can poke around a little. I take an early Oaktown off of R&D, decide I can take the tag rather than the meat, and clear it off, taking a credit. He Econ Warefare's me for value, and installs some more ICE. I take more money, throw down an Emp Strike, and start poking HQ, nabbing another Oaktown. At this point he HHNs me for value, but I can still clear just fine, and with 2 Daily Casts ticking, my money is still fine. I want to say he gets a double-advanced Atlas after a purge somewhere in here, which doesn't make me happy. It makes FTT worse as well, since he can use Atlas to shuffle the deck, should I see something on R&D from FTT and run on it. The turn before he scores it, though, I was running HQ click 4 to rebuild Aumakua (Femme on HQ). With FTT, I see another Atlas on R&D. When he scores the double-atlas, he obviously has to keep this one in hand. I figure with 5 cards in his hand, and me seeing 2 cards a run, this seems like a great time to just smash HQ. I throw out Freedom click 1, and run click 2. It turns out there was the final Oaktown that was also in HQ, which I hit, and win.

Match 5 - Sportsmetal

This was a cool match, against a really cool deck, against a really cool player that I remember playing against in the winners final of the Regional in Turin that I won earlier this year. This was an almost NEH style Sportsmetal deck, with DBS to find and filter cards, Team Sponsorship and Jeeves doing their thing, and Advanced Assembly Lines to spew even more cards out of hand. The DBS was really nice, since when I score an agenda (and he chooses to draw rather than gain credits) or faceplant into a Gatekeeper, DBS gets to fire on his turn, showing him even more options. I'll tell you what sucks against this kind of deck, though. Neutralize All Threats. Boy I love accessing multiple cards, but with so many cards with high trash costs, you can go broke fast. Fortunately (?) I got "lucky" and faceplanted a Fairchild 3.0 on his remote on the second click of a turn. We talked about it at the end, and that Fairchild rez might have lost him the game, because I used it to trash Neutralize All Threats (and, after thinking about it, Safety First). For the rest of the game I was free to poke where I wanted to, and was able to use his open remotes to farm Aumakua counters, whereas before I would have been forced to trash those remotes, which doesn't gain counters. At this point just poking around managed to get me to 7 points. It might have looked unlucky with me hitting a couple choice agendas, but it was all due to me not having to care about pesky Threats, and the Neutralizing thereof.