Whiplash (16th @ Euregio)

This deck was inspired by and is dedicated to the wonderful Pommes, who created this superb Metallica themed Outfit ID that captured my heart and birthed this creature of the night.

I wanted something simple to play, fast to win (in order to counter my slow Leela on the day) and with enough options to be interesting. Most match ups were good (with the exception of Leela) and I managed to get 16th of 41 players on the day which was a real achievement for me :D

Although bad draw can be punishing, overall i found that as long as you played like you were going fast, the threat of HHN tended to keep the runner scared at the beginning and allow you to bluff aggression even if you hadn't seen your key pieces turn up yet. The absolute weakest part of the deck was trying to keep the runner out of R&D once they could clear HHN tags but I can't think of a way to fix that without slowing the deck down. It is also terrible against Leela as icing up HQ to protect against DoF slows you down and then reinstalling all the ice each time you score slows you down even more.

The Roughneck was good and gave a way to money up and clear Bad Pub when you were waiting for combo pieces to rise up out of R&D. A Fast Track + something else might be better so that when things slow down you just accelerate even harder, but I really enjoyed having something to jam in the remote to force the runner to lose tempo checking it.

Star of the show was probably Ashfar, which seems innocuous enough when there's one on HQ but somehow appears four times worse when there's two. The IP Block should definitely be an Eli 1.0 and the Sapper should be something good although I'm not sure what (suggestions in the comments are extremely welcome).