Donut Shop - #1 Ayla - 60th at Worlds

What a World we live in

I started playing this silly game seriously starting in February of this year. It has been quite a ride getting to this point and its really the culmination of a lot of hard work and so much fun! I got 60th overall and am very happy with my performance. This was the best performing Ayla deck, although thats not saying much considering there was only 8 of us.

My corp, which was almost an exact copy of the Glasshouse CI list went 4-2, loosing only to two Clot lock Haley’s, which was a great meta call on their part. I knew CI fast advance would be weak to the hate people were going to bring, but I brought what I knew and had practiced the most. Turned out to be a decent call, however my runner deck is really what I am proud of.

This is a deck I was working on with Wes and playing quite a bit leading up to Worlds. It went 3-3 on the day but my losses were is mostly due to my lack of experience against CTM. I knew it wasn’t going to be the best meta call because as strong as Mopus is in the late game, I found out it was just too slow for the current meta. However, it has decent matchups across the board so I decided to bring it because again, its what I had the most reps with.

Donut Shop

OK there’s no shops but there is a Donut. Seriously I played Donut Taganes in my worlds deck. I’ll get to the reasoning later. But first,

I feel strongly that Ayla is the best ID to build a Mopus Shaper deck. The consistency of the setup is amazing. There was only one game I didn’t get my rig set up by turn three and well, I lost that game, but when you play 6 games, it happens. Usually you can get Mopus down on a Dheghdeer with either Beth or Ubax out by turn 2 or 3. There’s been games where its down on turn one!

Load up your NVRAM with Dhegdheers, Mopus, Ubax, Beth, breakers, even Modded is good for a quick start if you don’t get Mopus or Ubax on NVRAM. Mulligan hard for the setup. Sequencing is very important in this deck but you need to know the matchups. If you are going against a fast deck with smaller ice, then maybe slam Mopus without Dhegdeer and save the SMC for a breaker. You have to get a feel for the tempo of this deck in order to make these calls though.

Savant turns out to be very good in the meta. Breaking FC3 for 4 credits, Tollbooth for 5, Data Raven and Archangel for 2 is just insane. If you get Mopus and Savant on Dhegdheers you can run with very little credits and put on some serious pressure. Corps will often not rez because its just not worth it for them mid game. Dedicated processor is in there to not get locked out by Sandburg and IT Department. Its also good for the games where you can’t wait for Dhegdheer.

Reason why I think this deck is good is because of the value you get with Ubax, Mopus, and Beth. Think of it like this, clicks are worth 2 credits when you have Mopus. Beth, and Ubax give you an extra click (loosely) so every turn you are getting 12 credits of potential value. This also puts things into perspective too when choosing to make a run. The opportunity cost is high for every action so you better make em count.

Speaking of, Deep Data Mining lock is what this deck is building up to. Being able to see 5 cards off R&D is just nuts and doing it two turns later to see another set of new cards is usually game over. Combined with HQI, you can really pressure centrals hard. I ripped 6 points of agendas in one game off a DDM.

Meta Calls

GS Shrike M2 is an obvious choice when you have to pay 2 credits per sentry sub. I play tested against Gagarin enough to know that if this wasn’t in the deck I just loose that matchup. Its also very important against Komianu.

Hunting Ground did a ton of work in the tourney because I played against so much NBN. Slamming Hunting Grounds and DDM’ing through a Data Raven feels so damn good.

Biometric Spoofing is surprisingly good in this meta. Not just for the obvious hate against Brain Rewiring decks, but also against BOOM!, and net damage decks.

Donut Taganes is the star of the deck, ok well not in terms of performance but he could have been if I played a single CI matchup. In the ice breaker I played against Alex White on Brain Rewiring and turn one I played Draw NVRAM -> Hedge Fund -> Draw NVRAM -> Donut Taganes. He didn’t know what hit him lol. There was one turn he played Archives Memories for a VLC netting him only 1 credit and 4 cards. In the end of the game he couldn’t combo off because he just didn’t have enough credits. Its devastating against operation econ, and my deck is not dependent upon operations. I played it against Titan FA and did put some pressure on during that game.

I optimized against the CI matchup but just got unlucky in the field. I went 5-1 starting off which sent me to the top tables where I played against 3 NBN decks. Slums would have been so much better for the CTM matchups, but I just made the wrong call. Oh well, still worth playing it in the Ice breaker! It was just too good.

Matchups

Sanjay on Gregor Mendel Theme Deck - (Worlds 2017 Best Tennin?)

First game against Sanjay was great. He makes these beautiful alt-art cards that he gave out to competitors and was just the nicest dude I played all day. Props to the worlds best Tennin!

His deck wants to go fast and I had a terrible start. No Mopus, no Ubax, it was just clumsy and very slow. He was able to score a Nisei early and just go faster than me. This deck can be weak against these decks and it showed here. Even though I lost, playing Sanjay was a pleasant start that loosened me up for the rest of the day.

Tomasz on Rush Building a Better World

This was an interesting game where Maven was MVP. Tomasz just wanted to go fast and rush would behind Mogo and Loki. He Fast Tracked a High Risk Investment and slammed behind the Mogo thinking I couldn’t get to it. At that point I had Ubax, Dhegdheer and Mopus down. Maven in hand and misdirection on NVRAM. My turn was draw Misdirection, Install Misdirection Install Maven, and steal the 3 pointer. Once I had my breaker I was able to control the rest of the game and eventually single access Govt Takeover. MVP Maven.

Travis on Titan Fast ADV w/ Boom

I had practiced this matchup a bunch but still this game was very clumsy and close. He was able to get an Atlas, and a Hostile scored before I had Clot threat out. He started fast advancing an atlas then I popped SMC for Clot and I had a Sac Con out. On his last click he used a counter for a Hortum and ice’d up the remote. I was holding on to Maven at that point and was able to get in fortunately. He HHN’ed me after expecting to win off BOOM but I was holding on to Misdirection. Crazy game.

It was still very close he took the next few turns purging where I wiffed on a DDM. He was able to score another Atlas putting him on game point. I knew if I didn’t win asap I was going to loose very soon. I was on 4 points and thought he has some agendas in hand. HQ ice was triple advanced and my Maven was only at 6 Str. The turn was install Dhegdheer bringing Maven up to 7 Str. Play Freedom Through Equality bringing me down to 4 credits. Run HQ, Colosus gets rezzed, break the subs, and wiffff. I then pondered life and went back taking subs to the face loosing my breaker and rip a Global Food FTW! It was a thrilling game that put me at 5-1.

Virtual Insanity (32nd Worlds)

I has played a lot of matches against Gagarin leading up to worlds so I had a plan against these types of asset prison decks. The plan is pretty linear too. Get the normal set up going, but focus on getting a lot of money up front. It’s fine to take a turn or two taking 8 or 10 because when you do get Hard Hitting News’ed it needs to be for a large portion of the corps credit pool. Also don’t run unless you can drop Misdirection and clear 4 tags.

The practice played off very well in this matchup because I was able to trash the high priority assets, maintain enough credits to be able to pressure centrals, not get tagged, and win off a DDM mid game. Pretty straightforward with Mopus and Ubax because you can use all of your clicks against NEH. That all goes to shit against CTM…

Eric Caoli on Reg CTM

This was a very tough matchup… He got a good start of something like Pad, Bankers, Hedge. I had the usual start of Mopus, Dhegdheer, Ubax on turn 3 and was feeling good to start trashing things. He didn’t play many assets or ice so I thought he was maybe flooded. He makes two remotes and gives me the feeling he’s sneaking one out. This is where the game fell apart though. I decided to run one of the new remotes and hit an MVT on ~8 credits. I clear the tag and didn’t run the other remote which was a Beal. It was the right call to run but I just lost the coin flip. After this swing he was just able to start scoring 3 Beals and a 15 Minutes behind a Tollbooth. Pretty classic CTM. I shouldn’t have ran the remote but I honestly didn’t event think about MVT in the moment.

Even though I got swept that round Eric is a super nice dude and was a pleasure to play against!

Yoshi on Reg CTM w/ QPM’s

Last matchup of the day, another CTM blunder. I was a bit late to the party in terms of setup and he scored a bunch of points early. I Misdirectioned off 4 tags making the corp very poor and the tide turned in my favor. I did manage to rip 6 points off R&D with a DDM but I couldn’t close it out. In retrospect after ripping the agendas I should have just moneyed up and trashed the DBS’s. He closed out by creating a double Data Raven remote (Hunting Grounds) and waiting for a QPM with DBS. Well played by Yoshi!

Summary

Worlds is amazing. Loved piloting this deck and seeing peoples faces when I flip over Ayla. I think if I practiced the CTM matchup I could have made day two. I think this deck is fun, it’s classic Netrunner at its finest. If I had to do worlds again, I would have brought Haley, but I had a blast with this deck and am very proud it.

See ya’ll next year!