KANEHL++, An EA Sports Title (4th at UK nats)

Ollie 252

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This deck carried me to 4th place at UK nats, it's a very good deck. At EA Sports HQ we were testing a bunch of the corp decks that had done well at worlds and soon identified KANEHL+ as having pretty decent matchups into most runners, so we started testing it more with the changes suggested by Pinsel, of adding an extra Mestnichestvo. This was good, 5 credits is a lot early game but unless it's boomeranged or bankhar'd it's probably costing to runner a bit to either facecheck or break so it's not the worst exchange in the world also advancing it when it's protecting a Bellona in the remote is incredibly rude.

We found the unsmilings to be lacking somewhat and ended up swapping them for Starlit Knight which works well in this deck because the card is basically ice and tag punishment stapled together and also runners don't want to take the tempo hit of installing a sentry breaker against you early game and this ice punishes that.

The other changes we made were -1 Biotic Labour, -1 Federal Fundraising, +1 Seamless Launch, +1 Economic Warfare. Having 2 Seamless felt very good, you now have 5 ways to NA a Cryptocrash early and more chances to see Wage Workers + Seamless early to enable an early Bellona score to get you to threat 3 early. Economic warfare did some work on the day but I'm skeptical as to whether it truly is correct or not, in practise it was used for 'value' a lot more after installing 3 cards with WW rather than the dream of econ warfare into an Oppo. Fundraising was a card that in testing never felt that great hence we were happy to cut to just 2, however, at the event it was one of the key cards for me, clicklessly drawing extra cards to help enable WW turns, as well as always knowing at least the top card of R&D means you're a lot less likely to lose from centrals leaking agendas and you can also keep key cards on the top of R&D to play around Maw (just remember that you might not want to shuffle Marylin back in if you are doing this).

This deck is also a good lesson in why you should always scruitinise every card choice, we didn't even think about tweaking the agenda suite as to us it was already perfect and as a result completely missed playing AR Enhanced Security instead of Oracle Thinktank, that's just a strictly better swap in my view.

A huge shout out to everyone who came, you all made this event great and reminded me of why I love sitting in a room playing a children's card game so much, it was great to see a lot of old faces and it was great to meet so many players who have started playing this year - it truly feels like the community has grown a lot this year. Thanks to Paul for putting so much work into this event and all the judges who gave their time to run the event as well.

Finally thanks to my testing friends in EA Sports, you made me a member of your group despite me now living in the Greater Readox Sphere of Influence and it was great to meet you (some of you for the first time) at the event! Bring on next year!

2 comments
14 Nov 2023 not_yeti

Pleasure meeting you and looking forward to more wins together with EA Sports! It's (gonna be) on the ban list!

17 Nov 2023 Zoehope

Economic Warfare is such a spicy add here. I love and hate it. Great work, and this deck was absolutely brutal to play against at UK Nats. You piloted it so well, and it really was cool to see!