Miracle Grow - Top 8 Cambridge Regionals

It's a miracle that it sprouts so fast and just keeps growing and growing!

The deck did extremely well at a competitive regionals, only dropping out due to piloting failure (not the deck's fault!) against a great opponent. You can see the tourney report at the bottom of my post about my runner deck if you're interested.

The is a tempo-centric build designed to abuse MTI's ability to rush out 4/2's that help you score more 4/2's (hopefully keeping your hand clear of agendas when they Clan Vengeance, or better yet applying so much pressure they can't effectively set up a good CV in time), then transitions into abusing free inner ICE installs to transfer to glacier to close out the game.

Notes from the tourney:

• GFI over Obo was the right call. The deck pressures on money, not on cards, and especially in this Anarch Zer0 meta the price for stealing Obo just isn't high enough. This decision literally won me two games, and Obo wouldn't have protected itself with its cost even once.

• Circling back to the cards v. money thing: people underestimate Code Replicator, but it shines in this deck because I could consistently create situations where the runner would die if they chose to go through the Anansi or DNA tracker they couldn't afford to break again instead of jacking out. It doesn't get flatlines and isn't designed to - it's meant to either be a 9+ cred tax (very nice combo with Ash) or an ETR upgrade that doesn't require a psi game or advancements. It also helps immensely with bad ICE draw sequences because it lets you turn a facecheck ICE into an ETR temporarily. I would not cut these.

• Mind Game is really good in MTI, but I wouldn't lean on it too hard.

• Sand Storm was an MVP in the games it worked, especially since most Anarchs are just running conspiracy breakers and no AI, and it's tougher for turtle to break. The critical downside is that they have a tendency to be Clan Vengeanced out of your hand and don't work great on their own (though they are awesome at preventing Apocalypse and run events).

• Sadaka felt fine, but probably didn't give enough value, so I'd replace it with something that doesn't trash itself, or a Voter Intimidation for more targeted CV hate.

• Bryan Stinson wins games against even the best players if they don't see it coming.

• Envelope is way better than Kakugo in this deck because it has higher str (better against turtle and twice as expensive for Clippy to break) and a facecheck that fired multiple times in the tourney and discourages Turning Wheel farming. You aren't trying to flatline, run them out of cards, or defend an Obokata, but you do want them to lose tempo if they dare run early, and you want late runs to cost as many creds as possible.

• People have said to me "MTI dies to EStrike" and that is definitely not true. EStrike is very strong against MTI, but you can play around it and still execute your gameplan. I don't even hold Scarcity, I just play it normally to suppress the runner, and I never regretted it. The Estrike only really does major damage the turn it's played.

• I did not feel poor enough that I missed Palana's ability, and I got a ton of mileage out of MTI's ability. YMMV.