Grape Juice Variant (10th at Regional Atlantis, Hamburg)

This deck is the deck I took to the Regional at Atlantis in Hamburg. It went 2-1 in Swiss. It is based on Sanjay's Grape Juice deck. The only change I made was swapping the third Artist Colony for the third Sacrificial Construct, because I was expecting a lot of Fast Advance/CI Combo and Skorpios and also had the feeling from other Shaper decks, that two Colonies are enough. I am a much better Corp player than Runner, that's why I took a deck, that had some weaker matchups, but also some which are nigh unlosable. I was willing to make that trade, since I figured, this would get me more wins than a more well-rounded Runner deck with more equal matchups across the board. This decision was absolutely correct. For a good writeup on strategy, look at Sanjay's deck (as well as the one it is based on).

Game 1 - Bye: We were 27 people with two Store Championship Byes, so one person got a random Bye. That was me.

Game 2 - AGInfusion Semi-Glacier (Guybrush) - Loss: This is one of the bad matchups I talked about. We actually played this matchup once or twice online before the tournament and it is bleak for Ayla. The Grape Juice deck needs a couple of turns to set up and some decks can really capitalize on that. My opponent iced and moneyed up the first two turns and scored a Corporate Sales Team on turn 4, quickly followed by a Nisei turn six. With all the setup you need for the Au Revoir/Snitch-combo, you can't really contest that. Add the fact, that you can't counter AGInfusions ability because you don't play Employee Strike and you have no real chance of getting the last GFI when your opponent has Caprice, the ID and a Nisei counter to keep you out of the remote.

Game 3 - Boom SYNC (MarauderPixie) - Win: This game was actually harder than I thought it would be, especially because my opponent played an AstroScript Pilot Program which I did not expect in the normally very defensive oriented Agenda Suites out of SYNC. He quickly scored 4 points (the Astro, a Kitty and a Breaking News) and then Install-Advanced something in a Remote. I feared the GFI and made a risky run, which left me too broke to fight the incoming tags. He used them to trash my resources, but luckily, I found another New Angeles City Hall before he could Boom me. Also, the Agenda was just a Kitty, which I helped him score there, a very nice play by my opponent. After this turn, I just built up counters on my Turning Wheel for one big game-ending run. That didn't work out though, I only reached six points and lost my City Hall, but managed to trash his Booms out of hand. With no Archived Memories and all Jacksons gone, he had no more kill options and tried to score a GFI behind a Data Raven into Vanilla server, which of course did not work out. Still, the game was closer than I expected SYNC games to be, mostly because of the Astro.

Game 4 - Archtitects of Tomorrow Semi-Glacier (Dönerking) - Win: This was a really great game. Both of us got to six points relatively quickly, after some back and forth of scoring out of a remote, me breaking into it and accessing cards from HQ and R&D and some Fast Advance. Then he tried to Fast Advance for the win, but overlooked my Artist Colony, which I used to sell a Vitruvius for the saving Clot. Afterwards it was a dance around the remote. It was protected by Vikram, Heimdall 2.0 and Eli, so it was extremely taxing (especially considering the fact that I took 4 Brain Damage during runs on it to steal Agendas earlier). I also poked around HQ and R&D. When he purged my Clot and drew 4 cards with Jackson, I knew I had to go for it. I hammered HQ, accessing one, then two, then one again, nabbing the winning ABT. Really tense game with a 50-50 finish and the lucky end for me.

All in all, the deck performed well, it had one really good matchup, one really bad matchup and one, which can go either way, so I am satisfied with the two wins. Unfortunately, my Corp play was really bad, so I missed the cut (only two of six players with 15 points reached it, I was not one of them). Still, the deck was a good meta call, since there were some Skorpios and lots of SYNC around, which are two extremely good matchups for this deck.