Close The Gates! (4th Gainesville, FL SC)

So to start off with a little overall of the deck. So far it has been played in three store championships and has adjusted as packs have been released. The overall record is 9-3 (3-0, 3-1, 3-2). At the most recent event it was 3-1, going into the top cut were in the losers bracket I loss to Ve Herrmann in a fantastic game. (They would go to get 2nd place in the event.)

So what is this deck? CODE GATES! Lots of Code Gates. Why? Because FFG keeps printing Jinteki decent Code Gates. Also hey we have a 3/1 agenda that increases all their strength. Well isn’t that neat!!! So what do we do with a 3/1? I hear fast advance is good. The original list ran 2x SanSan City Grid and if I could make changes I would probably try to get it back to two. With 3x Encrypted Portals 3x Braintrust 1x Philotic your pretty set on slam it and jam it. Also to point out if you have two Code Gates rezzed your scoring Portals for free.

LOTUS FIELD! This card gets its own section. Of those 9 games 5 of them were against Whizzard of some flavor in which I locked them out. How you may say? A Lotus Field at strength 5 is really hard for anarch. Most people will say Black Orchestra but even with that card it’s still 6 credits. I played against people who had no access to it and once I got a Lotus on R&D, HQ, and a Remote it was pretty much over.

Quick Tournament Overview

Round 1 – Vs Maxx My opponent got 3 points very fast of a naked R&D with Medium. Then I got double Macrophage on R&D and put a stop to that. Came down to the wire, literally last minutes in the round!!! They ended up Levying fearing running into a Chyashi which post game we figured out that because the agenda they were running at would have been game point they should have just risked the damage. Anyway awesome game and Palana Splits!

Round 2 – Vs Whizzard (Temujin) Man this was a grind. Ice gets blown up. Ice gets put back. The start was very strong for me. Problem was agendas literally came in the wrong order (Considering a one of fast track). If I had scored a portal my opponent told me it would have been extremely hard for them to have closed out the game. But alas I scored a Food and a Philotic, they scored 2 Food, 2 Portal, and a Brain. Good on ya Smitty!!!! Well played.

Round 3 – Vs Kate (Security Nexus) This was the shortest game (we had a long game me being runner, R&D wouldn’t give it up lightly). As a precursor I want to make a special note. This was the most amazing play experience I have ever had. In this game I played versus an amazing player who happens to be deaf. They still play the game they enjoy. We communicated with a pad of paper, but if you have a friend try playing a game in complete silence. It’s actually really cool and kind of humbling. Back to the game it was very unfortunate for my opponent. Everything just came in order for me and I just hammered out agendas. They slammed into a 7 str DNA Tracker which was the beginning of the end.

Round 4 – Vs Whizzard (Temujin) Super early Portal. Lotus fields came up and I locked the Whizzard out of R&D and Remote. It looked like they were on double Yog.0 so maybe no Black Orchestra. But no agenda stayed in HQ. Bhagat didn’t get them anything good and I was able to squeak into the bubble.

Loser’s Bracket Game 1 – Vs Whizzard (Temujin) This was a grind. Back and forth it felt at least on my side of the table. Early four points for me. Held a GFI for a decent amount of time in hand waiting to score it behind a Lotus Field + Vanilla. I think I waited a turn too long and missed the window. Got too cautious. But excellent game won by an excellent player who would go to give the only loss to the winner of the event (Tristan). Awesome job both of you!!!!!

I think this deck has been a blast! I like the idea and theme and really want people to push the envelope of what they think is good. Play stuff you love so when your lucky enough to be successful it feels even better. This deck has been a labor of love.

The Gatekeeper :)