Global Suicide - 8th Place @ Euros - 7-0 Swiss 1-1 Cut

This was the best (and only) Blue Sun @ Euros). Disclaimer: English is not my native language, so bear with me.

First the name: It started with Blue Sun Suicide, then I added Global Food and the name changed to Global Suicide, as it seemed appropriate. Well I knew that it was almost like a suicide to take Blue Sun to Euros as the meta was expected to be more than 50% of anarchs playing employee strike, additionally, the purpose of the deck is not to stop accesses as you will see by the explanation below. I wanted to take a deck that would not force me to take some harsh and hard decisions, as the first day could be a long one (and on this one I got it right) and my runner deck, Geist, was making me to do a lot of thinking. So, this was supposed to be a fast and furious deck. On the tests I was winning on a 90% rate and on turn 5-6.

Now, the plan. It is really straightforward. Make money, leave your central servers opened and try that the runner baits it. If they go for it and don’t steal any agendas you can HHN them. If they steal any agendas you can Punitive Counterstrike them. This is the plan. To win the economic battle you have NGO, Hedge fund, IPO and Economic Warfare. It is not hard to get an initial hand. You need NGO (best option) or hedge fund, Hard Hitting News. This is what you require. Consulting Visit and Economic Warfare are a plus. If you manage an NGO on your initial hand you just install, advance it twice and pop it right after. You have 11 credits and all servers opened. Almost all runners will fall for a run on R&D or HQ. Than is HHN time. I’m sorry if this seems dumb, but on a meta where runners are in advantage this seemed to me the best plan. Why Blue Sun? I don’t use many times Id, but the plan is not that. I use it when I really need the money. Rez an Ice, put it in your hand to install again always seemed a waste of time. You need to get it if you need the money for a Punitive, HHN or to reposition it. With this plan all other Weyland IDs seemed to me far worse. Argus will not fire enough (hopefully) times to justify it, the same applies to Skorpios and building a better world only has 5 targets. So Blue Sun it is.

The Deck Agendas: 3 – SSL, because money is good. 3 – Global Food Initiative, because they only get 2 points but 3 damage from Punitive Counterstrike. 1 – Atlas, because install it and score 2 points, to finish the game, when they think you only have 3-point agendas is great. Or sometimes to get with 1 or 2 counters means GG.

Assets: They function more like a Toolbox. 2 – Executive Boot Camp to get the right asset at the right time or to stop an Indexing. 1 – Elizabeth Mills, to clear the Valencia Bad Pub and to stop those horrible mining accidents. 1 – Illegal Arms Factory, because 1 card and 1 credit per turn really helps, and if you use Blue suns ability they will never get the potential Bad Pub from it. Of course, that you can leave it open because a run and spending 6 credits to trash it is a great enabler for HHN. 3 – NGO fronts. Nothing to add here. Fake agendas and get money from it to HHN is your plan. 1 – Malia Z0L0K4, as it happens that film critic completely shuts down your main plan and to stop Beth or an Earthrise Hotel is always fun.

Upgrade 1 – Bryan Stinson. This was the last change before leaving Portugal. I had one Rashida, as it is a good card, but I’m always with my hand full, so the draw is not that good, and Stinson can give you more money and goes well with Economic Warfare.

ICE 1 - IP Block: punish the big turtle. 1 – Spiderweb: delay a little bit Pirate Hayley. 1 – Tithonium: Because trashing programs is good and Trash a resource and end the run is the best subroutine EVER. 1 – Hortum: See IP Block. 1 – Macrophage: See IP Block and wreck Khumalo. Later I found out that also annoys a bit Smoke, but that was a plus. 2 – Mausolus: 5 Strength, 3 subs, money, damage and tag. Your plan is written all over it. 1 – Tollbooth: Best ICE ever. 1 – Colossus: You need a sentry to force MKUltra out of the bin. 1 – Sapper: R&D and HQ surprise defense.

Operations: 1 – Scarcity: You need it right now. 3 - Hedge fund: Money 2 – IPO. Money. Initially I had 3, but a Thursday final test just force me to take the third one for: 1 – Preemptive Action: Recursion is required if the game takes longer than the usual. 3 – Economic Warfare: Taking money from the runner is twice better than getting money for yourself. 3 – Consulting Visit: Get the operation you want when you want it for 2 credits a click. Awesome. 1 – Archived Memories. The same as consulting visit for Archives. 1 – Best defense. Kills Misdirection. 3 – Hard Hitting News. They will run and they will get tags for doing it. Sorry. 2 – BOOM!. They ran. They got tagged. They are dead. 3 – Punitive Counterstrike. If they managed to steal your agendas they MUST be punished for doing so.

On the Swiss rounds: Round 1: Win vs Valencia - Catherine Underwood Bad start. They got loads of money. So, I was required to HHN them 3-4 times before they finally died. I remember very well of this one as it was one of the toughest games on the day.

Round 2: Win vs Freedom Khumalo – DBOW. If I remember correctly I scored earlier and then they needed to run early without establishing their economy/engine. Big mistake.

Round 3: Win vs Hayley Kaplan - Ed Pemberton. I think this was also quite fast. I think this one was due to a punitive.

Round 4: Win vs Valencia – JISA. Also, really hard. They money up but eventually I killed him due to loads of tags.

Round 5: Timed Win vs "Smoke" - Alexander Kohlmann I managed to score 6 points on an early stage of the game. He was cautious before established his table, but at that point it was too late.

Round 6: Win vs Sunny Lebeau – STER This was my auto-loss match up. On my initial hand I got Scarcity which delayed his game a lot. On turn 3 or 4 he paid 6 for an Earthrise Hotel that I blanked with Malia. At the end of 12-15 rounds I was able to kill him after a HHN.

Round 7: Win vs Kit – My friend Rui Barreiro After a lot of mistakes that you can see on NeoReadingGrid stream I ended up by killing him or scoring the third 3-point agenda. Any of the cases was possible on the hardest game of the day.

Round 8: ID.

Day 2 Cut. On the cut I knew it would be harder as the opponents could see all my tricks beforehand.

Game 2 Vs ApocVal from Dave Hoyland: I could do nothing here. He got the economy at the beginning. Then a Wanton that took HHN, Punitive and consulting visit from my hand pretty much sealed the game. I tried to score an agenda behind and ICE, but I just triggered an Apocalypse. The game took 15 minutes at the most.

Game 3 Vs Smoke from Peter Dinya: You can also see it on NeoReadingGrid Stream. He knew my list, but at this time I took advantage of this, scoring a naked Global Food on turn 3. No one on his perfect mind do that, but desperate times require desperate measures. I learnt from Alexander Kohlmann’s game on Round 5 of the Swiss that I needed to score fast. I managed to score later an SSL. Then was waiting for an error from Peter that didn’t happened. No surprises here. Time was called and he couldn’t find the SSL that would win him the game. He conceded before I could kill him.

If you made it trough here... really sorry and thanks :)