Eats, Shoots, and Leaves (3-2 Ntscape Store Championship)

What is with the name of this deck? Well, it is inspired by this Hamburger Earth deck but it also has Bean Tips.

This is basically an Argus list (in fact it is very much based on osclate's Tech Cards Are Bad) that I tweaked to make sub-par and then ported over to Earth Station. Why? Because it is really fun to install an ice in front of HQ, flip your ID, and then install Rashida Jaheem. You basically can leverage a lot of deterrence using very little ice. This is not glacier; it's more of a Modernism list.

This deck went 3-2, dropping games against Sunny and Smoke, which was to be expected. Carving through 1-2 ice per server really does a number on this deck. One of my two wins was from scoring out, the other two were from flatlines. Despite doing better with my Corp deck than with my Runner, all I can see when I look at this are things I want to change, such as:

• It needs more money: I think another Too Big to Fail, or maybe some Government Subsidies would go a long way here, especially a third NGO front.

• Armed Intimidation feels alright: I'm still debating this. Armed Intimidation is not an amazing card to most people, I would venture. Here, it did do some work when scored, but was very scary to attempt to score. I might consider switching to Global Food Initiative, which is the conventional wisdom.

• 2x Crisium might be too many?: These didn't feel amazing during the tournament, although maybe if I had more money to rez them I wouldn't mind.

• Preemptive Action not great: One downside to playing Earth Station is that Spin Doctor doesn't feel amazing. Sometimes recursion is necessary to recover your limited ice, or to get HHN back into the deck. Here, maybe it would be worth it to cut, and just be as careful as possible otherwise.

• IP Block and Archer: These cards are okay here, but I don't love them. I don't think I managed to rez Archer really, and would maybe prefer it to be another ice, though Sentries feel tough to come by. Not sure if Ballista is worth playing in Standard. IP Block is nice AI tech, but just happened to not do much work in the tournament.

I think I am going to try -2 IP Block, -1 Archer, -1 Armed Intimidation, -1 Hostile Takeover, -1 SDS Drone Deployment, +1 Too Big To Fail, +1 NGO Front, +2 Hortum, +2 Global Food Initiative.

This deck is also really fun to play, but I think could use some tuning. It's very refreshing to be piloting something rushy in Earth Station, rather than something glacier. Thank you to all my opponents at the tournament. These games were a lot of fun. And thank you of course to Akira for organizing!