Cats > Orca (1rst, 8th CoS, 2nd Startup Championship)

Testrunning 1239

This is the deck I brought to Crown of Servers and Startup Championship going 9-1 across both events. Pinsel also took my decklist to CoS but changed Daeg to Orca. Despite winning he only played 3-2 with the deck, proving that Cats are better than Orcas (this has nothing to do with Pinsel not practising any Startup beforehand; and neither does us not installing Daeg or Orca during CoS invalidate that statement either).

Titanic

Preparing for Startup I made several observations about the Startup meta:

  • Boat is legal.

There were also other observations, but they are pretty irrelevant in comparison. Also Arissana is the stronger ID for Boat than Padma.

The only loss during the weekend was against belazor on Kill-NEH. I did not practise that matchup beforehand, but in hindsight I think that it is also runner favored (I won twice against Kill-NEH afterwards) after figuring out these key aspects for the matchup:

  • There are no defensive agendas, you just win of accesses, Kill-NEH doesnt even have a low agenda density
  • They can't kill you so long as you have NFL and/or Stonechip installed
  • They only play 1 End of the Line as tag punishment. If you know were the Reaper Functions are and trash them, they cant do anything as long as you keep 4 cards in hand.

In other matchups your general Gameplan is to use boat supported by Flux for charge, Vandal for single-sub ice and Hush for anything with annoying text. Buzz and Corroder are only backup breaker for mostly Magnet and Tatu.

Charging Nuka or WAKE is often correct.

Into the Depths is incredibly strong in this deck as you can land it very reliably and it helps you either with Money, Charge or getting key pieces (such as Hush or clicklessly tutoring Pichacao during a Deep Dive turn) ... or all three of these things in one.

Huge shoutout to all the folks at NSG who made the whole Worlds Weekend possible.

Also thanks to the NWE folks for being amazing people.

8 comments
22 Oct 2023 cros

I was waiting for you to publish this after taking my only corp loss from you in the startup championship. Great great list and well piloted. Gotta give it a try GG

22 Oct 2023 Jakuza

I take personal offense at this.

( <3 )

22 Oct 2023 Testrunning

@cros Thanks, I tried my best. You played the ontological sports, right? I liked that decklist :) not suprised to hear that you did well with it.

@Jakuzawhat have I done? O.o

22 Oct 2023 Jakuza

@Testrunning I defend the honor of my son.

22 Oct 2023 Testrunning

@Jakuzaoh no, I forgot. But consider that: daeg is 13 cans in one card. Orca, however good the Art work, is just one orca, it just can compede with the catficiency of Daeg

Daeg was excellent morale support sittinig my hand (x13)

22 Oct 2023 Anzekay

I love Orca, but I love Daeg more. Perfection.

22 Oct 2023 Jakuza

This is an outrage. I'll have to talk to Kanel and moving to their testing group.

22 Oct 2023 zmb

Only now realizing that Flux Capacitor is unique. I had a runner installing two over and over again on my scoring remote at startup tournament :O