Thimbloop (1st Aarhus Regionals)

11 People showed up at our regional in Aarhus this year, which probably doesn't sound like much to many, but at best we are 7 people in our local meta and 3 of these couldn't come this weekend, which means that 7 people travelled from Copenhagen, or further away, to participate. So first of all a BIG thank you to everyone who took the time to travel to Aarhus to participate! Also thank you to Anders(@Zombie) for organizing and 'Aurbits' for additional prize-support.

Thimbloop

Not being a big fan of playing rush Weyland decks, I had a hard time choosing my corp for this tournament. Gagarin is probably the strongest deck at the moment, but being the established 'best deck' and with a weakness to teched Shapers I didn't feel confident in this choice. Near-Earth Hub, my would-be second choice, falls prey to some of the same Shaper hate as Gagarin, whilst being much weaker to Apocalypse decks too, so I was deep in the tank for this one. Enter Sam Bull(@swabl) who misspelled my favourite ICE in the game, Excaloop Palana + Thimbelrig, but also inspired my choice of corp and was kind enough to share with me his experiences with the deck and take a look at my suggested changes.

So what does this deck do that other Data Loop+Obokata decks don't?
0. not much.
1. but it rushes a little bit better.
2. and throws some curveballs at Surfers.

Some notable includes

2 Project Yagi-Uda instead of The Future Perfect. These you can jam both early and late game, they help you get to game point fast or close the game out should an uncautios runner deem it an upgrade. They do make the agenda suite an ugly 21-pointer, but the 3rd obokata is necessary to close games against pretty much all runners and makes it a ton easier to get to 7 points.

Upped the Thimblerig count to 2. As mentioned it's my favourite ICE in the game. It helps makes sure everything is where you want it to be, which is especially important against surfers in combination with another important include - Code Replicator.

3 Scarcity of Resources - Play these turn 1 against Hayley.

Code Replicator helps Data Loop against Hunting Grounds and trips up surfers at the end of the run.

Tournament breakdown:

Round 1

Against Casper on his really cool MaxX build. By turn 2 he had two Rezeki up and running and soon after followed it up with Demolisher. He then went on an ICE trashing spree getting rid of everything protecting R&D over the next couple of turns. Meanwhile I was able to score 4 points, I think they were all 3/2's. However R&D didn't forfeit a single agenda, so on the turn Casper had to Levy to be able to steal future Obokatas I jammed one for the win.

Round 2

Against Andreas who bested me at our last store championship on Tidal Hayley. I remember my opening hand quite clearly for this one. Kept a hand with Data Loop, Scarcity of Resources, and 3 agendas; Project Yagi-Uda, Philotic Entanglement, and Obokata Protocol. Took a credit, ICE'd HQ and played Scarcity gambling that he wouldn't poke HQ on turn 1 through the ICE I couldn't rez. It payed off, I quickly got to 4 points and by the time he was able to contest the scoring remote, it was impossible for him to steal the Obokata as he was short on cards.

Round 3

Leopold from Austria on Apocalypse Liza proved too much to handle. I kept a promising hand with 2 ICE, Celebrity Gift and some upgrades, then swiftly drew into 3 agendas more upgrades and nothing to stop the Aumakua and Liza value runs on archives. Things were going south fast and when I finally drew adequate protection for HQ, an Anansi, the turtle already had five counters. The following turn Leopold ran HQ click one with 7 credits (No ICE rezzed). I decided I didn't want my Anansi broken for 3 credits only to be shut down in a case of Emergency and we put a Nisei MK II in his score area. Click 2 he ran R&D, which was protected by yet another unrezzed Anansi, but with no ICE on archives I was no longer able to tax out the inevitable incoming ragnarok. Click 3 run archives. The Apocalypse happened at 3pm, on the 17th of August, click 4. Regretting my previous decisions I tried to recover, but to no avail.

Round 4

Paired up against Igor, also from Austria, also on Tidal Hayley. Turn 1 Scarcity. Igor tried hard to remove it by putting down RDI and running R&D on his first turn, but didn't find anything. From that point I was well ahead and scored out quite comfortably. After the game Igor told me that his turn 2 hand after drawing first click consisted of 3 SMC and 3 Stimhacks, ouch.

First round of the cut

I finished 2nd in Swiss on SoS and chose to corp first, hoping to avoid facing Liza again should I be up against Leopold the upcoming next round. My opponent, Anders, was on Apocalypse Alice. He played an early Stargate, but wasn't able to punish my open R&D sufficiently and had a hard time establishing his econ after that. I chained two Nisei MK II behind Excalibur and Border Control, leaving Anders with the task to steal 7 points in 1 Click on his final turn as I had 3 ETR effects at the ready.

This was my final corp game at the tournament. All in all the deck performed as expected - it's not an incredibly strong deck, but a fine meta choice to deal with the late game shapers including wu. Against most runners it consistently rushes to 4 points and hopefully you can cheese out an Obokata in the remote with Loop after that. If you're picking this up I'd recommend swapping a Kakugo for a DNA Tracker to have another piece of taxing ICE to put on centrals, the primary ICE that keeps your Obokatas safe is Data Loop and 8 barriers is too many.