Intelligent Scandal 8th place (Arizona Regionals)

I brought this deck hoping to just Apocalypse some Industrial Genomics and Gagarin Alliances. Fisk Investment Seminar in particularly was to help force them to draw agendas if they played Heritage from hand. I didn't expect to accomplish anything, except a bit of Blackmail Apocalypse for laughs. I played against 0 IG decks on the day though there were several in the tournament and like 3 in the top 8.

I played only 1 (maybe 2) Apocalypse on the day. That may sound bad but the threat of it makes players waste time and ice on archives. Fought 2 NBN decks that ran scorched with traffic accident and a Weyland kill (and exchange), so I needed heartbeat to stay in play. Played 2 HB: ETF and had them rez Architect very early. I really missed the e3 against HB and that will bring me to my next take away.

Passport was dead weight that I was expecting to use on a central Turing but it just never happened (it was always an Architect instead). HB felt like Apex's worst matchup so I think you'd almost perform better using tech for NBN and Jinteki and hoping to dodge the HB players. The matchup is literally that bad.

The MVP was Fisk Investment Seminar, forcing the corp to draw into more agendas when they were install advancing to score out or right after they did some Jackson draws. It made sure there was always a chance for agendas while I ran HQ to build turing. Almost decked a Sync player after a Levy brought some Fisk back.

Generally the play was to hammer HQ with everything to try and snipe agendas and build up a turning wheel. All Preys in the same place. Use your Blackmails to try and prevent scoring until you can get a nice 5 access on R&D or whatnot. Occasionally, I would run early remotes with the intention of playing Prey on them before they got too iced or expecting an ice that was inexpensive with Endless Hunger so I could still Blackmail.

Facing Weyland was brutal. I couldnt die and on top of that they would give me the bad pub by scoring a Hostile Takeover and I wouldnt even need Corporate Scandal. Apex is not very good, and I think I got some really lucky accesses and intelligent plays, but mostly I just was getting lucky snipes left and right.

Corporate Scandal and Wasteland in play proved to be really helpful for Apex's economy. Sometimes I would play the scandal early if I wasnt worried about hiding the Blackmail play or when I knew I'd have some assets to trash on the turn.

Top 8 lower seed forced me to tell an HB player that I was running Apex. He selected that matchup and I quickly got knocked out of the tournament. Apex went 4 and 1 in the swiss mostly due to my opponents having bad draws, going for kill, or not even knowing that Corporate Scandal existed to enable my Blackmail, hahahaha!