Space Tricks - Leisure Games London, 1st place

Why print your name on the moon when you can shoot for the stars? A slight twist on the infamous Astrobiotics proved to be the *ahem* shining star *ahem* that went undefeated throughout all 8 games I Corped.

As with my Runner deck I teched for my local meta, expecting a swathe of Criminals and likely several Siphon MaxX players looking to ambush me in Swiss rounds by sabotaging my missions to space. As it turned out, apart from the eventual runner-up (a Gabe deck I had to deal with 3 times during the tournament) and a Silhouette, all the other matches were known archetypes that I wasn't too prepared for, so I had to improvise. The sheer power of fast advance NEH helped immensely in carrying me through those games. Here's my anti-Crim/Siphon tech:

• Space ICE: 0 to rez. Completely nullifies Siphon and Emergency Shutdown - that's 5 of 45 cards in a typical Criminal deck rendered obsolete.

• Space ICE also screams STAY OUT to Criminals: Wormhole is a staggering 7 to break with Passport, single-handedly preventing the Runner from locking that server. Nebula isn't much better, demanding a not-Mimic to get through. Half my matchups of the day featured Cyber-Cypher/Torch as the main decoder, which Wormhole still decently taxes for 4 .

• Ability to score from 0-2 . This one's the kicker that many players (especially those relying on Siphon lock) simply aren't prepared for; they can't prevent me from scoring by forcing me to rez ICE, because I can score from an emptied credit pool! PAD Campaigns greatly help with this; with Business Shows and SanSan Grids flying around, no one could afford to trash my PADs during the tournament, which meant I could threaten scores every single turn:

  • Standard Trick of Light (ToL) + advance combo costs just 2.

  • With an Astro token out it gets really scary: "Install - - ToL - Astro token" can be done from 0 .

  • Alternatively, Shipment from SanSan is free too. Also helps with scoring stuff with SanSan grid - most players don't expect that from a Corp with 6 creds.

• Wraparound hopefully carries me through the perilous early game against MaxX decks, forcing a Corroder or Knight. That's the main reason I chose NEH FA over Titanmodernism.

• Even with an early Siphon (say, turn 1 Knight + Siphon), Closed Accounts levels the playing field.

Highlights of the day:

• Overscored Beale for 3 points twice during the day, both leveraging on Runners offering me scoring windows due to being poor.

  • One of which involved a daredevil's call to Fast Track a Beale (yes, over an Astroscript). The Runner couldn't afford to run my hand the next turn to steal it, allowing me to install Beale - double ToL - Astro Token to bring me up from 4 points to 7 points - victory! Who says Beale is the bastard child of NBN =)

  • The other involved bluffing a single-advanced agenda behind a remote Tollbooth as NAPD, after burning their entire cred pool the turn before running said Tollbooth to trash a facedown... Daily Business Show.

• Closed Accounts fired off twice, one of which I willingly expended an Astro token for. Totally worth it, erasing a Kati that was just unloaded for 12 creds. With 8 cards in deck that enable fast advance (3 ToL 3 Astro 2 SanSan), why not?

• In one match, my Astroscripts decided to take a break after working overtime: managed to win a game without an Astroscript in either player's score pile. (3 pointer Beale helped :P)

Holistically the standard NEH Biotic is a superior deck; my build is particularly vulnerable to Leela bouncing Space ICE and any combination of cutlery + D4v1d. Very fortunate to have completely sidestepped those matchups; this eye-opening deck that took 3rd in the same tournament likely would've had a field day against me. Glaring weaknesses:

• Cutlery/Parasite makes Wormhole especially sad: denying rezzed ETR ICE deactivates Wormhole as well.

• Requires two moving parts (ToL and advanced Space ICE) to begin fast advancing, which slows me down. There was a game where I was flooded with Astroscripts early (opened with one, drew into second, painfully chose to Business Show the third), without any fast advance means.

• Yog makes me sad :(

Lengthy analysis/tourney report over at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgCd002UyKo