Diamonds Are For Trashing (3rd place 3-0 Melbourne GNK)

The reports of Hank Scorpio's death have been greatly exaggerated. Now he's wheelin' and dealin' with the high rollers in Las Vegas!

Honestly, before we get started, this is tier 1.5 at best. It's the first day of MWL 2.1, and I ran against some atypical decks. There's an Adam deck one of the Melbourne runners has run with since forever that this would fall over to. But I'll get in to that later.

Atypical for many Skorpios decks I've seen, this dials back on the rigshooting and aims to be far richer than the runner while keeping the runner dirt poor. I mean, after all, who can break a lowly Wall of Static if you don't have 2 credits?

Let's talk about economy then, and specifically how great NGO Front is. I mean, who wouldn't run a 2-advanced card if you think you can break in to the server? Drag the runner through something disgusting like a Chiyashi or a surprise Rototurret only to pop the NGO right after they scrape through. There's a single copy of the legen(wait for it)dary Barney Stinson, which you might think is weird since there are only two copies each of Hedge Fund and IPO. But make no mistake. This is to just psyche the runner out and make them slow down. It'll fire once a game and it'll be amazing, and then you'll forget it ever existed. You'll be swimming in money thanks to an agenda suite best describe with an Idiocracy quote.

(Side note: Oaktown is obviously worse for money than Corporate Sales Team, but it does work nicely for the psyche-out. Truthfully though, I only have one copy here of CST and the other two are sitting in my apartment in Finland.)

The non-money agenda, Project Atlas should be obvious why it's there: either play the never-advance game with it, or over-advance to 5 so that you can get those sweet sweet cards on demand. Otherwise, the only other tutor in the deck is Consulting Visit.

Make no mistake. This is Skorpios. You still absolutely want to RFG their breakers. Hunter Seeker is your best friend, and the single copy of Salem's Hospitality is utterly invaluable to snipe Levy and Clippy when the runner's deck is low. A surprise Ark Lockdown will also do in an over-confident runner.

The thing that makes this tier 1.5 though is the ice suite. While I've got a copy of Norton AV in there to make turtle soup with, it really needs to be 2 copies to provide consistency. Which then leaves dealing with Clippy. And those weak-as barriers aren't good enough. Spiderweb is actually a great performer - multiple ETRs are far stronger than single ETRs, especially with spicy new Shaper BS™ and evergreen Geist minifaction cards out there. Tithonium has some great subroutines but ultimately crumbles to Clippy - so rez it when you can call the helpline to solve those pesky runner problems. Chiyashi is certainly value town when it fires, so I don't regret having that there at all. Ice Wall is easily one gearcheck too many and is the first on the chopping block. But ultimately this needs 14 ice.

Did I mention how good NGO front is? Yeah? Okay then, guess I'll talk about the match ups.

Game 1 - Versus Val

This one ended with a lockout, after a rebirth in to Omar IIRC. I think I Ark'd the first Paperclip, Hunter Seeker'd the second, and locked the Aumakua out with Spiderwebs. Didn't see the CVS all match. Sigh. I know I need two, but I switched one out for Barney and that's just far too much good value to drop.

Game 2 - Versus Eddie

This is a deck I've not won to once during my stay in Melbourne when playing with various Skorpios decks. Turn one, I iced up archives with the Wraparound. And HQ with Chiyashi. Thankfully this was enough of a deterrent to stop him running, which gave me some breathing space to get some more ice out and start getting rich. Chiyashi did get rezzed, which provided very good value with the net damage right after an I've Had Worse play. He eventually got a Clippy down, which quickly went in to the trash and RFG. And then kept digging for his last Clippy. More than enough time for me to rush out the win, since it was down in the last 5 cards of his deck. Bad luck there. But hey, I finally won against Skorpios-as-a-runner.

Game 3 - Versus Hayley

Now, this isn't a Hayley you would know. It uses that spicy Kongamoto/Grappling Hook combo I lampshaded earlier. So this one was just a case of keeping enough ice in the right locations to deal with it. I did get a Reversed Accounts to land for a 16 credit hit. And a few turns later, I got value out of Stinson. I suspected it was running Clone Chip at first, but half the deck down and I hadn't seen it installed. So when the deck got lower, I went fishing for Levy with my Salem's and found it. Boom. And then he started digging with Deep Data Mining. Some steals were made, his copy of Inti met a drone, and thus it came down to recurring the combo to get it happening again (and me being a derpface, I kept forgetting to use Skorpios' ability at the right times). I even installed a Batty on R&D and got to fire it, but then we both spent 1 on the psi game. Classic. There were two Deep Data Minings in the bin, two Same Old Things installed. But I got greedy. I wanted the third one I'd seen thanks to Salem in the bin before I triggered the Ark Lockdown. But then after some draws, the second Levy came out. Ah well. All three of my centrals ended up with a Spiderweb on them, and thick enough ice on R&D and the scoring remote that there was no chance of breaking through them. Lockout. Win.

Final thoughts

I'm Australian, but I live in Helsinki. So coming to the Melbourne meta knowing that Sneakdoor/The Winning Agenda/the reigning world champ are all based down here, I figured it'd be a fantastic learning experience. And it has been. You really need to be on your A game against these guys, and I was expecting them to pounce on every little mistake I make. Which they have been over the last two months I've been playing down here. But they're also all chill and relaxed and generally cool people, and plenty of theorycrafting/discussion happens in between matches.

Every one of these games I've described was tense. I have a good understanding of how the game works, but not necessarily the skills to back it up yet. This deck here is actually the second deck I've tried to build with the cards I have down here for Skorpios, the first one was far too inconsistent (but has the seeds of a good idea at least). This deck still needs work, and it does require some mental gymnastics to make the right calls, but I believe it should serve well as a template for a different kind of Skorpios archetype.

Also. How good is NGO Front?