Pew-pew-nitive Counterstrike (snake draft)

The Draft

Round 1: Global Food Initiative

The recommendation was to go for fundamentals like agendas, econ, and ICE. Seems like pretty much any deck is going to want a couple GFI's. Plus, having looked at a couple of other snake drafts, it seems like blue sun has a relatively straightforward game plan and minimal overlap with other strategies (who else is drafting OAI? curtain wall?)

Round 2: Project Atlas and Ash 2X3ZB9CY

Gotta get them good agendas. It did not look like anybody was going for blue sun, so I thought I was likely to end up with a strong econ setup that I could parlay into glacier/punitive. Ash seemed like good support for scoring out the final points in the late game or mitigating R&D digs.

Round 3: Oversight AI and DNA Tracker

OAI cemented my claim, and DNA tracker was kind of a mistake. I forgot about Chiyashi's existence, and went for a painful-to-face-check, expensive ice (Tollbooth was taken). At 3 influence, I had no chance of slotting it. whoops.

Other Core Picks

Localized Product Line, Interns, Hive (and big ICE). Getting enough credits on board to lock down and threaten the punitive is crucial, and between LPL, OAI, and multiples of orion/curtain wall, I was able to bounce up to ~30 credits within the first few turns in all of my games. In some early testing I found that getting the 7th point was hard (weyland problems), so I put in the Public Supports to use in conjuction with Archer or closing out the game.

Tech Choices

It turns out that a couple of runners had drafted a Location that was core to their game plan (pawnshop, wyldside, citadel sanctuary) and one was on blackmail val, so I put in two Elizabeth Mills and she did some WORK. Aside from that, Will-o'-the-Wisp was in there to open scoring windows.

Game Day

Round 1: flatline val. I was able to get well ahead on credits due to a good opening and LPL for elizabeth mills to remove bad pub and trash wyldside. Got the second punitive and VP together and flatlined him from 7 cards in hand.

Round 2: lose to CT stimshop. This was one of the best games of NR I've ever played. I had a solid head start-- trashed workshop with mopus on it, but he bounced back with clone chip + stimhack and was able to rebuild. I was able to tax out his Lady/clone chips with hive and curtain wall, and knock out a couple of pieces with an Archer (thanks, Public Support!). I thought I had the game sewn up and made the mistake of scoring an atlas to go to 5 points--neutering my hives. He installed Atman + double medium to pound out the last points on R&D: it was protected by two hives and a Meru Mati :/

Round 3: lose to noise mill. This was lost due to a critical misplay-- I scored a VP early (cool) and then put the second behind and OAI'ed orion and another ICE. I had two punitives in hand so I thought "oh, well if he steals it, I get the kill."... and stupidly included the 15 credits from orion in that calculation. He broke the Orion, trashing it (d'oh) and getting away scott-free. He won off a milled agenda and a couple of R&D accesses (again, through useless late-game hives).

On the whole, I was pretty happy with how the deck turned out. Both of my losses were directly attributable to lack of Hive replacements for the late game. Probably dropping one of the hives to fit in 3 hard ETRs would have been wise.