Infinity Welcomes Careless Runners (11th CT Regional, 3-1)

Shiiuga 1266

This deck carried me to 11th place out of 30 at the Connecticut regionals, missing the cut because of my underperforming Andy deck which went 2-2.

This is a variant on the New Potatoes build that rojazu took to 4th at the London BABW event. It differs in a few key ways:

  • Obokata Protocol: This agenda is super baller. It replaces GFI, freeing up some influence in an ID that already struggles in this regard. I'm so happy to pitch a couple of these in to Archives, especially after a runner has been stung by a Shock! or a Hokusai Grid there once already because PU's ability is so distasteful.
  • 1 Snare!: Snare! is expensive and you will often be too poor to fire more than one. There are enough spiky rocks for the runner to throw themselves on anyway.
  • Synth DNA Mod: Makes people grimace about Yogging through an Aiki. I rezzed one on an HQ run, my opponent said "so I have to take damage either way?" broke the subs then jacked out. If you can get two out/rezzed it's even better. Installing behind a Kakugo or Data Mine is delicious. Friendsing two back out, doubly so.
  • Econ: I don't like showing even a hand of traps to Sleb Gift so I changed it for MRF (because you don't really care if the runner has money) and IPO. TarMar witht he freed up influence. Name whatever you think they're going to drop. If you can't guess, name Siphon because everyone seems to be running it these days.
  • 1 Neural: The chances of having enough in hand to kill through more than one card are slim anyway so I cut down to 1. The runner will kill themselves eventually anyway.
  • Voter Intimidation: For Film Critic primarily but if they have another key resource then go for it. I didn't see a single Critic all day so it didn't get used.

On the day it lost to Obelus/Counter Surveillance Tag Me MaxX (I couldn't find my Lockdowns for Siphon or ICE for HQ and got Siphoned 5 times then vamped) and beat O/CS Reina (similar to above except I played around it better and he faceplanted two Fetals on his deep dig), Andromeda and Eddie Kim.

Managing of archives and agenda density is pretty key to success. You want the runner to be casting about looking for the agendas that you're hiding. Obokata mostly protects itself wherever it's hiding. Early game you're pretty happy to let the runner steal. One game I IAA'd one naked on turn 2. Runner stole and then spent the rest of the game catching up.

The way to play around PU is to be super careful. Don't run if you have key pieces in your hand because they might get sniped. Don't run if you haven't seen key pieces because they might get sniped. But eventually you're going to have to run, probably before you want to. It encourages even the most careful runners to take risks and you just have to make sure those risks don't pay off. In the Reina game I was poor as hell from Siphon but after Locking Down his only MKUltra I managed to rez a Swordsman on his God of War on his deep dig run, killing it and doing 1 net, followed by a Hokusai damage. Then he accessed my whole deck and the Fetals got him. Let people get frustrated and make mistakes, that's your bread and butter.

Changes: If these 'take all the tags access all the cards' decks become prevalent I'd switch the Archives Memories and maybe one TarMar for a BOOM! because people won't be expecting it out of Red and will take tags as they set up. Honestly though you want them to deep dig. Other than that Breached Dome is definitely going in when it's released. Probably -1 Snare! -1 IPO -1 Hokusai for that. Also maybe I'd go 3 MRF and 1 Hedge.

1 comments
1 Aug 2017 esutter479

I was your Rd. 4 opponent. I played Kim, lol. Your deck is pretty brutal, man. :) I was perhaps a bit overconfident against you, as I kinda annihilated a Potential deck 2 rounds before. IIRC, that IAA Obokata was also against me, haha. I probably coulda used 1 or 2 of those cards that got pinged, but ultimately it was the damn DNA that made me croak.

I suppose my biggest mistake of the whole day was in preparation. I came expecting to see Moons. Didn't see a single Moon all damn day. Instead, EVIL Charlie (tourney judge) matched me up against 3 Jintekis, which is Kim's bane WITH Levy/SoT. Well, I decided to go WITHOUT either of those, and sure did pay the price! :)