Startup - Still Open Imp - 1st at Toulouse CO H2 2024

This is the deck I built for the Toulouse H2 Startup CO (which I also organized). I wanted to play Loup, Imp, Audrey and Arruaceiras Crew, so that's where I started. The game plan is usually to use Crews to open up a central so that you can feed Audrey and Leeches and then use Botulus and Audrey to contest the remote. You have to be brave and facecheck often to force the rez (Hammer hurts a lot though). Never commit Botulus on unrezzed ice.

I tried Hermes in the console slot, but it doesn't match my playstyle of forcing ice rez to either trash with Crew or Botulus. Lilypad is a bit expensive, but the MU and draw can be really good. Sometimes you don't need to install it and 4 MU is enough to pressure with Audrey, Leech, Botulus and cycling between Fermenter and Imp. I also tried Conduit, but it felt unnecessary as if you can keep the pressure on HQ and the remote, you don't need an R&D wincon. That's what a control deck is, right? I only go to R&D to either force rezzes or find Imp targets to feed Audrey. I was very happy when I switched the influence to Alarm Clock. It can be very useful to kickstart the virus engine after a purge or just to clicklessly keep the HQ pressure on.

For the influence budget, I also tried a version with Burner and Dockland Pass, but it turns out that Imp is enough HQ pressure (especially with Cookbook and Privileged Access). Diesel is obviously very good when we want to find ways to put pressure quickly. Once we're set up, we have a decent draw engine with Loup, Solidarity Badge and Lilypad. Diesel helps us get there. Last influence is for Networking. It's somewhat of a tech card (I was expecting some NBN, privilege of TOing :) ), but it's also just sometimes useful with the self tagging of Crew and Privileged Access.

Last slots worth talking about are Ice Carver and Scrubber. Both are useful tech cards that I did played but could be switched around. Ice Carver can really help when breaking with Audrey because there is quite a lot of 1 strength ice. Scrubber is really good against asset decks to support Imp. Sometimes, you don't have access to Imp, and when you do, trashing a 2nd card per turn is just bad for the corp. In early iterations, I also tried real breakers, but I never installed them. Maybe Mimic can be worth a slot as a tech against Hammer, but you really want to Crew this one anyway.

I won the tournament winning all 6 games, so I'm obviously pretty happy with the deck. My corp deck was LLBlumire's PE UK nats deck. Round 1 was against Kawe's BTL. I remember eating a painful Hammer early on, then an even worse Archer in the late game. But the corp suffered from the economic pressure of rezzing those bad boys and I was able to snatch enough points before they could do much. Round 3 was against Metal's R+ deck. Before the tournament I had played and lost a few games against various iterations of this deck. Each time, it felt more close. This time I was able to be careful enough to not die while keeping the pressure. Round 6 against Yidaho's PE was similar. Not taking unnecessary risks and keeping the pressure spread over HQ, remote and R&D worked.

The tournament was great, thanks to everyone who came to play!