ESPN (2nd, Milwaukee SC)

Team Sponsorship is one of my favorite cards, and as soon as Calibration Testing came out I paired the two in a match-made-in-heaven Russian NEH deck. It...has been fine. Eventually I got to the point of saying, "Although I would lose 5 influence, this would just be better out of CtM."

I went 3-3 with my corp at the Board Game Barrister on 2/3. The 19 player meta was yellow and orange all the way down. What is this, Worlds 2016??

The tag punishment never came out to play on the day, which makes me want to change up the package. Also of note is the missing point of influence. I probably put in another Team Sponsorship, or a Tapestry instead of the Gutenberg, which always goes on R&D as anti-indexing tech.

The Cards

Speaking of, Gutenberg is a big boss baller. It fell out of favor two years ago when everyone was on D4v1d, but now that's a rarity and I'm baffled by how I never see it. It's better at giving a tag than a Data Raven with all the Hunting Grounds around.

Best Defense is mostly for Tapwrm, SMC, SacCon, or Same Old Thing, although it obviously gets mighty powerful if they float tags.

NASX is super good in the Sponsorship builds because you can use the click ability and then bring it back.

The Games

Round 1: Jason's Val

An early HHN put Jason behind the ball and shut off his resource economy. He wasn't really able to recover and I pull out an early win. [Win | 2-0]

Round 2: Andrew's Maxx

Andrew starts off with a Hacktivist, which I immediately clear with a 15 Minutes. But then I didn't rez my assets like a greedy greedy boy, so he puts a 2nd Hacktivist into play. 3 turns later I NA a beale off the table, and then I didn't rez my assets again, and he puts down his 3rd Hacktivist. I think I spent so much of that game playing around Hacktivist that I wasn't forwarding my game plan, and also I was poor, so eventually I lost off of a Legwork. [Loss | 3-1]

Round 3: Daine's Ed Kim

Daine was excited going into this game knowing he teched heavily for CtM. He gets set up fast, but two cards in his deck don't bother to show up until I get caught up: Indexing and Slums. I stall out after getting to game point, and he's able to indexing twice over the last several turns to win. [Loss | 4-2]

Round 4: Kevin's Val

Kevin and I play each other at the FLGS, and you never like seeing meta-mates in the last round of swiss. If one of us sweeps, he's very likely to make the cut. I had some amazing draw here, starting off with 2 Bankers and a DBS in the first 2 turns. I clear a Hacktivist with an AR-ES (learning my lesson from earlier and immediately rezzing things) and continue snowballing from there. A tempo Hard-Hitting News when Kevin was on 8 credits bought me a scoring window to score a Beale, bringing back a Cal Testing. I Cal-Sponsor my last 2 Beales in two turns to win. [Win | 5-3]

Miraculously I make the cut (thanks to the SoS gained from Jason's win at the bottom tables), and I face off with the undefeated Jerry as runner against his CtM. I win, which brings me up to the winner's bracket for...

Cut Round 2: Andrew's Maxx

I will not be Hacktivisted again! This game was pretty tense throughout. I land an HHN, and he's not able to clear the last tag with Citadel. I trash the Citadel, a Data Folding, and a Same Old thing, and next turn I Best Defense the Same Old Thing to avoid the Deep Data Mining that's in his bin. He installs a STR 6 Atman to deal with my Archangel and Gutenberg. I have a double-advanced GFI in my remote, so he drops the 3rd SoT from hand to DDM, which gets him the win. After the game, he reveals two Hacktivist and an Inject on an untrashable Street Peddler. :-p [Loss]

Cut Round 3: Jerry's Val

Back against Jerry in the semifinals. I don't remember the details of this one well, but I believe I win off of the Cal-Sponsor combo. Early in the game I land a cheap Sea Source to trash some of his econ, which slows him down a lot. I think he also whiffs off of an indexing, which was probably one of his outs. [Win]

The tournament closes out on an explosive note as Andrew lands a turn 3 boom against me to get his revenge on Omar.

Big thanks to Jason for organizing. I had an amazing time making it into my first cut ever and getting to second place. :-D