Ambush under the moon - 0-3 NZ Nats 2023-09-16

Tried to spice up the list that I used for Canada East Nat 2023. But it did not go well.

Here is the original list.

Game plan : flat line the runner through shell games.

Mulligan plan : maximum one agenda.

The deck lost against MGK (Hoshiko), Mortivor (419) and techgin (Tao). Those were all fun games.

Thanks to all my opponents for the fun games. Shoutout to nbkelly for judging and organizing the event, it was excellent.

Short version of the changes : -1 Clearinghouse, -1 Spin Doctor, -1 Urtica Cipher, +2 Cerebral Overwriter, +1 Moon Pool.

Reason for the change : without Cerebral Overwriter a runner has much less fear of running advanced assets, when the list is known. Also, at the event, I saw that Moon Pool was very potent and can save agendas located in archive or HQ.

The play pattern is all about putting assets and agendas on the board, naked. To know how to do that, you put something on the board on the first and/or second turn. If the runner checks them, you know you have to put assets rather than agendas on the board. If the runner does not check them, you can put agendas and assets like Reaper Function on the board.

The best strategy against this deck that I have seen so far, is to check a bit of centrals, and a bit of remotes. This makes choices more difficult for this corp. Not concentrate on only centrals or only remotes, which makes the game so much easier for this corp.

The main weakness of the deck is Diversion of Funds. Anemone does not have any stopping power and the economy of the deck is rather weak. This was demonstrated, on Jai stream, when I got DoF 3 times by 419 (the toughest matchup after Lat).

All in all, the original list went better than this one. If I had to redo this, I would just cut a Trick of Light from the original list and add a Moon Pool. The latter really demonstrated how good it was in many games.

On the day of the event, two other games were lost when the opponent just tried to dig R&D a bit and got all their points like that. This is a possibility with a deck that uses few ices. The variance is higher. Also, my opponents played rather well by checking sometime the remotes and sometimes the centrals, which is the correct strategy.

When played in person, this deck is MUCH more fun. The bluff aspect of this deck cannot be understated. It makes for memorable moments. Cheers!