No expertise needed to identify the absolute state of suckitude that Tsurugi has been living in since IHW came out. I haven’t had any more trouble with Grail RP than regular RP though, playing exclusively as maxx and Kate in post-worlds tournaments. The wanton/doppelganger version of maxx that I’ve been running has an embarrassingly good RP match.
It would’ve been a great call at our place today since I think literally half of the field was Leela (9/18) but RP is going to have trouble in most other settings, given a strong field in terms of both decks and players.
The deck’s pilot was @ryanbantwins. So he might share (also want to try the list). Great player, 2 times runner up in SC’s of Belgium. Told him finals are his weak point
DBS over Eli is probably a solid choice - basing this on no experience, but DBS does some serious work in the more “standard” variations of RP. It is highly likely that it does even better in an RP deck that is even more focused on finding specific cards.
Posting this for a friend who apparently hasn’t had an account long enough to post it (or something).
Location: Bam CCG
City: Leamington Spa (England)
Players: 16
Rounds: 4 + cut to top 4
Date: 2015/02/28
Card Pool: The Source
Event: Store Championship
Winner: Alexander White (Vinegarymink)
card pool: Through Order & Chaos
event: Store Championship
players: 22
location/store: Tabletop Shop
city: Newington, Connecticut
country: USA
date: February 28, 2015
winner: Cal Neuvost
“Drugs” - Newington, Conn., Store Championship (45 cards)
MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock
– Event (33 cards)
3 Account Siphon ****
3 Day Job
3 Dirty Laundry
3 Déjà Vu
3 Forked
3 I’ve Had Worse
3 Knifed
1 Levy AR Lab Access ***
2 Retrieval Run
3 Spooned
3 Sure Gamble
3 Wanton Destruction
– Program (9 cards)
2 D4v1d
3 Eater
2 Mimic
2 Parasite
– Resource (3 cards)
3 Same Old Thing
I was glad to do well with Eater MaxX without Keyhole!
“Mooncast” - Newington, Conn., Store Championship (49 cards)
Near-Earth Hub: Broadcast Center
– Agenda (11 cards)
3 AstroScript Pilot Program
2 Breaking News
3 NAPD Contract
3 Project Beale
– Asset (8 cards)
3 Jackson Howard
3 PAD Campaign
2 Snare! **
– ICE (15 cards)
3 Data Raven
1 Eli 1.0 *
1 Enigma
3 Pop-up Window
2 Quandary
1 Tollbooth
1 Troll
1 Wall of Static
2 Wraparound
– Operation (12 cards)
3 Hedge Fund
3 Scorched Earth ****
3 SEA Source
3 Sweeps Week
– Upgrade (3 cards)
3 SanSan City Grid
This was a great event! Thanks to Gabe for putting us up. Thanks to Twitch and Mungo for the rides and company. Thanks to El-ad and Zeromus for being great traveling buddies. Thanks to the great competitors, including Ally, Danny, Carl, Kenny, and Peter, who was repping Rhode Island, and all the rest!
For what it’s worth, rounding out the top 4 in Card Kingdom we had Eater MaxX / Blue Sun, Eater MaxX / RP, and Leela / RP. But there were definitely some interesting brews running around. A couple of the players I talked to spoke disparagingly of ‘netdecking’. My very brief and limited experience in Seattle seems like many players really like to brew with janky cards and make it all work. (Though I wouldn’t consider Keyhole Siphon MaxX the avant-garde of deck design either.)
I have a lot of respect for anyone that builds their own decks, but I think there is a point where you have to call jank what it is and recognize that there isn’t a great reason to play it when the surprise value doesn’t outweigh the jankiness. There shouldn’t be any stigma against netdecking, especially when the card pool is small enough that two good players/builders can brew almost exactly the same deck as one another without conferring.
Most of the time, when I see a janky deck win, I think “oh, so a good player decided to dick around and their skill carried them to the top DESPITE the jank”. It’s rare to see a novel deck that actually looks like it can be great on paper. The Tennin never advance deck looks like one of these decks to me. Coherent/synergistic, full of strong cards, and good in the metagame. Au revior CT, on the other hand, doesn’t have a lot of justification outside of the novelty/fun value.
Anti-netdecking culture puts newer players at a severe disadvantage in tournaments and actually keeps people from learning to become better. I think that the Philly meta does a better job than any other at taking new/intermediate players and making them truly top-tier, and it’s largely because we have a culture of deck-sharing and strong competition even at our random game nights. People aren’t ALWAYS netdecking, but I find that new/intermediate players take their skill to the next level by copying decks and only then start building on their own, at which point they’re actually competent enough to construct something that isn’t just a waste of everyone’s time.
I don’t even understand the point of Au Revoir—Jacking Out is pretty rare, right? Why would you even waste deck slots on something like this?
edit: I expected Au Revoir to pay the runner for unsuccessful runs, which seems useful; sort of a reverse Desperado. As it is you have to have 2 of them out to even match a Sec. Testing or a single MO click ;). Plus there are a ton of things that synergize with successful runs. Kati is a much better way to click for 3.
You can click for $3 with all of them out, but if you were playing better cards/less MU, basically every other econ engine will be better over the course of almost every game. Every deck can play 3 Kati Jones, and that alone is way better if you replace whatever you used for the superfluous memory with some more burst econ.
When I read the list, the only conclusion I came to is that the person playing the deck (and their opponents) didn’t understand that you don’t jack out at the end of a successful run. Seems highly unlikely, but it is the only way I could justify it in my mind.
In a meta filled with horizontal decks, I could see it… if you refuse to play Criminal and run SecTest / Bank Job.
Edit: Because presumably against Glacier decks, you’ll need to make successful runs at some point in order to access cards, which turns off your engine. I guess you could just never run HQ or Archives without jacking out for money, so then they could only rez with something like EBC.
