These days if I see a Melange out of NEH, I just assume it’s a Butcher Shop build until proven otherwise, and will try and adjust my playstyle to match. It’s the only build I see that uses it right now. Obviously the IAA Breaking News trap can be a real shitter if you get very behind on cash early on, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. On the plus side, it takes a very specific set of circumstances for it to actually happen (they have to get a lot of money early, have the BN, ideally have the Midseasons, and have 2 kill cards), so it doesn’t happen super often.
fair enough. happened that time. triple melange, midseasons, scorch traffic 3 sweeps bn all in top 20. i stole one astro early…
Out of interest, I took this to a Store Tournament today (pretty strong field). It has a strong matchup against Blue Sun, but it’s utterly demolished by NEH (and from some playtesting, the same with RP if it can get some economy established, and likely ditto with ETF).
It needs to be a lot faster and a lot richer. I think 3 Day Job, 3 Liberated, 3 Lucky Find, (3 Daily/Kati?) is not an unreasonable bare minimum to consider if you ever want to start dropping Vamps, and you probably need the Scrubbers along with it.
Another good place to start looking would be Chris Hinkes old Magnum Opus/Vamp Kit decks.
Who also sucks against NEH.
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So, if it’s a Butcher Shop style deck, the best thing to do is to money up, find meat damage protection and just check every remote. They have no Psychos in the stock list and have trouble fitting them in without cutting some other things. Once you get about two plascretes down (right?) you can run through their Ravens. The matchup is in their favor. You have to grind the matchup in testing a lot. Wish there was an easier solution. 
No plascretes in my list, and at 2 least psycho (I saw them both) in the particular deck I played against.
?!?!?!?!?!?! the sheer audacity!
SO many Reinas on OCTGN right now, but I’ve been having great luck against these decks with my Tennin and Titan midseasons decks - probably just the pilots though: a lot of players seem to have trouble converting their advantage into points. I just keep my play tight, then do what it takes to get enough $$ to land my agendas. What are my opponents doing wrong (I want to know in case I face actual good players with this IRL)? I agree that these decks seem really powerful, but there never seems to be enough money on the runner side to keep me poor and dig for agendas.
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always seems the case when I try it, too. even with turn 1 Kati the deck just can’t keep up IMO
These decks require a lot of decision making during a game, which can lead to mistakes. Also, the worst matchup for Reina is Titan Midseasons.
I don’t know. Those decks tend to not have a ton of money, and you can beat it if you’re careful. @bblum and @Calimsha made an HBFA deck that really shits all over it with EtR ICE and Adonis/Eve Campaigns. EtF’s ability is no slouch either. Once they get up to $20-30 there isn’t a lot Reina can do AT ALL anymore. You don’t even have the means to hail mary access or anything; you just sit there and lose.
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I agree with this - I lost to this deck twice last night and it was clear the other people I’ve played against running this deck have been cocky and overly aggressive at the wrong times. It’s true that titan can run somewhat poor, and if you wait for the right moment it seems you can slip the noose on tight.
Also, yes, i can imagine HBFA takes a hot dump on Reina. Been playing around with a list (@bblum’s I think…did he post his? I can’t remember…) in meatspace - it’s a weird way to play but so so flexible and fast.
It’s bad, yeah. I was saying to @Remorhaz that when HB becomes popular again, Reina might go away again. Sad. It’s beatable, though. Aim for the Eves and let the Adonises run out. Vigil also rarely fires in this matchup, too, which sucks.
So one topic that has come up throughout this thread is about the use of Keyhole. Whether it should be 2x, 1x, or dropped from the deck altogether and replaced with something else. Maybe Keyhole is absolutely worth keeping, but for the sake of discussion, what do you guys are some good replacements?
My first thought is a datasucker or two to make runs cheaper and help keep the economic headlock going. They are cheap to install and don’t take up a lot of memory.
Someone mentioned Gravedigger, but I don’t think that’s a great replacement for Keyhold because it’s not necessarily the case that a lot of installed cards are being trashed. I think a better option is Hemorrhage. The downside of hemo is that the corp gets to pick the card, but after you’ve established the headlock for a few turns, they really won’t have many good options for what to discard out of HQ. A typical turn at this point might be to run HQ twice with Lamprey to drain two credits, click Hemo to trash a card and then one more click to do something else you need to do.
So those are my two ideas for potential Keyhole replacements: Datasucker and Hemorrhage. Thoughts?
Hemo is better, far better than gravedigger. I’d imagine keyhole is the best thing though, given the amount of pressure it applies. It’s board presence detracts from HQ sufficiently, without it, the corp can just heavy ICE HQ and the whole thing starts to fall apart.
Maybe wanton destruction to clear FA out of hand, or make agendas bulking up easier to hit when you can’t get accesses. Thats all-in on HQ though…
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I’ve been testing a BWBI glacier recently, and that deck really kills this one stone cold because of free advancement on the space ice.
But you know what really kills BWBI every time… D4v1d.
Not so much in the recent builds I’ve been playing, but this is veering a little off topic if we go down that.
I played against a BWBI glacier deck and while it did blank a lot of the cards in the deck, I was able to win by just getting money and then Vamping when they made a remote play, with Keyhole follow up.
If they have over advanced space ice, they can rez it for free, right?
Only if they’re advanced with at least 4 token. Because of Reina ability / Xanadu.
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