Just played my first game with this last night using an exact copy of Hinkes’ Cambridge PE. After my brother got his teeth kicked in three times by Black Tree at the last store tourney, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I understand the technical goal of the deck, but I lost 7-4 to a Shaper deck last night because he ran carefully, kept his hand full, didn’t fall for traps, and hammered R&D almost exclusively. Admittedly, I did a lot of damage, but after a Levy AR, that was pretty much all she wrote.
Maybe it’s because it was my first game using a faction and playstyle I don’t normally play (Jinteki and flatlining), perhaps part of the problem was that I wasn’t aggressively trying to sneak out Agendas, or the fact that I never landed a single Ronin. I don’t know why but from my side of the table, he never really seemed at risk of dying. He just made sure to draw up/overdraw before running R&D, and ignored the Cerebral Overwriters/Psychic Fields. Again, maybe he didn’t feel pressured to run anywhere else.
Maybe it’s the fact that Shaper is the worst matchup for this type of deck. I don’t know… it just doesn’t seem very good to me.