Say there’s a life-or-death store champ happening tomorrow, your very life is on the line and you have to perform as best as you possibly can. What pairing would you bring and why?
As for me:
RUNNER
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Papa Smurf (with 2 salsette slums switched in, how chris won without it is beyond me)
Whizzard with salsette answers all the worst problems in the game for me, be it IG, CtM (especially the transmission dish+door-to-door variant) and any kind of lock/asset spam really.
I’ve tried hate bear and frantic coding variants (both mopus and no mopus versions) and I think frantic coding builds are too inconsistent and vulnerable to slightly more hate (like arc lockdown/decking/bad luck). Also I’ve realized that net-ready eyes is EXTREMELY important to have a consistent matchup into all corps, especially glacier.
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I feel nexus kate is also good, film critic and new angeles are great tech to have vs any kind of sync kill/combo kill. Personally I wouldn’t run her however because I can never quite win vs IG-the Mopus economy falls a tiny bit short which makes me worry it isn’t consistent enough vs asset spam in general. Then again IG is more of a pet fear of mine than a common tourney ID.
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Siege engine geist(with the source/film critic/NACH teched in), hate bear and DLR maxx are also very solid imo but fall short in certain areas that the above decks don’t. Valencia can be ridiculous but what hates her hates her hard (bad pub removal).
CORP
This is a genuine tossup for me as I honestly don’t know what corp would be best in the current climate. I’ve had success with snakebite CtM, Replciaitng Perfection and 'tis the season Blue Sun.
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'Tis the season blue sun is something I ran only once (other variants of blue sun I’ve decent experience with). Normally I’m a believer in vegan, but the idea to run midseason with 3x consulting visit is a great idea IMO and is a gearcheck/trap akin to the prime days of butchershop. Needs more testing but I have high hopes for this due to it’s capability to punish red/blue’s lack of film critic and an easy answer to val with elizabeth.
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CtM has me on a knife edge every game. It seems every runner is heavily teched or a direct counter. Every Andy I see is the nexus kind and salsette slums is practically a phobia at this point. By turn one I’m usually left thinking I have to do x, I have to do it FAST or I’m screwed and either I barely win or I lose. The deck is very versatile and has at least some line of play into anything, but it’s quite linear in a way so if the runner can get the lock you’re done for.
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RP has a much higher winrate than CtM for me right now, you might have seen the build with 3xsensies/sundew/health clinic, spiky ice only on centrals and enchanced login protocol at some point. A good hands puts huge pressure on the runner with turn 1/2 money card+tsurugu/komainu/dna trackers on centrals and turn 3 sundew sundew sensies or something like that and it can snowball out of control insanely fast. My gripe with it is that the extreme lack of flex slots makes it relatively predictable to someone who knows the composition and leaves no room for tech cards. Loses if the runner can stop you from moving from the rush/asset spam phase to the glacier phase and keep up, wins if they cant.
If I had to choose right now I’d go with the RP, but as I play more BS and see what the matchups are like I might prefer that.
Other strong corps I’ve seen are Spanish CtM (transmission dishdoor-to-door variant) and Sol Glacier, but I believe both are too weak in certain matchups for my liking, everything else is flat-out not good enough, with the possible exception of NEH combo-kill that i just don’t have experience with.
There’s so much NBN hate right now, Boom Sun is a fine meta call. It can be teched against, but no one really is right now. You risk running into shapers with an unstoppable late game, but NBN can generally keep them to the lower tables. Even so, barriers are generally the most taxing ICE these days.
I think you under-sold DLR MaxX. It has a solid NBN matchup, and made it as far in Worlds as it did for a reason. It’s also just a solid deck for getting you through swiss. Very good at shutting down left-field jank.
(Disclaimer, those are the two decks I just won an SC with, so I’m a bit biased.)
Nexus Andy and various Geists are very strong calls. I think the tech you mentioned is overkill for Geist. RP might be fine for swiss, but in my experience it folds hard to Whizzard for the same reasons it always did.
Good points. I’m continuing to test BS and its as good vs anarchs as I hoped, I’ve yet to fall flat on my face with a bad opener however.
RP, with a good hand, can and has beaten whizzard for me almost consistently. Yes he has the asset trash, but unless he opens with the normally singleton mimic he just can’t facecheck any of your centrals each turn without suffering a huge tempo swing due to faceplanting a komainu/tsurugi/dna tacker. It does require a strong opener though.
Don’t get me wrong I love DLR maxx, I just find her weak to those wildcard net damage decks. I prefer to have decent game into any matchup than stronger game into certain matchups. In fairness though PU or IG at an actual tournament may just be me being paranoid, I just love shutting them down so much that I always play counter decks.
Geist without source just seems to glaringly weak to FA that I haven’t ran into yet. Adding the tech dilutes the smoothness of the deck, but it hasn’t exactly NOT worked for me yet.
You know, despite what I said a couple weeks ago, at this point I would bring my Citadel Andy deck to any SC.
If Martial Law is legal, I’d try to find room for On the Lam to block 24/7 kills, but I’ve been able to play around those fine so far without that card.
If you don’t like that, Josh has a flowchart somewhere to tell you which Whizzard you should play (Hate Bear, Temujin Whizz, or Dumblefork Whizz). Given that Christmas is coming soonish, I think there is a 3 Magi joke to be made in there somewhere.
If you are worried about damage decks: personally, I haven’t seen one in the top half of swiss around me, but I know they have been strong at least in the Atlanta area. If they are a concern in your meta, play a Whizzard deck; they are much more resilient to damage than Andy.
Corp side I’m a little more conflicted. I’ve been playing a Boom SYNC deck that’s teched slightly more for scoring than kill:
This deck is very powerful, but certainly not unbeatable. Again, if Martial Law is legal then it needs to rethink its priorities, but any game where you can land an early 24/7 + Closed Accounts + HHN is pretty much a guaranteed win.
Other corps I’d consider would be Josh’s Palana from Icebreaker:
If you have a CtM list you are confident in, you should consider that as well. Even it’s bad match-ups aren’t that bad. I haven’t been playing that style of NBN for a while now, so I don’t have a list to recommend.
Finally I’d think of an NEH Boom shutdown combo deck, such as Dien’s list from worlds:
I’d be nervous about playing Boom Sun or RP because there will likely be whizzards with e-strike around. They pack tech that is really bad for both of those corps, so I’d be worried about those match-ups, especially in the cut.
Thanks for that insight!
I’m not familiar with josh or the flowchart, cursory googling brought me nothing. Linky :)?
I’ve tried the andy deck literally once, won, then never touched it again because I was afraid it’s too slow. Maybe I should give it another whirl.
As for sync, I gave it a few whirls (slightly change version of beyoken’s). It suffers from being being a collateral damage victim to the high-link decks designed to prey on CtM. I’m guessing it’s nexus kate matchup isn’t great either if she’s smart enough to pack NACH.
Palana probably has a decent niche I feel in the sense everyone assumes everyone runs rumour mill, but honestly it’s pretty rare so caprice/batty sheannanigans are very much live most matchups IMO. Still though I don’t think its enough.
@Thyke p.s what kind of tech would you expect against BS? All that springs to mind is the ever-present ES and the rare film critic.
Film Critic, any anti-meat damage cards, ES + recursion, D4v1d + recursion, ICE destruction. None of it outright beats Boom Sun, but every time one is played your job gets incrementally harder. It’s all being played, just not in any density that actually concerns me yet.
Store Championship? My Sunny deck and probably Russian NEH or the Yellow Railgun list. I’d possibly consider a Vegan Titan Rush deck I’m working on, but I don’t think it’s quite ready for a tournament. I’ve also played the Sunny deck a lot so I’m confident in piloting it, despite it being not actually the strongest possible deck.
If this were Regionals or higher, I’d bring some form of Whizzard (Hate Bear intrigues me the most, but I’m sure I need to play with the list a bit before taking it to a tournament.) and CtM.
The flowchart was a slack thing, it wasn’t anything ground-breaking, it was basically:
“Do you want to win?”
No: Who Cares?
Yes: How do you like to play
Siphon the corp:
Be super rich:
Trash everything:
only not those things. Those are the best examples I could find for the for each deck, though I would recommend the gencon tech of Vigil instead of Grimoire in the Dumble variant.
Seriously, we need a 3 Magi reference for those whizzard archetypes for this SC season.