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.