Valencia "Postal"—2nd Place Store Championship (Troy, IL

MmmBraaains 463

25 player tournament
2nd Place Finish

STRATEGY
Blackmail recursion: Same Old Thing + Deja Vu
Face-check ice as needed. Use Fork + Knife + Spoon + Parasite to destroy and pave the way for future Blackmails as needed.
Keyhole + Eater as credits allow.
Parasite recursion: Deja Vu
Account Siphon recursion: Same Old Thing + Deja Vu

Itinerant Protesters + Investigative Journalism + Vigil

1st MVP:
Vigil is so amazing. Very, very frequently a corp ends their turn with max hand size. Even more frequently when Itinerant Protesters and Bad Publicity lowers their max hand size. Free card every turn is HUGE.

2nd MVP:
Investigative Journalism seems intense to give up your turn, but you can't deny the +1 credit for EACH RUN. It was not uncommon for me to have 2–3 Bad Publicity on the Corp.

Weaknesses + Warnings
The deck seemed to have a weakness to fast advance, more specifically Biotic Labor. In games that I faced Corps with that strategy I had to rush and overdraw to find Wanton Destruction, credit up, and Wanton click 1 with 3 clicks invested to force the Corp to discard 3 cards. When a game against a fast advance strategy happens and I don't see Wanton, its pretty rough and I have to hope Keyhole + Eater pulls at the right time.

Data Raven and Tollbooth are pretty punishing, so keep an eye out for those.

Swordsman can ruin your day if you are not careful, keep those Parasites handy!

28 comments
1 Feb 2015 sjohn

What would you do if the corp put a Crisium Grid on R&D and/or HQ? I see parasites and utensil events, you likely didn't face this at the tournament, but it seems like a very real possibility.

1 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

Good question. I suppose if this deck became a think (or the Keyhole + Eater concept in general) then that is something we'll need to f figure out.

You are right in assuming I didn't face this. It's something I'll need to dig into...

1 Feb 2015 SlySquid

I think this deck is tits!!! But if I could make a suggestion I'd pull one Wanton Destruction and Knifed and toss in two Injects to get the party going asap!!!

Also you just need to eat the ice infront of hq to kill the Crisium Grid play, your deck is better suited for it than my maxx

1 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

good call on the Crisium Grid. I like the Inject suggestion. Ill test it out.

1 Feb 2015 am_percival

Definitely need to give this a try. Please keep us posted on future modifications.

2 Feb 2015 BxN88

What was your winning objectif, running Archive only or you manage to get Agenda from other servers. Did you only focus to make the Corp trash cards and run Archive when the tempo is good?

2 Feb 2015 Somberbrero

This was hugely frustrating to play against, one of the better Runner decks I've seen in a while!

2 Feb 2015 BxN88

I will test this deck 2night. How he manage to get your agenda? Mostly on Archive or he manage to get some on other server using blackmail?

2 Feb 2015 Somberbrero

I can't recall if he hit my remote scoring server with four Blackmail runs, or three remote Blackmail runs and a single Archives pull. Regardless, Blackmail did most of the work that game.

2 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

@BxN88 my main objective is Eater + Keyhole with a later Blackmail on Archives or Hades Shard access. I also use Blackmail when I sniff a scoring server being formed, a HQ agenda horde going on, or an Asset or Upgrade that I dont like and need to trash.

2 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

@Somberbrero what were you playing? and What was your name? Thanks for the kind words BTW.

2 Feb 2015 Somberbrero

Ian here, I was running TWIY* Grail and Nasir. For what it's worth, the only Corp game I dropped was against your Valencia.

3 Feb 2015 slevin38

With a 50 card deck, I would think you need more card draw. Maybe Earthrise?

3 Feb 2015 weepinggorilla

These Eater-only builds just aren't gonna last if they become popular, they're so easily countered...

3 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

I dont know if they are easily countered. As far as a Bad Publicity based strategy goes—if it was to become popular it would be hard for the corp to tech in cards just for a bad pub strategy...not to mention there aren't really efficient cards for getting rid of bad pub either.

5 Feb 2015 McKindling

Blue sun has all it needs. Executive Boot camp to rez ice and Elizabeth Mills to remove BP.

5 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

@McKindling you are right. Blue Sun is an interesting matchup.

5 Feb 2015 McKindling

Blue sun is just hard for everyone to tech against. It doesn't mean it's the best identity, but it's the hardest to counter. BP removal, Knight and parasite destruction, account siphon recovery, bad pub removal, etc.

6 Feb 2015 EnderA

I would recommend swapping out one Account Siphon for two Planned Assaults. It increases your chance of hitting Siphon, plus you can search for Cutlery/Blackmail with it. (Or Wanton Destruction in a pinch.) You could even cut a Lucky Find for a third Planned Assault.

6 Feb 2015 MmmBraaains

@EnderA My original build ran Planned Assault but I found it to be to expensive (click and credit wise). How has your testing gone with it?

2 Mar 2015 GoldenArmKid

@gmeacher Do you think this deck would still work alright without the Same Old Things & Dirty Laundry? I would love to give this a go but unfortunately dont have a copy of C&C yet.

3 Mar 2015 EnderA

I haven't gotten a chance to really test out Planned Assault, actually, so I'll defer to your experience. It seems good in theory. Have you considered Prepaid VoicePAD? It seems like it would work well with your 60% event deck. It might be able to replace Dirty Laundry (no risk of a failed run)/Lucky Find (free up influence), and give you consistent income. It straight up beats Dirty Laundry after two or three additional turns.

3 Mar 2015 MmmBraaains

@GoldenArmKid I dont think it works well without Same Old Thing. Dirty Laundry is not crucial IMO. I think you just gotta try it out and have some fun.

3 Mar 2015 MmmBraaains

@EnderA My first build ran Prepaid and I found it was to slow. It seems great in theory with the amount of events (as you said)—but in actuality it just made me setup more. I think whats nice about a deck like this is that there is minimal setup. If you draw Keyhole, thats what you do. If you draw events and Blackmail, thats what you do. If you just see Eater and know keyhole, then you go destruction and open up servers to steal. What you draw dictates your strategy—where as most decks make you draw to find the pieces you need.

28 Mar 2015 tgirod

I'm wondering, given the sheer amount of events in this deck, why didn't you include Prepaid Voicepad to fuel them ?

28 Mar 2015 EnderA

He literally just answered that question.

29 Mar 2015 tgirod

woops, I skipped that comment :-/

29 Aug 2015 tgirod

After playing this deck 5 times or so (and winning most of my games), I wonder if account siphon is necessary.

In most of my games, I wasn't running much, unless I had a blackmail or intended to trash some stuff with keyhole+eater or some cuttlery. So most of the time the corp was sitting on a pile of cash because they couldn't spend it rezzing ices. In this context I'm not sure an econ denial card such as Siphon fits well. I'll try to replace them with some emergency shutdown.