Fast Advance is a Crutch - 4th Place South African Nationals

TR1S 625

Nationals was a great experience and I am so glad that I managed to attend before I jet off for the UK. This is mostly for archive purposes but there are at least three things I learnt:

1) Sherlock 2.0 is a significant improvement over Janus 1.0.

2) Caprice Nisei is not nearly as good as advertised. Rumor Mill is just terrible and ruins her day. QQ. Should have left in the SanSan City Grid from the last tournament.

3) SA's meta is incredibly competitive.

Inspiration

Having now become known as "The ETF player" in my meta, there was no way I could abandon HB. I have been trying out Jinteki and enjoying the mind games, but the lure of Capitalism keeps pulling me back towards my true home. That and I finally finished the Worlds of Android and have decided that Director Haas and I are actually soul mates.

Y u still no play Vitruvius?

I actually tried to tinker with the agenda mix this time round. In a faction that can often run tight for influence because of the presence of Eli and Architect, saving two influence can be a massive boost. Additionally, the GFIs aren't actually doing any work when scored which was starting to get on my nerves as I was frequently in positions where I had a window to score, and a PriReq would have ensured that Wotan got rezzed, locking down R&D for a bit longer.

I tried taking the Foods out for another PriReq and an Eden Fragment (my logic being that building million ICE deep servers cheaper would be awesome) but the deck just did not perform as consistently. It's weird, fundamentally nothing actually changed in the deck - the runner still has to steal three and I still have to score three - but it just didn't seem to work. I went back to the 2xFood, cutting the Architects, about two weeks before Nationals and didn't regret it.

Nationals Performance

I was fortunate to have an incredibly easy time in the Swiss rounds. A small nationals, just 12 players, and a first round bye meant that I just needed 2 wins (against the Whiz and a nexus Chaos Theory, the latter a 9-0 win) and an ID to finish top.

I fared worse after the cut. My runner losing in the first round of the double elimination meant that I was up against MaxX in the losers bracket. I rushed to 6 points - scoring out a PriReq and the Utopia Shard and had the ABT, biotic labour and 11 credits necessary to win the next turn. With the 2 other cards in hand being GFIs, I was pretty confident I could close out the game. If the runner accessed anything but the ABT I was safe, but 2 hail mary runs on HQ netted him a GFI and then the ABT taking him to 6-5 though the use of turntable. With time called, I was forced to try and score out the GFI, but it was too little too late and I was eliminated. It was a really intense match and one of the most fun I have played in ages. Props to Peter H. for the pressure he put me under all game and for making it to the final.

Changes

Caprice was entirely the wrong choice. I took her over the SanSan City Grid because I was worried about a Nexus Andy deck that a friend was playing and that had caused me trouble in the run up to nationals. But given that we didn't play each other as a result of the ID and she was Rumour Milled in the losers final, I would have probably been better off with the SanSan.

I am also not sure Biotic Labour was worth the include, despite its importance against MaxX. A large part of the reason why I didn't close out that game faster was that I had a poor start as it took ages to draw into ICE. I think another cheap piece (maybe a Markus or a WoS) might actually be worth while just to improve the consistency of my opening hand.

Obviously, any and all suggestions are welcome :)

5 comments
11 Sep 2016 PureFlight

I agree that GFI only maintains its zeal if you're running all 2-ptrs otherwise. Once you put in a true 3-ptr like Priority Req, and it might not really be worth the influence. The idea of the Eden Fragment is pretty cool - do you really prefer VMI instead of Eden? And any thoughts on one or two Domestic Sleepers? Might be nice for closing out your game against CT, for example.

11 Sep 2016 TR1S

Hey @PureFlight,

That was my thinking as well - the GFI isn't actually doing anything in this deck and other agendas would be so much more useful. I genuinely find it inexplicable but my win record plummeted on Jinteki when I took them out. I've read that there was a bug on Jinteki that was clustering agendas together so that may have been the problem, but given that I didn't have much time to rest in person I went with the devil I know. Now that Nationals is over and I can test more in person I'm going to go with an Eden Fragment and another Priority Requisition.

I love Voting Machine Initiative. Finding ways to pressure the runner's clicks is really important in HB and scoring a VMI first basically ensures that Turing cannot be clicked through and in conjunction with Enhanced Login Protocol it means the runner has only one possible action if they want to run that turn. Obviously Shapers have now Beth Kilrain-Chang to help them out but Anarchs and Criminals really hate that combination.

The Domestic Sleepers idea is really interesting and I'd actually quite like to try it. Any recommendations for what to cut to make space?

12 Sep 2016 PureFlight

You make a great point about the synergy of VMI+Turing+ELP. It's probably one of those things that, looking at the card, VMI might not seem very strong to me, but in practice it can be really useful.

Yeah, the Sleepers idea basically turns your scoring plan into 3+3+1, which I think can warrant its inclusion (I think it's a bit weaker in a 2+2+2+1 scheme because it's pretty easy to FA one of the many 3/2's that deck would run for 8 pts).

I'd probably drop 2 ICE like Bastion for 2 Sleepers and see if I like it. I think Bastion is your weakest ice. That said, I'm a really bad glacier player and dropping ice could be a terrible idea. I would think 19 ICE with Jackson draw is sufficient, though.

If you put SanSan back in, you can install Sleepers on the SanSan (and maybe a Herrings) and leave it. They have to pay mad money to steal a 0-pointer. If they don't, you Advance and Score it, then play your Biotic for the win.

12 Sep 2016 PureFlight

Actually, I'm curious about how helpful Sandburg was for you. I often see it with cheap ICE so there's lots of leftover cash for STR boosting. Did you still feel like it was effective with all the chunky bioroids you have? And did Rumor Mill make Sandy less relevant?

13 Sep 2016 TR1S

@PureFlight I have a friend that often tells me that I shouldn't pick agendas based on their best case scenario - but I definitely disagree with that. At best you have that kind of interaction which can really extend the midgame and give you space to find and install the last agenda. But even in the "worst" case scenario the runner is still a click down which can be annoying.

I don't know if sacrificing ICE is a good idea. The deck runs 17 in its current form with 18 as a possible combination if I drop Biotic Labor. I know a lot of people are down on Bastion but that is largely because Atman is often pumped to strength 4 when used. I don't see Atman much anymore, especially in my local meta so more often than not I am happy to see Bastion in my starting hand.

My thought was was actually to drop Eve Campaign and see if that works. I often find I am reluctant to rez her without Breaker Bay which means she sometimes sits on the table doing nothing. I'm keen to try out the Sleepers because it's a card that no one expects and I'd love to make that work :p

The other option is to drop Sandburg. But I love that card. This deck tends to run quite wealthy anyway so I've always found Sandburg to be a massive pain for the runner to deal with - it's more often than not +5 or greater. Obviously PriReq really helps with the bigger pieces of ICE, but I am often willing to hard rez an Ichi 2.0, even if it takes me to just over (or even just under 10). Those big pieces were annoying for runners to get through before Sandburg so they remain annoying even when you don't have the credits or have been Rumor Milled.

Getting Rumour Milled can actually, ironically, end up being the play that loses the runner the game - they often assume you will have cheap, shitty ICE on your scoring server and aren't prepared for hideous stuff that you are now even more willing to rez because you don't need to hoard the credits. I've found that the card I am actually most annoyed about losing is Jeeves Model Bioroids but its never devastating. Actually the only time I've lost due to a rumour mill was when I made a particularly ill timed use of JHow and didnt immediately trash him. Lesson learnt.