Shipment from whatnow? (Winner of Sheffield Q1 GNK)

This started when I got Haarpsichord Studios as my Charity Gift ID last year and found that all the usual News Team shenanigans was bad because everyone was on Shadow Net. I settled on a surprise fork of fast advancing with Shipment from Tennin and Sea Source EOIing. It worked ok, but obviously I was mostly playing with a blank ID and I had to work very hard to stay richer than the runner.

Fast forward to this year and Crowdfunding has taken over the world. I thought I’d have a go at a similar idea but out of a sensible ID. Azmari is the obvious choice and, of course, others have had some good success with the EOI game plan there (most notably the Schüttel dein Tag worlds list that dome_ published).

If games go well they go something like this: Ice up centrals and get a few creds from a Hedge Fund or the ID ability. Your opponent is initially wary because they’re not sure what flavour of Azmari this is and they don’t want to get hit with HHN or steal an SSL and get punitived. I use this early window to SFT out a Beale, which is usually met with “the look”. Next, it’s time to find some EOI fodder by cheesing a QPM behind a Data Raven or just finding the 15 Minutes. The mid-game can drag on a bit, but the key is to maximise how taxing it is for the runner to run anywhere. Slot Machine is great for this. Gutenberg goes on R&D with Sherlock 2.0 on HQ usually. Know when to feed them a GFI. Take advantage of any weakness: if they stop running then fast advance, if they get too poor then EOI. They know that this will happen (usually) but often there is not much they can do about it.

Best Defense is there basically to get rid of No One Home, which otherwise ruins your day. If you’re certain that they’re not running if then use it on whatever seems most vital.

I’ve played this list quite a lot on Jnet and done well with it. I took it to the Sheffield GNK and won by defeating MaxX, Apex and Leela. It’s a lot of fun to play, but perhaps somewhat less fun to play against. My Apex opponent described it as “you’re like Santa Claus but you leave turds.”