La Costa Palana (15th @ Worlds 2019)

Dante42 181

After going 5-0 with spiky Ag in Crown of Lasers (and getting that sweet lasered ID), I switched to Palana for the main event. It worked reasonably well, but the shaper matchups proved very difficult.

No matter how high do you stack the remote, shapers are eventually able to get in multiple times a turn. 3 Kakugos, Slot Machine, Anansi and Bio Vault? No problem with Smoke. Hayley with Brahman and D4v1d is also a good answer. In general, you probably want to rush the first Nisei harder than I did, even though Compile makes that tricky as well.

The deck went 4-2 in Swiss (losses against Smoke and Hayley) and 0-1 in the top cut in the streamed elimination game against Joe Schupp´s Apoc Val.

Thanks to the organizers, players and our Czech crew of @longi, @iref, @mildesorte10, @Krasty, @TwadaCZ for a great event.

3 comments
8 Oct 2019 Cucin

Hi Dante, I saw that match on stream. My opinion is that Joe Schupp was little bit lucky when he accessed final (I think 2 agendas) from HQ through single accesses - if I remember correctly. I think you had played that game well and you should won.

8 Oct 2019 Dante42

Hi Cucin, thanks. I feel that while I played well to avert the Apoc and build up an advantage, I made a mistake in the endgame and Joe was good enough to capitalize on it.

Specifically: I probably should not have fired the Rashida on my last turn. I wanted the money for remote ICE (DNA Tracker, something, Border Control), but HQ was too porous to be drawing 4 more cards. While Joe was somewhat lucky to hit both agendas on the first two accesses, he could have run clicks 3 and 4 as well.

IF I had already fired the Rashida, I probably should have jammed one agenda in the remote instead of NGO. That way the HQ agenda density would be halved and even if Joe got through the remote (which he probably could), he would be only on 5-6 points. Still, it was a great learning experience and I can hardly complain that I did not play perfectly against a world champion.

9 Oct 2019 vesper

Thank you for coming all the way from Czech Republic and congrats on making the Top 16!