Cayambe's Last Gleaming - June GLC Modded Tourney (2-1)

bowlsley 566

[Modded is System Core 19 + the Ashes cycle only]

For June's tournament I figured I'd try going back to my roots and using the IDs I chose in my first ever Modded tournament some 7-odd months ago, to see how my skills as a deckbuilder and player had progressed, and I'm reasonably proud of the result! This is a fairly straightforward glacier Earth Station deck (my runner deck is here), although it went through a revision halfway through the tournament (decklists are not fixed) after I found myself getting quickly torn apart in my second game, but on reflection I think this was simply a result of bad draws (and strong play by my opponent) rather than any big glaring weaknesses in the deck, so I'm still not quite sure which version I prefer.

Some notes on specific cards:

Cayambe Grid - We all know it, we all loathe it, we all cheered when it hit the Standard Ban List, but it's still legal in this tournament and so I was damn well going to utilise it. My biggest mistake was often trying to install it too early into the remote, and give the runner a window to get rid of it. Ideally the ground should be laid by Wall To Wall before it's installed, so that there's immediately a heavy tax on running.

Agendas/Punitive Counterstrike - In the first iteration I had 3x Vulnerability Audit, 3x SDS and 2x Hostiles, so the Punitives made more sense there, but I found the deck struggled to stay rich enough to be able to outpay the runner when it needed to. I squeezed in the Oaktowns for more cash, and the Atlases give me great flexibility - I can either bluff them as W2Ws, or IA them for an invaluable agenda token. So I could probably cut the Punitives here and not miss them.

Aggressive Secretary - I needed something to help me open up scoring windows, and there are four advanceable traps to pick from here. I went for Agg Sec because I think it's got the biggest potential to swing the game if it lands. There are only a few recursion options in this format, so losing a breaker can be anywhere between incredibly inconvenient (if they've got a second somewhere in the deck) and downright devastating (if they don't).

Rime - ICE suites aren't great in Modded, and Rime is free and boosts the other ICE I do have. I can't remember whether it ever came in useful, but I'm also not sure I'd want to spend my precious money on anything else.

Many thanks to Dirjel for organising the tournament, and the rest of the GLC Discord server for all the fun I've had there! See you all again for July's version.

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