Gettin' Rejiggy With It (The Worst Deck in Startup) 0-5 A2A

rural_octopus047 100

This deck was the ill-begotten brainchild of wanting to bring something a bit out of left field to the Ashes to Ashes online tournament (a fantastic & well-run event!). What it lacks in efficiency & general good-ness it makes up for by way of also being not very competitive against good (read: any) corp decks.

The idea was to use non-icebreaker tools to pressure remote servers early, forcing the corp to build wider than they wanted or trash their botulus/boomerang-ed ice. Stargate was there to apply mid-to-late game pressure, using rejigs to rearrange our fun tools onto R&D. Quetzel's ability was an additional source of breaker-less breaking if a gear-check barrier was in the way. The mayflys were meant to life fast and die young, and buzzsaw was purely anti-magnet tech.

As I was steamrolled by player after player in the tournament, I came to realize:

1) This deck is not very good.

2) I am also not very good.

3) The 20% win rate on jinteki.net this deck amassed in preparation for the tournament was actually a harbinger of tournament results due to points 1 & 2 above, and not just a fluke due to bad draws.

Who would've guessed?

Anyway, losing all those games got me plenty of tickets in the consolation raffle so I can't say it was all bad. Huge thanks to all of the A2A tournament organizers for their hard work over the past month & a half!

2 comments
10 Jul 2022 Sanjay

Thanks for publishing this!

I love the tricksy nature of this deck and the non-standard ways of dealing with ice. I think I can see why the deck didn't come together, but I really do like what you were going for here.

One tip I'd give you is if you ever build a deck like this again where the goal is that you are trying to reliably make a few punchy runs, rather than being able to run forever, I'd include more multi-access cards than a few Jailbreak. And Stargate is a great card, but usually at its best when you can run a little more reliably.

Some cards to consider next time you go for something like this might be The Maker's Eye, Legwork, or Khusyuk.

Sorry if it was a little presumptuous to just throw unasked for advice at ya. Regardless, I enjoyed the list and enjoyed the write-up, so thanks again.

10 Jul 2022 rural_octopus047

Thanks for the input @Sanjay, definitely not presumptuous of you to try to help out! I'm not sure I'll be doing anything this level of jank in the near future but great notes about more efficient multi-access tools. I had a number of times when I'd work my way through an iced-up HQ just for a single access or break through a remote just to get Spin Doctor rezzed on me. Playing for more frequent central server multi-access would've been way more effective; Khusyuk would've been great with 3 botulus and a boomerang on board, I'm kicking myself for not thinning of slotting that one in!