Wallet Grinder - 1st & Undefeated @Welcome Sokka Tourney

Bridgeman 2594

Check out my silly runner over here. More stuff about the tourney, shoutouts and deck choices there.

Don't worry, this is not grinder, this is wallet grinder! It is not prison, it is a nice padded cell so the runner is safe and does not suffer from having too many things to choose from, just click for credits.

Here is my general theory about spark:

  • Spark gives you a lot of early momentum, your deck should be built around leveraging that
  • This means we want to run a lot of ads to make sure we get the momentum, and keep it. Hence all inf is spent getting good ads.
  • This means our tag punishment is vegan, but Shipment from Vlad is a strong closer, and market forces is good even at one tag.
  • To keep the runner in this poor weak state longer we have cryptocrash and HHN, this makes it harder for the runner to get to a comfortable spot. And HHN leverages our credit lead.
  • In terms of ice we go for few of them because the assets leave little space, but we want them to be impactful, we are using our credit lead to be able to rez big ice.
  • DBS is important to not get flooded and just finding you the right cards
  • Amani further keeps the runner in a poor state
  • The whole deck is built in a way where bellona becomes hard to steal meaning a good chunk of your points are safeish especially early, given that 15 minutes is sort of not points.

The deck did really well, securing a semi-lock in 3/4 games! Navigating the momentum wave all the way to the finish line is just really fun!

I think with strong runner decks and careful play a runner will often be favored, but I'm surprised at how strong this deck actually feels.

Shameless plug of my channel!

3 comments
1 Jul 2023 PiCat314

Spark as deck of the week in it's final hour? this is what I love to see. this deck looks sick

1 Jul 2023 zensiert

because this deck spams assets, i think it will not be a scary contender for meta with crim on ms bones, anarch on imp and shaper on Patricia. but
since everyone expects op ids, i hope, spark won't disapear. gj playing on this bridgeman. cant wait to watch you vod

2 Jul 2023 Bridgeman

So as a disclaimer, I built spark as a challenge and as stated above I think probably good runners with perfect piloting have good game against it.

In terms of the current meta, It is pretty unclear to me, I dont even think anarchs are on imp at all typically, there seems to be less crim presence, and little shaper presence, but I agree crim is on miss bones and shaper is on paricia.

I think some nuance is needed when looking at how such tech affects different asset matchups because they are not all the same imo. What makes spark a bit different is that it plays more money assets and squeezes the runner econ more in the early game. This means that it is easier to afford HHN early and harder for the runner to stay out of hhn range in a comfortable way while trashing assets.

Essentially, first the runners need to have access to their tech by drawing/tutoring and second they need to have enough cash to be able to use it without risking going tagme right away. This typically means that before the runners are comfortable running you have already gained a lot of momentum from your assets in the form of cash, making the runner lose cash, and cards. So when the tech hits the board it is not necessarily game ending, because you are already in the lead.

In a lot of situations vs spark the right call is to just leave the assets be, focus on your own econ to be able to contest scores while staying out of tagme range. If you are able to break spark economically that is great, but usually that means being aggressive early, meaning you need burst econ plus tech to do it well. Shaper has an easier time ignoring your money because hhn is basically ignored by misdirection, but you should still have a nice window to exploit early where they are weaker and not set up.