Crisium Food PD - 4th at Euro / Africa continentals

RotomAppliance 2926

This is the deck I took to 4th place at Euro Africa continentals, played online this weekend.

PD is a well established archetype at this point, but this list was tested and tweaked pretty thoroughly in the run-up to the event. Most notably 2 Crisium Grids came in to improve the apocalypse matchup, as it was proving tough to beat Maxx without them. Crisium also helps against crim (especially if on Counter Surveillance) and is just rarely a dead card - whether you're stopping Omar, slowing down Conduit or just random R&D events out of Shaper or Zayha. It also trolls the occasional Adam by acting as a Mumbad Virtual Tour that you don't even have to install.

Other choices:

1) I made the tough choice to go down to 1 Spin Doctor and up to 15 ice in order to change Ikawahs to Global Foods. I've played extensively with Ikawah and the click tax is relevant, especially when trying to push through a borderline score, but the number of games lost due to having real 3 pointers in the deck was significant. In particular, you often leave R&D open in the early game, and bleeding an agenda is so much worse when the runner can win off of 3 steals.

2) The deck now only plays 1 Void, a significant sacrifice to fit the Crisium Grids. I've seen versions that drop Border Control to retain 2 Voids and the Spin Doctors, but slots become a lot tighter, probably forcing you to only run 12-13 ice. Also, Border Control is so good.

3) The deck retains all the virus hate, a choice which worked out well as the top tables saw a lot of Hivemind Maxx, a traditional good matchup for PD. I also added a cheeky Tithe, which I mostly considered a joke ice, but which is actually very annoying for Maxx, as the risk of losing key pieces such as Labor rights/Apoc/Apoc enablers means it often has to be broken. To date, Tithe has been targetted by ice destruction 3 times (including once being broken by Engolo), and has secured my only flatline win out of PD. If you're expecting a lot of Crim, it should be something else, probably another Hagen to punish 419 facechecking with Turtle installed.

4) Advanced Assembly lines makes for an excellent remote bluff, especially against Apoc. If they don't bite and instead try to land the Apoc, an Assembly lines install before the third run can stop the apoc cold, after the runner has spent significant money. AAL is also nice early game for absorbing the 419 trigger, so I decided to go up to 3 and only 2 Tranquility Grids, which still feels like it shows up pretty much as often as it did before.

The deck went 5-1 across the two days, beating 4 Maxx and a 419, and losing to Valencia. It was a joy to play, though I think my R&D was pretty kind to me.

Thankyou to everyone who organised and made this happen, including a top-notch stream, and congrats to Django, the overall winner. Thanks to osclate for countless testing games with this deck, and for blowing up my board countless times.

2 comments
24 Aug 2021 tzeentchling

Solid deck. Thoughts on AAL vs NGO Front?

24 Aug 2021 RotomAppliance

NGO is a good card and I've used it in PD before. The only problem was it didn't make for very convincing bluffing because agendas tend to be scored from a facedown state, though that might be more a lack of creativity on my end. I think including a copy is worth considering especially for an open list format, as it introduces an element of doubt.