String Theory Exile (2nd place, technically)

Sanjay 3561

This deck went 0-2 in swiss and 0-2 in the top 4 of a relatively small tournament. Inexplicably, that was still enough for a second place finish thanks to ridiculous luck, frozen yogurt, and NBN Mutate.

Incidentally, I cosplayed as Exile during the tournament, and I have two thoughts on that:

1) Wearing four layers in a room crowded with people was a horrible decision. It was ridiculously warm. Doesn't Exile live in New Angeles, Ecuador? I do not understand how he manages.

2) Wearing a hoodie as your innermost layer underneath a dress shirt, a vest, and a jacket doesn't look nearly as ridiculous as it should.

6 comments
22 Feb 2016 Ino209

Your pulls off of Oracle May that last game were so sad. Of the predictions I saw, I think 80% were incorrect.

22 Feb 2016 Sanjay

@Ino209 I forgot to believe in the heart of the cards :(

22 Feb 2016 Ino209

@Sanjay a critical mistake!

And you did so well during our playtesting! Then again, my deck was incredibly slow, and provided tons of time for you to play around.

22 Feb 2016 LeonardQuirm

Wot, no Eureka!?

23 Feb 2016 tiedyedvortex

I'm not understanding this deck. You've got Comet+Oracle May+tons of Events... but out of Exile? I'm guessing your idea is to draw through your entire deck, throwing most of your programs in the heap, then Test Run+Scavenge to recur your programs.

Which is a janky as hell combo, but even if you pull it off you're only going to actually recur maybe 3 or 4 programs the entire game, netting you a total of 3 or 4 cards from his ability.

Admittedly, putting this in Kate or Chaos Theory isn't much use either since you don't need the MU and you're not installing enough for that to help. Since you're already running Code Siphons, maybe Jesminder Sareen would actually be the best here? Even if you only use her ability once or twice in a game you're still coming out ahead, and as Data Raven is played you will be coming out way ahead.

23 Feb 2016 Sanjay

@LeonardQuirm Eureka would have been fine but I didn't really see the need. It's not essential to get your whole rig set up... usually just Faust and whatever you need to cover their anti-Faust ice, so Eureka typically doesn't have a lot of opportunities to trigger. And if I know what the top card of my deck is, I already have something good to do, so Eureka really is kinda niche.

@tiedyedvortex You hit the nail on the head that there isn't really a Shaper ID that is going to trigger a whole lot with what I'm doing. I went with Exile because the deck can get really card hungry and I figured every bit helped. In most games, I would usually get three or four activations from Exile's ability, but this is better than nothing. The draws come at nice times, because usually when I'm scavenging a Femme is a time I want to run too.

Jesminder is certainly another strong choice, though.

The way the deck plays is use shaper draw and shaper tutoring to get a Faust out as soon as possible (sometimes using Test Run Femme (and hopefully Scavenge) to code siphon into R&D). Hit R&D hard with easily available multiaccess. Use Oracle May to fuel the economy and keep the cards flowing.

It's not essential to dump your whole deck into your heap.