GEM-A Teia (18-6 @ Worlds)

For non-germans: Wikipedia article for GEMA

This is largely an updated version of my prior A Teia list, which exchanges the Tranquility Home Grid and a Thimblerig for one DRM and a Magnet, while cutting the remaining Thimblerig for another Tithe.

In the days leading up to the event, I somehow managed to convert my two fellow glacier-enjoyers @lazychef and @Locker to play this deck as well and found that it is next to impossible to beat if you don't know how it operates, and still a hard match up if you do. Therefore, on the tournament, it went 7-1 for Locker, 6-2 for lazychef and 5-3 for me, thus easily securing us placements in the top half.

As a TL;DR, you can see me pilot an earlier variant of this deck against @Baa Ram Wuu here (having gotten their permission, of course). The most important bits I've already explained in my other write-up, so I'll mainly reiterate ways-of-thinking and play patterns.

The basic premise of this deck is that stacking multiple Border Controls and Anemones makes a server extremely hard to attack, even more so if you have any mix of other ice in between to make it more expensive to run multiple times; even Tithe does this job splendidly with how quickly you can set up your tower of death.

La Costa Grid allows you to keep developing the board while ticking up agendas, which you optimally want it to be doing every single turn, hence Digital Rights Management so you can make sure this happens. While slow-cooking might feel a little slow, this really plays more like a rush deck; you always want to keep going forward in tempo. Advancing agendas yourself is one of the most tempo-negative actions you can take, and by letting La Costa take care of it, you can just keep chugging along, installing cards and gaining credits, while the runner has to turn their accumulated tempo in at some point to contest you. You should also keep asking yourself "What happens if the runner runs my remote? Do I fire my Anemones and/or Border Controls to keep them out? Can I afford them getting the agenda and still keep the pressure up?".

The only time you want to be triple advancing an agenda to score it is if you think that the runner has to spend very little resources to get it, and you want to secure it. Think about it: Assume you are flooded (i.e. 2 or more agendas are currently sitting in HQ) and your La Costa Grid has just put the first counter on an OffOff. One might be tempted to go adv-adv-adv-score, but this does not accomplish much; you are still left with your agendas in HQ, you are forfeiting a La Costa trigger on your next turn and you just telegraphed a lot of information to your opponent. Clicking for credits is often a better play here, as you keep generating tempo this way while telegraphing less information about your cards, and next turn you can go adv-adv-install to get the next agenda cooking immediately. Every further adv-counter you can tickle out of La Costa gives you much more tempo in the future in the form of more A Teia triggers.

Your more expensive ice goes on centrals, which is where you lose from the most. While any ice can be run through easily once Turbine or Takobi are out, we plan on going so fast that it is still very costly to go through an Attini or an Anansi by the time our remote becomes uncontestable.

I still stand by my prior statements about Anoetic/Daniela/NGO; if you have the option, you'll always want to install an agenda in your remote, but I can be convinced otherwise, as you do sometimes run into off-turns where you can keep setting up. Daniela is probably the biggest contender for being an include, as she reduces the amount of Anemones we need to fire to protect our agendas, but I'd have no idea what to cut for her. Adrian and Vovô are much more streamlined to install, as you can get them out by installing in either remote and scooting them over as needed.

One last consideration to use up the floating influence that went into Magnet might be Divert Power, as it allows us to reset Anemones while rezzing an expensive piece of ice on a central. Including this though might cause trouble with the delicately balanced ratios of ice/upgrades/agendas in this list, and I haven't had the time to solve this for a DP include.

Thanks to all my opponents! It's been fun playing you! @ataraxis @Santa @Chris Kieta @Dr. Awkward @nimzowitsch @Zombie @RotomAppliance @Cpt_Nice @Limes

Thanks to my Berlin crew for making the last few days in Barcelona such a great time! @Angelbot5000 @awildturtok @Jokunn @lazychef @Locker @Mirilu @Watzlav @yehonathan_

Thanks to everyone in NSG, and especially @pspacekitten for putting in all this effort to make the event as awesome as it was!

And thanks to my partner @jsullivan93 for always being by my side! I love you so much <3