Gregor Mendel Theme Deck - (Worlds 2017 Best Tennin)

Sanjay 3561

I took this deck to Worlds and went 3-3 with it. I also went 3-3 with my Sunny deck, which meant I finished 6-6 and in 132nd place.

~~~

How can I self-aggrandizingly spin this? A few ways:

1) As far as I know, I was the top placing Tennin player. This was considerably harder to achieve than last year because other people besides me played Tennin. As far as I know none of them did better than 6-6, which meant I have successfully defended my Tennin crown and am very happy with myself.

2) I didn't defend my Mutate crown, but if nobody went for it, I am still the mutate champion. Check the by-laws. I will continue to assume I am the best Mutate player in the world unless anyone tells me otherwise.

3) I finished in 132nd place instead of 211th place, which is a modest improvement from last year!

If you had a better Tennin deck or a better Mutate deck do better at Worlds this year, I definitely want to hear about it and I will graciously yield my titles to you. But until then, I will assume that I am the best.

I know Stonar's Tennin deck at least was better and cooler than mine, but they just happened not to place as well.

~~~

Thoughts on the deck:

I don't think this deck was especially well tuned. I'm mainly sharing it so I can bombastically claim to be the Worlds Top Tennin two years running. But there were a few interesting ideas in it that I thought would be nice to highlight:

1) Mass Commercialization is a heck of a card for Tennin, though it is a bit finicky. Usually, your Tennin ability gives you a lot of economic payoff. You need modest number of advanceable ice as a backup plan though, especially if you deck is like this one where you are leaning pretty hard on Mass Comm for your econ. But the econ in this deck was decent, despite the limited number of econ cards.

2) Allele Repression did work. It's the Mass Commercialization that really makes Allele Repression hum. Baiting the runner through an expensive remote only to chuck some Breached Domes into Archives in exchange for our busted econ card back. You can even return Allele Repression itself if you want to do it all over again.

3) My plan for dealing with agenda flood was Heritage Committee combo'd with shuffle effects. This worked just fine and I don't really recall being overwhelmed by agendas. Which is good because it means my plan worked, but bad because it means I didn't have an easy excuse for my 3 losses.

~~~

Thanks and acknowledgements:

There are so many people I want to thank and mention, but principally I want to thank Gregor Mendel. Thank you for allowing me to name this deck after you despite only having four cards in the deck that really pay homage to your legacy (2 Hortums, 1 Allele Repression, 1 Crick). I really appreciate it.

I'm sorry Shock! rotated because I think that flower in the art would have fit in a lot better than Breached Dome.

My only wish is that your contributions to Netrunner do not go as long undiscovered as your contributions to genetics.

3 comments
8 Nov 2017 Nembras

Congrats on your improvement over last year! May next year see you rise at the same pace.

Your deck is so different from anything I would put together, I have so many questions. Here we go!

What are your usual targets for ark lockdown, best defense and consulting visit?

Is the additional econ a compelling enough reason to choose sales team over philotic‘s fast advance potential?

I can see the tempo value of heritage commitee, but would you consider cutting one for a fast track to help find that first nisei? (Especially if you had a miraju to help deal with agenda flood)

About your ice suite:

How much work did hortum do? I usually find that I prefer it to be a firewall, whose tax increases with every counter . Was the AI hate so valuable?

How much trouble did you have rezzing chiyashi or susanoo? Wouldn’t DNA tracker fulfill a similar role for a bit less money (and also be a more taxing replacement for hortum)?

Is crick really a threat for the runner in this deck? Aren‘t the preemptives and allele repression enough recursion already?

Also, I am really intrigued about your experience with quicksand...

8 Nov 2017 StarlightCrusade

How's Gregor Mendel fit into all of this? Hortum and Allele Repression make sense, but I'm guessing you had more in mind.

9 Nov 2017 Sanjay

@NembrasThose are good questions!

For Ark Lockdown and Best Defense aren't a key part of the deck, they are just there to be generally hateful. Ark key run events, breakers, Levy. Best Defense was for Sac Cons so Batty trashes could land more efficiently, and for Obelus against Tag Me Anarch. I didn't really draw either very much so they didn't end up being that useful.

Consulting Visit is to get either of those two hateful cards if you see a particularly good use for them, or to get a Mass Commercialization once that card is big enough. Sometimes it is good just as an extra copy of Preemptive Action. You can also combo it with Heritage Committee to hide an agenda from your hand, which didn't come up on the day but was helpful in testing.

Philotic would have been better.

Heritage Committee was decent. Fast Track could have been cool too. I definitely missed finding an early Nisei in a few games. You usually aren't (or shouldn't be at least) rushing out an early Nisei, so theoretically you should be able to find one soon enough.

Hortum was okay. It was fine. I had IP Blocks in the deck and I cut them so I was especially happy to have Hortum as backup AI hate. Fire Wall is a really good ice and I missed it in this deck. I think going forward I should be more focused on getting Fire Walls into my Tennin deck because it is really good for Tennin plans. Maybe even cutting Ice Walls to do it?

Susanoo and Chiyashi weren't bad. I'm only using them on the remote in order to build an intimidating scoring remote with only one or two ice. DNA Tracker might have been a bit more flexible. I like the idea of adjusting the econ so DNA Trackers can replace Hortums, because plopping a DNA Tracker on a central sounds tedious for any runner.

Crick as a 1-of is great. Getting back Batty or Allele Repression is wonderful. I know I'm saying a lot of my ice choices are ill-considered here, but I stand by Crick.

Quicksand was a bit disappointing. In testing, it did a really good job of discouraging the runner from running centrals. In practice, it never really did too much. Kakugo would have been better. Wall of Static and Bastion might have been better. Maybe Vanilla would have been better. I like that it costs 3 to rez instead of 4, but that's really all it has over Kakugo.

@StarlightCrusade Hortum, Allele Repression, and Crick are my Gregor Mendel theme cards. If I could have spared some influence for The Root, that would have been good.

One time the runner placed Peas in Our Time on me, so of course that was really good.