Valencia - What is going on over there? - 14th Durham, NC

Hockmanm08 70

Greetings! I recently piloted this deck to pretty solid success at the Durham, NC Regionals a week or so ago. Had quite a few onlookers who were interested in the deceits so I figured I'd post it up for others to see.

This deck idea came about initially from one of our mad genius deck builders in our meta who loves to experiment with the less loved cards in sets. He originally build the skeleton of this deck out of Reina and then moved it to Whizzard. While playing him online I came up with the idea of perhaps running his basic idea out of Valencia so Blackmails can buy the deck a bit of setup time plus you get more card slots that help out. Turns out it worked out incredibly well.

The premise is usually trying to get the opponent into a DLR lock. You can do this by draining them of funds, or just making it very click intensive and costly to finally remove all your resources. You're able to threaten remotes with Blackmail until you get Faust online. Josh B. wants to be on the table early and ready to provide you some more time when needed. It's pretty awesome to be able to fire Duggars and then run to break into remotes.

Utilizing Josh and Stim Dealer (and even sometimes Amped Up) you are able to DLR for quite a few cards a turn, or even Wanton out entire hands. This can really throw off a corps game plan. Once you see 5-6 cards a turn going into Archives it gets worrisome.

Ideal opening hands include either Origami, Duggars, or Day Jobs. You then dig for breakers and resource pieces to start building the engine. You can get most of the parts set up pretty reliably fast. Turntable is just a one off console to provide the extra MU to get all the Origami out if needed. Siphon and Vamp to gain tags and drain the Corporation of money making it harder to get DLR off the table.

This isn't an easy deck to pilot and it'll take lots of play time to get used to the order and importance to get out certain cards. It has very solid matches versus RP and ETF. It's toughest games are against NEH FA/Butchershop. You want to try to get money drain early to slow them down. Plascrete will help a lot in that matchup. In the Regional I played against 4 NEH decks (all Butchershop) and ended with a 50/50 record against them. The two games I lost I was up to 5-6 Agenda points. They can be close games, but you have to play smart.

When Old Hollywood comes out Paparazzi will be a very solid card to try out. It'll allow you to get the DLR train moving on demand, and protect you against kill decks. Would most likely try to fit two of those guys into the deck. Not sure what to cut yet for it.

Definitely give it a spin, and feel free to ask any questions. One the best parts of the whole weekend were my opponents trying to figure out what the hell was going on with my side of the table. Plus all the people who kept asking "what does that card do?" when some of the lesser known drops would come out.

4 comments
24 Jul 2015 mawa

I notice this deck gets pretty hard countered by AI hate and suffers to Komainu as well. Could you slip in a one of Parasite?

24 Jul 2015 Fruggles

Komainu can be a bitch, certainly, but AI hate doesn't necessarily ruin the day - once the DLR lock is on, it's very hard to break, and at most you'll have to reset it once more in the game before it's over, barring some catastrophic misplay.

26 Jul 2015 dodgepong

I was on the receiving end of this when it was in an earlier Reina incarnation and it was extremely brutal. Solid deck.

26 Jul 2015 Hockmanm08

You can play around AI hate a good bit. Play your D4vids smart and try to not let them Rez. Usually the runs are blackmails or just one off runs to be able to drop DLR. komainu isn't fun (awkward when Faust is your only breaker), but if you suspect it make sure to get Eater out first. Maybe you can also just hold IHW and use it to your advantage to get some extra card draw?