Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now - Warren Regionals 1st Place

(⁎⚈᷀᷁ᴗ⚈᷀᷁⁎) Net-Ready Eyebrows on Fleek

It's just the "L4J (Looking for Job)" deck with Progenitor, lol. I went with the top-tier move of going with 46-cards and dropped in a single Progenitor for the obvious reasons -- extra MU needed for longer games, keeping Datasucker or Medium tokens in case of virus wipes, and Power Shutdown protection. I mostly pitched it throughout the day, but the program came in handy in one or two games. Don't be a bum like me: cut to 45 cards.

╰( ´・ω・)つ──☆ﾟ.･｡ﾟ we dem // w h i z z a r d // b o y z

Anyway, thanks to Steven Wooley for building the foundation for this deck, and to Spags for demonstrating it can wreck with a modified version at the Madison regionals. I'd never played Whizzard at a tournament before, and I only tried him in a handful of casual games previously. But I wasn't happy with the Stealth Andy deck I was practicing with for the Detroit/Warren regional, and I had just shelved the Headlock Reina I spent three months trying to get to work.

So, I decided just a few days before my first premiere tournament of the year, I'm gonna play a runner deck I couldn't practice with beyond a couple games. Oh yeah, did I mention I opted to bring another Steven Wooley-built anarch (AoA Noise) to my first regionals last year at the last minute, and got absolutely wrecked? Fortunately, I had a bit more success this time around. Went into the Detroit/Warren Regionals (63 players) cut as top seed, and came out with the win!

The deck did surprisingly well, besting an Aaron Andries-style Blue Sun, an ETF, RPs, and Butcher Shops, always by tearing down ICE with Parasites or making them inconsequential, then going wild AF with Medium(s). It dropped only two games out of nine for the day, both to @rnishimura's expertly-played Butcher Shop (once in Swiss and again after the top cut, but I eked out a win against the deck when it counted in the finals). Uh, I had never played against a real Butcher Shop before this tournament.

Ⓗⓐⓟⓟⓨ❤ヾ(◍’౪`◍)ﾉﾞ

Big ups to Eternal Games in Warren, MI for hosting an outstanding event and sweetening the pot with an $850 prize pool for the top 16. The organizers and judges were on point, the space was awesome, and the players were super talented (and friendly -- the cash prizes didn't turn anyone into a jerk, as far as I could tell). I hope there are no hard feelings over Cincinnati taking the regional trophy from Michigan; I was raised in the D, so it was less of a raid and more a return of the prodigal son.

Much thanks also to my wife Alexis for her support (and cheering me up after I was sent to the loser's bracket), Peter and Ellen for being awesome, the entire SWORN / EABG unit for helping me get to this level, the folks from the secret Netrunner Slack chat, Tiny Cartridge fans, everyone who stayed until 2AM to watch the finals, that coffee I sipped throughout the entire day to keep my focus, Dang coconut chips, Hemingway the cat, and the Embassy Suites chef who made me that bomb-ass omelette the next morning.