PTMC Coal Mine

I've been playing around with this list for a while, but given I was at UKGE all weekend and I have more important plans for EMEA, it doesn't look like I'll get to play it competitively for a while and similar lists are cropping up anyway.

Incidentally, if you saw us at UKGE then hi! I was the one without a hat wearing a Hermes.

The name of this deck is from Descent, a series of games from the 90s in which you work for the Post Terran Mining Corp, a futuristic metaphor for capitalism, which pays you to perform the titular act of descending into mines to blow up robots. This has nothing to do with the deck except that coal is a thing you can mine, but it's only a thing you can mine on Earth so it's not something a space mining corp would mine. I think Descent is really cool and totally worth getting for the pennies it costs on GoG. Gonna make a Descent alt at some point.

Some notable includes in the deck:

• 2 SMC and 3 Muse. This is correct. SMC is for sinking Trick Shot credits into, and Muse is for recycling your coal engine; a thing you can do with coal. In a pinch, tutoring an SMC with Muse while you have a Trick Shot in hand is also correct.
• Boi-tatá was in the initial versions of the deck, which I took to some events.
  • Pros: it's really funny to run an all-anarch suite in shaper
  • Cons: it stinks
• Imp could become Cupellation and make space for a second Pinhole, but Imp is easier to sell to the boi.
• Spec Work is a good alternative to Diesel, but is only a single because it really sucks to see before installing your first disposable program.
• Turbine - Coal engine go brrrr. No other reason for this card.

You know Descent 2 wasn't as good as Descent 1 in my opinion. Descent 3 is divisive but at least tried something brand new with the genre. Descent 2 just felt to me like a less-refined version of the first game. Don't get me wrong, there's loads of good content there, and the levels do feel genuinely bigger in both layout and scale, but idk maybe I'm clouded by nostalgia for the first one but the level design felt so much tighter in that one.

I'd like to thank myself for making this deck. It hasn't placed in any tournaments and it's not a very complicated idea. Please give me NRDB points.

To be clear, I don't think the developers behind Descent 2 were bad at their job or anything like that. Making games is hard and I get the impression there was a lot of love behind each instalment in the series. My pet theory is that they saw people complain about the (totally fair) drillers that get introduced in level 6 and elected to remove hitscan weapons from the sequel. But those enemies were the best part of Descent. They make you actually stop and consider what you're doing and how you approach each area. Homing missiles had a purpose: it was removal for these guys. The sequels felt much closer to dogfighting games to me. And that's totally fair for people to enjoy that gameplay more than the original. I just wish there were more of the first game I guess.