Tattletale (1st Place Nashville SC)

This is the Runner deck I took to an 11-person SC at The Game Cave in Nashville, TN. Overall, it went 5-1 on the day (3-1 in Swiss and 2-0 in the cut) and helped get me the championship win. The deck is an updated version of Goodbye to You by @afishisborn and Rude Girl by @nobo. I opted against the Artist Colony/Fan Site combo and also the Hyperdrivers with Leprechaun. I added an extra TTW and two Beth since I want to see those as early as possible as well as two Test Runs and a thrid CC to speed up the setup and protect from unwanted program trashing. Peace in Our Time is great in the opening hand to help pay for setup and works nicely with Beth. It gives the Corp an extra boost early game which can be problematic, but being shaper with SMC and CC can make the Corp leery of trying to rush agendas behind little ice, especially if they don’t know what kind of CT deck it is yet.

Round 1 (Loss): Played against Redd's Datapool/PSF CTM. It turns out that Redd was playing a jankier version of CTM with mostly unused 3-point agendas, but I didn’t know what normal CTM tricks he was still using (FYI he was still playing Consulting Visit and BOOM!). I had a bit of a slow start getting setup and he was able to get a Restructured Datapool scored. We evened out a bit with me snagging 5 points and him scoring a PSF to also get to 5 points. In hindsight, I should have just gained my creds and TTW counters off of R&D and attacked his hand or waited for him to advance something, but I was afraid he had Astro or Beale and would sneak out a no-advance when I wasn’t expecting it. Because of this concern, he was able to run me through his remote when I wasn’t ready and dipped me low on credits. I did use several TTW counters to look at maybe 7 cards in R&D but whiffed. I knew he was in a position to use his scored RD to tag me, so I went ahead and got double tagged running R&D. He proceeded to consult with people to blow me up.

Round 2 (Win): Played against Josh M's Punitive Argus. Our first game of the round took a really long time, so we were both rushed trying to fit this game in. He scored a Hostile while I was getting setup, but I got setup quickly enough and started amassing credits and counters. He Fast Tracked his Government Takeover and threw it in the remote. I had Snitched his 3 ice on the remote, so I knew what I needed to tutor to get through. Time was called on his turn, so I only had one turn left. I first ran R&D and spent my TTW counters to see 6 cards. I snagged a Vanity Project and Hostile, so I just had to install/tutor a couple of breakers to get the GT for the win. After losing my first runner round and losing my Corp game this round, I was very relieved to get the full win rather than a timed win or losing 1-0 in agenda points.

Round 3 (Win): Played against Connor's NEXT Design. After splitting the first two rounds, I knew I needed to get some double wins to have a shot at the Top 4. He struggled to get ice and left R&D open, which I was able to take advantage of and snipe what I needed off the top before he could get his defenses up.

Round 4 (Win): Played Craig's Lakshmi EtF. Craig is a regular at the Nashville tournaments and a great player, so I was a little nervous knowing I needed two wins to ensure Top 4. I had an amazing starting hand with PiOT, Diesel, and an Au Revior. I got all the pieces setup quickly, and there was not much he could do after that. I trashed most of his assets he would need to rez for Lakshmi, and I was able to use TTW counters to grab the agendas out of HQ and R&D.

After 4 rounds of Swiss, I managed to get into second place after a fairly rocky start. The leader after Swiss had to drop out, so I ended up as the 1st seed in the cut. I ran my first two rounds and played Corp during the finals.

Top 4 Round 1 (Win): Played against Craig's Lakshmi EtF again. As the higher seed, I got to choose which side to play and was confident in my runner match-up against his Corp deck. I had another good start with PiOT and Diesel. He was able to get his deck going quicker than last game and installed a naked card and advanced it once. I knew that probably meant he had what he needed to block me with Lakshmi, so I started digging for Film Critic. Luckily, I got her on my second draw so I could install and run last click to snipe the agenda. That agenda swipe quickly snowballed into the win for me. I built up TTW counters and grabbed the rest of the needed agendas by accessing his entire HQ twice.

Top 4 Winner’s Bracket (Win): Played against Tim’s FA Builder of Nations. I wasn’t sure what kind of BoN deck he was playing, so I turtled a bit and installed Plascrete. I struggled to get my full engine setup, and he was able to score 4 points while I grabbed an Oaktown. I finally got my 3 Au Revoir and Snitch, but I made a big mistake and used Test Run on the Snitch instead of one of the Au Revoirs. He IAAed a card in his remote, and I figured it was the game winning GFI. Beth drew me the Snitch that had went back on top of the stack, but I had to run the remote. I got in and stole the double-advanced Atlas (which would have essentially won him the game even if it wasn’t a GFI), but I took a tag I couldn’t clear and lost my Snitch to net damage from Mausolus in the process. He quickly trashed my Beth and TTW. I had already discarded the second copy of each, so my window of opportunity to win was extremely limited. I eventually used Test Run to get my Snitch back so I could at least start making money again and seeing what ice he installed. He used ToL to score a 2-pointer from HQ, so he was up 6-4. He couldn’t get the pieces to FA the last agenda before time was called on his turn. I only had enough credits for one hail mary run on R&D. Luck was on my side though, and I top-decked a two-pointer. The game was tied with time up, and I got the win as the higher seed. With the mistakes I made, I think I would have lost this match 9 times out of 10, but Tim was a great sport even when I top-decked the tying agenda that gave me the lucky win.

Since I ran my first two rounds in the cut, I played Corp in the Top 2 and won the event.

Overall, I am super proud of how this deck performed on the day. I had strongly considered taking a different runner deck to the store tournament, but I have been in love with Chaos Theory as an ID ever since she was released. Something about the 40-card deck size and extra memory in the Shaper faction gives me a lot of fun ideas for decks (with varying degrees of success). I am glad to net her another tournament win before she makes her last run in the competitive scene. This archetype is very strong and has some room for flexibility to tech against specific Corp match-ups. Having 40+ credits and 10+ TTW counters feels pretty good too.

Shout out to The Game Cave for a chill space to play and to Redd for putting together another great tournament and the effort he consistently puts in to keep out little meta going. I appreciate that we have a very diverse meta where you never know what kinds of decks you are going to face.