Snekbite - 1st and 6th @ Worlds 2016

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Nemamiah 4119

In hindsight I'm not overly enamored with the runner deck that I played at Worlds, but I'll go to the wall for this Corp deck.

We've been playing and tweaking CtM solidly since July, and in all that time I honestly believe it's been the correct choice for every major tournament. I briefly and foolishly batted my eyelids at HB decks a few time, but in reality this was always the deck I was going to play. There was talk of it being hated out by various tech cards, but in practice having those tech cards just lets you approach an even game against this deck. If you don't have hate cards you probably just lose; the deck is that busted.

Over the months we've tried variations with Lotus Fields, Mumba Temples, Product Placements and Biotic Labour, but in the end we came back to the standard two Bankers Group for this tournament. It often gets trashed, but it gives you five assets that the runner absolutely has to get rid of as soon as they appear lest your board state snowballs beyond reasonable limits. It's also much stronger against silly combo decks like Dyper.

This list plays two Exhange of Information. You usually only play one of them in a game, but having two ensures that you see it early enough to be impactful and makes your standard scoring plan easier to achieve. The cut is All Seeing I, but that's really only necessary against DLR MaxX and what were the chances of that coming up?

13 ice gives you a better chance of cutting off Temujin early or finding enough ice to stop a turn 1 DDOS. Pop-Up is incredibly valuable against heavy Siphon and Medium dig decks, both of which were very common. No Data Raven, because rezzing it sets your economy back relative to the runner and it's basically blank against late game tag-me runs. Don't ever cut Cobra; it's often effectively a double gear check and can cause blow outs because CtM forces the runner to start face-checking before they're comfortable. Team Snek 4 Life.

Other that that, there's nothing really interesting to say about this deck. It's what you get when you shove a bunch of dumb yellow cards with really strong synergy in to a deck.

Credit and thanks go to Tim Fowler and Laurie Poulter, who have been playing and tweaking this list with me for months, and to Alex White, who helped to finalise the build the night before Worlds and took an identical deck to 6th place.

16 comments
7 Nov 2016 tonybluehose

hehe, what are the chances of facing a DLR deck? :)

7 Nov 2016 Sixtyten

How did you find the enigma?

8 Nov 2016 Murphy

I got bit hard by the snek in Round two of Swiss. I didn't make that mistake again.

Double Closed/Exchange was very rude. Well done.

8 Nov 2016 azkiel

Have you played vs Nexus Kate? what's the plan?

8 Nov 2016 shanodin

Team Snek <3

8 Nov 2016 timfast

worth noting that I tried hard to get them to cut the cobra, and I can only say my views have been vindicated given Chris' results

8 Nov 2016 Snake Eyes

Don't step on snek.

teamsnake

8 Nov 2016 Nemamiah

@azkiel - against Nexus Kate mulligan really hard for political assets; it doesn't matter if your hand has agendas if you have a Sensie and a Bankers, for example. You can often score the first agenda naked off the table. Rush really hard behind single ice, preferably with a face-check impact, and go as fast as you can. Ideally feed them a Food at some point so you can EoI it later.

@Sixtyten - Dave Hoyland told me that Enigma was much better than Quandry so I made the change on that basis. It was fine, the important point is that it's a hard ETR code gate.

8 Nov 2016 FightingWalloon

Why is Enigma better?

8 Nov 2016 shanodin

@FightingWalloonI'm only guessing here but I'd say it's because it effectively plays into the corp's game plan of getting tempo over the runner - it's such a punishing face check when you already wish you had 6 clicks per turn.

8 Nov 2016 FightingWalloon

Good point. My experience is based on drawing them later in the game when Yog and other cards treat Enigma like a blank card. The lost click face check probably is worth a couple credits in the early game.

9 Nov 2016 Saan

SSsssssssssssss

9 Nov 2016 Nemamiah

@FightingWalloon - The argument is that it's a harder gear check, because you can't just Parasite it and kill it straight away. The lost click can also be relevant sometimes.

On the flip side, it's obviously got a higher rez cost and isn't as good at Spooned protection is Quandry is.

Basically, I think either is fine but playing one of them is probably correct.

10 Nov 2016 Cerberus

Enigma did loads of work for me against Temujin Whizzard, it allows you to rush out a key agenda while they are setting up. It often was key for crippling Breaking News plays. Quandary wasn't cutting it because it would often get face checked and then hit by Parasite.

I do agree with Chris that it isn't as good in some cases. It wasn't as good against Hate Bear, where Faust was their main breaker and it wouldn't protect my better ice from Spooned.

18 Dec 2016 FightingWalloon

Now that everyone is teching vs. CtM in various ways, including running a ton of link, is this deck still as good as it was? How would you play in the current environment vs. the one at Worlds?

20 Dec 2016 Nemamiah

It's definitely not as good as it once was. It still may well be the best Corp deck, but that's only because that side of the game is really hard right now.

My most recent version of this has dropped the Bankers for a Biotic and an ASI, shuffled some cards around to fit in all three PAD campaigns and tweaked the ice to have more hard end the runs and less traces.

CtM is very flexible and adaptable, which is a large part of why I like playing it, so you can always switch up your play style a bit to counter whatever deck you're facing.