Diversion of Frogs

Ahead of Geelong’s first ever district championship I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play. Like everyone I have had my share of fun with Crew Hosh but wasn’t confident I could pilot it well enough into an unknown corp field. And who has time to practice?!

And then I read the magic words from SebastianK:

“This deck is for hipsters.”

Sign me up! I swapped -1 Euler and +1 Unity as suggested, and then cut a Pichacão (a card I can never seem to exploit) for a Paricia (to shore up the matchup against the horizontal corps I was expecting).

Reader, I won.

R2 — Issuaq. I naively dirty laundry into archives and hit a Bacterial. Promptly flash back to every game I’ve lost against Punutive Counterstrike ever, but fortunately Jess doesn’t draw the punsihment. She extends herself to score a second Bacterial and then I scrape a timed win 6-3.

R3 — Ob. Avi is pulling all the right moves and sticks an EmDom about turn 3 but I manage to find an early Paricia to kill Svyagators and other troublesome assets on sight. DooF makes life hard and conduit chews through a fecund R&D to close.

R5– ID against Dylan on Azmari kill. At this stage I’m 4-0 and can comfortably ID into pole position. Our practice game demonstrates the hazard of playing passively through a bad draw. Dylan kills me after maybe 8 turns but I take some lessons here.

Cut final — Azmari. I now know I cannot afford to give my opponent (the excellent player and tremendous person Kror) much breathing room. I Facecheck A Lot to keep that credit total low. (I still don’t know the magic number for a Reeducation/Neurospike kill—is it 11? 15?) A few turns in I stall out with a hand full of environmental testings that I’m never going to get value from and am considering just discarding a chunk of my hand and trying to do better next turn. Then I remember that “bad cards right now” are basically core damage, and overdrawing is good actually, and play a click 3 diesel and finally draw into some stuff I can use: I overclock-SMC the remote and find a line through Rototurret and Mesnichestvo to snag the threatened Reeducation and keep a non-embarrassing credit total to survive the Punitive Counterstrikes that are likely on their way. The game steadies a little and we go back and forth a bit while I try to draw a Cleaver that I feared might be on the floor at the game shop where we played the Swiss Rounds. Eventually my fracter shows up, I can DooF a bunch, and the maths [sic] start to look a bit better for me. (Truly have I taken to heart the advice to watch my opponents credit total very closely.) There is a turn where I steal a Degree Mill and have to decide whether to draw up and make Kror find a triple punitive line to kill me, or drop conduit and hope that the win is in the top 2 or 3 cards of R&D. I choose the former knowing I can grab conduit for 4 clicks next turn, and luckily Kror doesn’t find the line and I can Conduit dig for the big W.

I make cuts occasionally, but this is my first real tournament victory. I am grateful that the heart of the cards was with me today, that my opponents were all excellent sports, and that Ben did such a great job hosting his first big tournament!

See you in Naarm