Dark Web Hayley (6th, 13th, 22nd, 24th at Worlds)

Circadia 2795

This is the deck that #teamuk settled on in the run up to worlds. I have the honour of posting it as the originator of the deck, which I built the same day rotation hit. It's gone through several iterations but the core of the deck has always been the same, lots of toolboxy one of events that you can recur with Fan Site + Shadow Net, Tapwrm/Saccon as the economy engine and a ton of flexible breakers to suit the situation. It's a perfect Shaper nonsense deck, my favourite kind of runner!

I shared the list with my testing group (Dave Hoyland, Mark Mottram and Seamus Macleod) and Dave/Mark quickly began testing it to destruction. The verdict was that it was favoured in almost all likely matchups due to its versatility. When Mark played it at a GNK, Tim "blabbermouth" Fowler got wind of it and within 2 days all of the UK was on it.

Seamus held out on Strike Smoke, but when all of UK jumped ship from Smoke to this, Seamus saw the light the night before the tournament. Good thing too as he was our best placed brit in at 6th place.

Last minute changes included the ditching or Artist Colony due to lack of use and the addition of Da Vinci to massively improve the Brain Rewiring CI combo matchup, by using Da Vinci and clone chip to cheat two Saccons into play during the combo turn when they can't be best defensed. We caught at least four Rewirers out with this trick. Some players also switched out Interdiction for Feedback Filter when the news about all the PU in the tournament broke. We also added in Polop for problematic assets and upgrades like MCA Austerity, Sandburg, Ash and so on.

(Side note, when me, Tris and Tagore called Chris Dyer for an emergency conference call with Ben Ni to explain the Da Vinci play, Chris leaned back in his chair and said "fuck me" - the dawning realisation that he was going to have to play Da Vinci was priceless.)

The list is favoured against most flavours of Glacier and Fast Advance. It can get rushed out by the likes of CTM, but with correct play (as demonstrated by Seamus's perfect piloting vs TheBigBoy in the double elim) it can maintain pace. It really does not like spikey PU and turn 1 Scarcity but aside from those it always has a game, a line and an angle from which it can win.

The deck was heavily featured in CodeMarvelous's stream of the event, in which several new memes were born when David Swiftie Etherington played Tom Holliday. Most notably the UK now has Senor Tapps (and his long lost brothers, Mister Tapps and Fu Man Tapps). Apparently we Brits flew a long way just to face each other in match after match.

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11 comments
7 Nov 2017 Zo3 (TR1S)

The real tragedy is that Seamus didn’t win so we could all get full bleed DaVincis.

11/10 would meme again.

7 Nov 2017 Cluster Fox

Just so I'm totally clear on the Da Vinci interaction, after they've double-advanced an agenda, you pop Da Vinci and a Clone Chip to get a Clot and a SacCon (or two SacCons if you already have Clot installed)?

7 Nov 2017 dawspawn

So... where is the Strike Smoke list? :)

7 Nov 2017 wynalazca

@Cluster Fox There are multiple lines. Da Vinci already installed: Pop it and install 2 Sac Cons because Haley, or two Clone Chips installed: pop one to install Clot/Da Vinci/SMC and use Haley to install another of these, then you can use Da Vinci for Sac Con, Clone Chip it back and pop it for another Sac Con.

@Circadia Congrats again on the performance (I'm your round 5 opponent who rezzed the CVS's before playing Best Defense and you Polop'd one away :(... I'm going to be beating myself up for a while on that one) and also @TR1Scongrats on the high placement (we played round 4 and you loaded your MCA up like 12 times and never saw IT Department)

8 Nov 2017 BenjayC

Firstly congratulations to you all!

And secondly given all your experiences at worlds are there any changes you would have made in hindsight?

8 Nov 2017 Seamus

Thanks for saving me from taking Smoke, Sam.

9 Nov 2017 Zo3 (TR1S)

@BenjayC realistically the only changes you can even contemplate with this deck revolve around the following choice:

  • Feedback filter
  • Interdiction
  • Neither

The deck is already cutting into the bone (see the fact that it only includes 2 diesels) and you just don’t have the space for any more tech. Their are strong arguments in favour if each of the options above, but I personally found interdiction useful and am convinced that feedback filter doesn’t meaningfully improve your game against PU net damage decks.

10 Nov 2017 laminatedsmore

I played mad dash instead of interdiction, then dropped a daily casts to hit 45. It was fine imo, hard to say what's right here.

26 Nov 2017 Haberdash

Why Test Run over Scavenge after Scavenge was errata'd to not have an additional cost that Shadow Net would ignore?

1 Dec 2017 Sixtyten

@dawnspawn I can share my strike smoke list which was based around the previous #uk build. I didn't have time to change for hayley as on honeymoon in the weeks before worlds!

2 Dec 2017 dawspawn

@Sixtyten Sure, would love to see what you guys came up with. Smoke just seems like a step or two behind the meta currently.