Wishbone - 1st and 8th Canadian Nationals 2018

First and foremost, this deck was created initially by @crithitd20, of Heartbeat fame. He brought this deck to our meetup the day Azmari EdTech was released. We saw the promise quickly and tested in a bunch over the next few days and weeks. I took it to a SC a few weeks ago, went undefeated and was fully convinced the deck was powerful enough to compete at a high level.

This is mostly the deck @eric_c and myself piloted into the top 8 at Canadian Nationals. Eric notably went farther than I did and won the whole thing. His changes were -2 Celebrity Gift, -1 Preemptive Action and +1 Death and Taxes, +1 Marilyn Campaign and +1 Archived Memories. I was on basically that list as well until the morning of the event. I switched a few cards based on feedback and testing with josh01. I like this version better but the results definitely favor Eric's build.

The basic game plan is to establish economic disparity with your ID, your events and your currents. You want to open Scarcity as much as possible and vs some matchups (Geist) it is the only thing you want to see in your opening hand. The ideal turn 1 is Scarcity, ice centrals. From there you build a remote with things like News Hounds, Tollbooth, Archangel, Ravens so the cost to check is high. Then you have flexibility to never advance Beales/QPMs or IAA so it looks like NGOs. If they check you can punish with HHN/Sea and Closed/EOI. There are a handful of games on stream thanks to Jason Deng and Metropole Grid(I believe).

The ID itself is very powerful and should definitely be considered in lists other than this. With even decent meta knowledge you should be hitting 8-10 credits if your opponents plays around the ID(which they should) and 16+ if they do not. Very generally, if you don't know what you're playing against, name event every turn. When you install something in the remote, switch to program. In the current meta, it is generally correct to name resource vs Geist every turn and I think the same logic is true vs Pirate Hayley.

There's not much to say about my day at CanNats except I went 3-1 on both sides including one ID and went 0-2 in top 8. The only change I would test is -1 SEA Source for the second Hard Hitting News. There's other things to test such as 3rd QPM or possibly Consulting Visit.

A big thank you to everyone the helped test this deck CritHitD20, Eric_C, Josh01, Jason Deng, Ellen and everyone in the Cleveland meta. Another huge thank you to the hosts at Canadian Nationals, Sungho is the MVP of TOs and he ran the entire event near single-handedly. Dien went above and beyond to plan meals and other entertainment for those travelling in. I quit the game around a year ago and events like this and the friends I see there are the main reason I'm back and still playing.

Finally, a huge congratulations to @eric_c for his well deserved win. Eric has been playing at a high level for years and is no longer a second place boy.