Professional Expense 1st @Startup GNK Montreal 2025-02-04

The deck went 2-0 at the event (out of 15 participants), allowing me to take first place.

Round 1. Win vs Simon on NBN: Reality Plus. Alarm Clock allowed to push on HQ and get all the agenda, since Simon got flooded fairly early.

Round 2. Win vs Jon on Weyland Consortium: Built to Last. Even with all those powerful Weyland ices, getting them derezzed time and time again slowed down the corp, allowing me to control the remote and keep checking HQ and RD. The star of the game was Professional Contacts, which kept me up with credits to play all my events.

Make the corp pay. Everything is expensive for the corp.

Game plan : Derez everything, return ice to hand, and touch cards for the win.

Mulligan plan : Professional Contacts or Hermes.

Here is the changes from the previous iteration :

• -3 Diesel
• +1 Docklands Pass
• +2 Botulus

Botulus allowed to not be locked out by ices like Ice Wall, which can be rezzed back again and again without much economic problem to the corp. It also solved having access to archive.

You do not break ices here. In Startup, there are no ice that make you lose the game. You have every tool to derez ice or make them even more expensive to rez.

In earlier iteration, I tried Fermenter and Telework Contract. But since everything is relatively cheap (we do not break ices), Professional Contacts is much easier. As you draw, you get the credits needed to play your cards.

After multiple iteration, Paricia showed load of value, being a 0 cost that help me trash assets, thus letting me deal with assets spam without breaking the bank.

Tags are the main weakness of the deck. They do not kill you, but losing Professional Contacts stings.

This is fairly easy to play, but still present the board as a puzzle to solve. Mainly, you have to be willing to facecheck ices. An earlier iteration had Forged Activation Orders, but those had to be cut in favor of Prepaid VoicePAD.

And with Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter, you get to bypass and derez again and again. Games can go a bit longer, finishing around turn 18, unless you get lucky in your accesses.

This is a different way to tackle the startup meta, where everyone has tech against Arruaceiras Crew. This bypass and derez deck deals with boosted Logjam, difficult Archer and indestructible Lotus Field in a different way.

Big thanks to Odonuvo for organizing the events. It was a blast to play. Shoutout to all the new players that came to the events, it means a lot to have new people in the game. Cheers!