Papa Smurf - 1st and 6th @ Worlds 2016

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Pubrunner - The Pick - Whizzard
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Nemamiah 4119

This was definitely not the best runner deck present at World's 2016. In my opinion Hate Bear, the Siphon Whizz list put together by the West Coast team, is a good 10% or so better than this deck. In particular, that concoction is significantly stronger against CtM, which dominated both the top tables and the cut. On the plus side, this list should have more game against Ben Ni's Sync list and should prove a bit more robust against the random swiss deck factor.

Alex White and I tweaked this list the night before Worlds. In retrospect we were embarrassingly unaware of what the best decks looked like and we were faffing about with a standard pre-Escalation list using Grimoire. Sam Suied, who was lurking in the same room as our late night greasy pizza testing session, told us to think about putting Obelus and Progenitor in the list. Two test games and a bunch of tenuous theory crafting later, we threw both in and called in a night.

Hopefully you know why Obelus is good, even in a list like this that isn't abusing its full potential.

Progenitor solves three minor problems in one slot. Firstly, switching the console from Grimoire costs you a memory, which is a strained resource in reg decks, and Progenitor gives it back to you. Secondly, it gives you another zero cost target to protect your Net Ready Eyes should you run in to Power Shutdown - Lotus Field - Ark Lockdown nonsense, Most importantly, you drop a Medium on it against yellow decks and you can sustain pressure after purges. Against HB you stick a Datasucker on it and you're far less prone to ugly Ichi or Fairchild blow outs off the back of a CVS., The card was very good all tournament; I lost one game where I realised later that the correct line would have been to Retrieval Run for a Progenitor that had been ditched by Inject.

We briefly talked about finding room for a Faust in the list, but it was getting late and the aforementioned greasy pizza was not sitting well in the stomach. We really should have found space for that somewhere.

Credit to Alex White for working on the list and finishing 6th overall with an identical deck, and a huge debt of gratitude to Sam for pointing out to us that Obelus was a good card.

12 comments
7 Nov 2016 Sixtyten

Congrats dude. Can't wait for the full art progenitor!

8 Nov 2016 meta4

Did employee strike pull its weight? I agree that you should find space for a Faust in here, and an ES would be my first instinct to cut. I'm also a little surprised to not see 3x Inject, are you finding that the third dirty laundry is better?

8 Nov 2016 zeroshift

Could you not have played 3 earthrise hotel so we can have 3 nice full art ones? <3

8 Nov 2016 Smashman

Congrats, Chris. Well deserved.
@zeroshift, you will just have to buy 3 packs of the full arts!

8 Nov 2016 Snake Eyes

Full Art Progenitor and Ice Carver are going to look so sick. Full art Parasites too.

Thx for winning with 3x Temüjin Contracts - I'm shuffling those between decks in meatspace more than pre-Alt Art Jacksons.

Solid Anarch deck, will be buying it when FFG prints it.

8 Nov 2016 Conduit23

3x full art Dirty Laundry and 3x full art Sure Gamble. Bless your heart.

Oh, and congrats on the win! Good to see Whizzard go out with a bang.

8 Nov 2016 Nemamiah

@meta4 - The strike is really strong against CtM, especially in a list with 3 Parasite. I wouldn't really want to try that card without those hate cards. I'd be tempted to drop a Parasite or the Net Ready Eyes before I'd consider ditching Strike.

The Earthrise was Inject number three until the morning of the tournament, when Alex made the change and I went along with it. The argument is that you're already taxing your limited recursion with 3 Peddler and 2 Inject, and Earthrise is the next best draw card.

9 Nov 2016 romakarol

What did you find is the best approach as regards hand size vs yellow that run a kill threat and sweeps week? Have just enough in hand to survive what you think they can do in meat damage?

9 Nov 2016 Nemamiah

@romakarol - I'm a big fan of playing with as small a hand size as possible versus all yellow decks. Against CtM and the like that means you can play on as little as one or two cards. If it's kill and you have a Plascrete down you can't go below three cards, but I like to aim to be on exactly three if I can.

Obviously if you don't have Plascrete you will occasionally want a hand size of 7 or more with Obelus.

The only other thing is that you do want to be drawing cards while you're doing all this (because the deck is very card hungry), so you need to find a way to play the cards you're drawing.

27 Nov 2016 ANRguybrush

I just realized this does not play d4v1d.

6 Dec 2016 Haberdash

Would you swap Net Ready Eyes for something else now that Best Defense is out?

15 Dec 2016 Nemamiah

``@Haberdash`: at the moment, I'd keep Net Ready Eyes in. I don't think that Best Defence is actually a particularly good card, and it doesn't seem to be seeing a massive amount of play. Net Ready Eyes is a really efficient card that helps the deck's late game dominance, so until it becomes a liability I'll leave it in.

On the other hand, dropping Net Ready Eyes and something else for David or Faust is an entirely legitimate choice.