Venue: Fantasy Flight Games Center on 5/21/2016. 42 players.

Decks: Ken Tenma: Express Elevator to Hell: Party Edition, New Angeles Sol: This Deck Still has Shop in the Title.

Swiss standings: 8th place. 13 points. 6-3-1. Tenma 3-2, Sol 4-1

Round 1: Noise, lose 3-7. ETF, win 4-2 (time).

Round 2: Foundry, win 7-4 (next ice gets to be a problem). Nasir, win 7-0.

Round 3: Noise, win 7-4. Sync, win 7-5.

Round 4: Noise, win 7-5. Sol, lose 6-7 (to a fantastic topdecked Psychographics after time was called, epic game).

Round 5: Whizzard win 7-0. NEH lose 4-2 (Traffic/Scorch/Scorch through Plascrete).

Top Cut:

Win 7-0 vs ETF. Siphon lock.

Win 7-0 vs Palana. Siphon lock.

Win 7-6 vs Leela. Taxed out faeries with double sentries on all centrals.

Win 7-6 vs ETF. Fired ABT hit 3 agendas early without Jax. He came close to winning thanks to upgrade spam stopping Siphon lock, and 3-2s but I dug RnD for the 4th agenda.

The gestation of the deck: I played Ken Tenma in a few of the earlier store champs, including one top cut, but later switched to Haley. I wasn’t happy with her performance so I’ve been trying a variety of new decks out (almost played Apex at FFG for fun). One of the decks I tried out while looking for ideas was Timmy Wong’s Siphon spam Whizz. After seeing how oppressive Employee Strike was against certain IDs paired with Siphon spam, I thought back to Kenny T. What would a Ken list look like with Dejas and Strikes?

The initial version I threw together for some testing on Jinteki played Public Terminals and High-Stakes Job like I had earlier in the season, but I found myself ditching the Terminals more often with less run events, which in turn reduced my desire to High-Stakes. I reevaluated the deck, and made a new list. If I found myself needing more cards to feed Faust, well, why not feed him something that turns into a benefit later in the game? Enter Party.

In the early game focus on Siphon locking. Letting them score an early agenda can help enable siphon locks, so don’t worry too much about aggressive pushes on their part, but feel free to force the rez, just know if you let a Turing on a scoring server get rezzed you have no answer beyond 3 clicks. Poke RnD when they can’t rez ice and you don’t need to worry about setting up the next Siphon. Root upgrades out of HQ between Siphon plays. You play 8 Siphons (3x Siphon, 3x SOT, 2x Déjà vu, plus a Planned Assault), and have Levy to reset. That is 80 credits max you can drain. You won’t, but you could. Multi-access is scale back in favor of credit denial. As the game develops transition over to a mixed rig with 1-2 normal breakers. Ideal rig should be a Mongoose/Faust/Sucker/central breaker. Emergency Shutdown probably worth a slot or 2, and would help vs Turings. I didn’t think of it when I built this final version (the night before).

Card choices:

Exclusive Party: It performed even better than I had anticipated. 0 -> 4 or 5 credit swing is great for tempo and re-enabling Siphon lock in the late game. Early Faust food is good, especially when it takes entirely zero consideration about what to toss.

Faust: This is how you get early Siphons to hit. You need an AI to ensure a proper reaction to whatever kind of ice they drop on HQ.

Special Order: 3 more copies of Faust.

E3: Necessary for transition to mid game. As ice slowly builds on HQ to try and stop the Siphon lock, you’ll need to pitch fewer cards. E3 also tears the HB matchup apart and negates ice that is otherwise problematic for Faust.

Breach and Passport: Breach is mostly to shrink Wraparounds, but sometimes it is also useful when your credit pool balloons or against things like Next Silver. Passport answers central server Turings magnificently. Passport is one of many MVPs. Watch your opponent commit Turings to centrals to hope they can stop the Faust backed Siphons, only to end up taxing you 1 credit for an install and 1 per run.

Mongoose: Backs Faust nicely. Negates things like Komainu that would otherwise be problematic, and Swordsman. Added a second after I cut the 2nd Faust from the old list.

Quality Time: One of the big changes I made was moving entirely away from the small handful of resources I used to play, for maximum tag floatage. QT is one influence and great dig, or burst for Faust.

Same Old Things: Siphons 4-6. Or Levy or late game multi-access dig.

Déjà vu: Siphons 7 and 8. Or program recursion. I didn’t need to pull any programs, but the option exists.

Employee Strike: MVP. Guts Palana, Blue Sun, and ETF. Solid vs NEH. Enables Siphons versus Sol, and makes Siphons versus Sync easier. Obviously useful vs IG.

Drive By: Kills campaigns before a Siphon. Would not mind a 2nd.

Inside Job: Outer Turing on a scoring server. 1 is fine.

Planned Assault: Was originally two, but I felt better with just the 1. Helps get the initial Siphon if needed, otherwise pulls your singleton Maker’s/Legwork.

Logos: A poor excuse for a console, but it doesn’t cost influence. +1 hand size is relevant. Search is relevant. MU really isn’t. I dump them to Faust a lot. I do like Logos in the NBN Scorch matchup, though. Pulls your Plascrete and gives you a 6 card hand to weather Traffic-Scorch-Scorch, but holding 6 cards and still being able to do anything is hard. Debating trimming one or maybe even both. Who needs a console?

Data Sucker: MVP. Every Data Sucker counter is a card saved on odd numbered ice. One is fine, as you’ll see it eventually on the first trip through the deck and it isn’t 100% vital. Also helps a lot with the awkward pump ratios of your other breakers.