Chronos Protocol Singapore 2014

Winning Decklists

Tournament Report

Thanks to Nyx for the following tournament report! 

Chronos Protocol (41 player start, 6 rounds)

Round 1: Nic Woo playing HB: ETF and Kate (win)

Nic was a player who came down from Malaysia. I’d seen him play in the previous Singapore Store Championship and knew him to be a decent player so it was kinda balls that I had to play him in the first round. When I played Corp he ran pretty aggressively against all the cheap taxing ICE that combined with his inability to draw econ kind of killed him in the end. Pop-Up Window guarding a Caprice Nisei + SanSan City Grid was pretty killer, especially since I managed the 0-credit bluff on Caprice 3 times. Made a mistake this game when I installed an NAPD Contract into that server for my last 2 points when he was low on credits. He had 3c left and no more clicks after running through the Pop-Up but had Desperado up. I chose 0 here (he did too), forgetting about the extra 1c from Desperado. Still won but that was dumb of me.

Don’t remember much about when I played Kate against his HB:EtF but I think he mentioned that his annoy-Atman ICE was at the bottom of his deck. Stuff like NEXT Bronze, etc. HB has this problem with Kate where if you don’t play Swordsman or Wraparound (sometimes even if you do but don’t draw them), a single Atman at 0 supported by 2 Datasuckers and possibly another Atman at 4 could make every server porous.

Round 2: Alvin Yeoh playing HB: CI and Whizzard (win)

Alvin was playing a Cerebral Imaging that ran the common Shipment from SanSan / Efficiency Committee / Biotic Labor package to score stuff from hand. I hit both R&D and HQ pretty hard early on but got pretty unlucky overall with my accesses. The funtime on R&D was over when he hardrezzed a Wotan but I got through that with a Femme later on. I saw at least 15 cards from R&D this game and hit HQ about 8 times but just couldn’t come up with enough to win. He got to 4 points and had the ~20 card hand size with a bunch of credits. I asked if he had 3 FA options (some combination of at least 1 Biotic and 2 more Biotic/Shipment from SanSans since he had Efficiency Committee with 3 counters) and a 5/3. He did and revealed Biotic/2 Shipments…and a Government Contracts. Kinda sucks that he had to lose due to illegal deck but I guess I was pretty unlucky this round anyway so I’m just glad I could still take the win.
My NBN had a bunch of assets that would be really crappy against Whizzard so I kept that in mind when mulliganing. He was playing some sort of econ-resource-heavy Whizzard that splashed for Special Order. I don’t quite remember how I won this game, but I think it was off the back of Caprice Nisei super-server. Eli 1.0s are a bitch to get through without Datasuckers (; Alvin’s just returning to the game from a long hiatus so there were a few questionable Imp-trashing choices from him.

Round 3: Dingyuan playing NBN: MN and Andromeda (draw)

I played Kate against NBN:MN and got Astro-Astro-Astro-Breaking News-ed.
He was playing Andy and got a typical great start with Desperado, Dirty Laundry open R&D, Daily Casts and a Faerie. The Faerie ended up breaking a Rototurret IIRC and that slowed him down a little. Snuck in a few agendas here and there and I think I sniped a Kati Jones with Breaking News masquerading as a SanSan City Grid. Later on that remote got a Caprice Nisei upgrade and that was that. Caprice Nisei didn’t really do much work this game but it was great security.

Round 4: Abbey playing HB: ETF and Kate (ID)

We intentionally drew the game but still played for fun anyway. We were both playing fast and loose and stomped each other on our respective runner decks. Turns out we would have drawn anyway.

Round 5: Mark Chang playing Jinteki:RP and Reina (draw)

Mark was playing the Joshua B/Account Siphon/Vamp/DLR/Fall Guy deck in Reina so that was scary. I made a conscious effort not to overdraw so much and to score early. Had to score 2 Beales and 2 Breaking News since I never saw an Astro. I lost a third Beale due to a mistake I made. He had just 3 credits and was running my remote when I had only 3 credits too. Remote was an unrezzed Draco on the front and a rezzed Viper behind it protecting a Project Beale. I had enough to rez the Draco and still have enough to advance+shipment the Beale but didn’t do it as I mistakenly assumed he didn’t have enough to break through the Viper. 2 Fall Guys later, he took the Beale and I was a sad panda. In my defense, I had only just gotten Double Time and Chronos Protocol was my first time actually playing with Double Time cards ): He had scored one Astro after my first Beale and I later saw the other two when he was milling 4-5 cards per turn. I never got Siphoned this game but the lack of an Astro counter really killed me this game and I lost at 6 points. In the last 3 turns of the game Mark made a few mistakes that might have given me a chance out of the deadlock he had me in (Only ~12 cards left in deck). Overall I’d say the archetype is pretty strong and definitely fun, though I don’t know if it’s consistent enough.

Jinteki:RP was a pretty weird game since I scored 4 points off lightly-protected/unprotected remotes. Later on he had his PAD Campaigns / Sundews up which I ended up ignoring in favour of hammering away at centrals. Got the last few points soon enough, though I took a few risks with hand-sizes. At one point I hit a Snare! and was considering not removing the tag. He revealed a Scorched Earth after I did (whew!).
Round 6: Wailiong playing NBN:MN and Kate (ID)

ID’d this game and didn’t play. Had a good chance of making it to top 8 at 16 points since I was at Table 1 anyway.

Top 8 qf (6th seed playing vs 3rd seed): Wailiong playing NBN: MN and Kate

Turns out I would be playing him anyway! He won the die roll and opted to go Corp first. He left HQ undefended turn 1 and I just went for it. I can’t remember if I got 2 or 4 points here. Game was pretty brief and ended at 10-2, meaning I just had to score 3 points to win as Corp.

He had to trash any SanSans he saw even if they were unrezzed so the matchup was incredibly tilted in my favor. He basically had to check almost every card I installed in remote too so it was really sad (this is why the old elim format is pretty silly). I ended up sneaking in a Beale followed by a Breaking News.

Top 4 Semis: Yisheng playing HB: ETF and Kate

Yisheng won the die roll and opted to run first as Kate. I scored a Breaking News pretty early on to snipe his Kati with 2 counters (value!) but ended up leaking 6 points to him through 3 R&D Interfaces. He had good economy so running through 4 ICE deep R&D was no problem as he needed just 1 point anyway. At some point I managed to get a Caprice onto R&D which slowed the game right down. It ended up not mattering anyway as he took the last point from the NAPD Contract which he knew I had in hand (he saw it earlier from R&D but couldn’t score it yet). Lost 3-10

Playing as runner was tough since he only had to score 4 points to win. Had a crap hand so I dumped it and looked for another 5. Was musing out loud that I’d like a Desperado+Datasucker and actually got it. He didn’t ICE up HQ so I ran it twice and got 3 points, 2c and 2 Datasucker tokens for my effort + information that he had a Rototurret in hand. For some reason HQ remained unICEd and I just kept hitting it for the bulk of my next two turns. At one point he installed a card and made it a 2-ICE remote. I knew one to be Grim and the other to be Roto from all that HQ-running (and he should have known that I’d know) so I picked up 2 points pretty conveniently here. Got the win next turn after 2 runs on R&D, the first trashing a Jackson Howard and the second picking up the last 2 points I needed. I’d say Yisheng made a lot of mistakes this game, probably due to a long day.

Finals: Split with Abbey
It was late (11:43pm) and we decided to split the finals so that’s it!

Overall thoughts on the tournament: Kates, Kates, Kates, everywhere. There were few Weyland players and none at all in the top 8. I personally didn’t face a single Weyland all day, which made me kind of glad I only had 2 Plascretes. Caprice Nisei was huge for me, really liked it. Was never sad to see it in hand. Tollbooth makes me kind of sad since it’s such a great target for Emergency Shutdown and Femme. Would probably be the first card I’d cut. I never got to Closed Accounts anyone all day but I think I’d still keep it as a 1-of to combo with Breaking News once in a while. Melange Mining Corp I have mixed feelings about. I got to activate it many times throughout the course of the day but it just somehow felt like the loss of clicks was hurting me quite a bit. Will test it out more. Overall, I’m happy with how both decks played and am glad I got all the goodies plus Honor&Profit+the next datapack thrown in by Gamersaurus Rex, my awesome FLGS!

– Nyx