Okay, this is my second place deck for the Conspiracy even at GenCon 2010. We had 4 people show up for this format and as suspected, the use of conspiracy cards vs normal story cards changed the game little if at all. I had decided that I was done ever playing Birds/Steps again, so I busted out my favorite deck to play: Agency/Syndicate Utility. This deck is a blast to play, but a bit too slow for a competitive fight. It has no distinct focus, preferring instead to have answers for a multitude of situations. I've played about 15 different variations of the deck and this is by far my favorite.
3x ASL F1 Government Exorcist
2x AHS F21 •Marshall Greene, Too Old For This…
1x ADN F41 •Nathaniel Elton, Questing for Cathuria
3x CS F11 Peeler
2x AAD F41 Repo Man
3x CS F7 Undercover Security
3x CS F16 Shotgun Blast
3x CS F19 Small Price to Pay
2x CS F18 Torch the Joint!
3x SOA F5 Beneath the Burning Sun
3x ASL F2 Interrogation Center
2x SOA F17 Anarchist
2x AAD F45 Brazen Hoodlum
2x ASD F85 Clover Club Executive
3x CS F66 Clover Club Torch Singer
2x CS F71 Extortionist
2x AAH F7 •Richard Finchington III, Exotic Collector
3x CS F79 Low Blow
3x CS F73 Dutch Courage
3x AMD F22 Prize Pistol
My first matchup was at the hands of a Things in the Ground/Blackmoor Estate grinder. This matchup was fun as my deck is a bit slower than Birds/Steps and plenty utilitarian against other things. The first game, I kept hitting strong on Things in the Ground while my opponent was getting nothing. He had tons of ancient ones in the deck, so I'm not sure what went wrong. Anything that did come down that looked like trouble I was able to shotgun blast before he could Arkham Asylum them from slumber. Repo Man made the day here as I went at a story that had 2 Combat icons and was able to steal his Arkham Asylum and Blackmoor Estate in one go!
Second was to Tom's World's deck. I was OKAY with this as I had Interrogation Center and Richard Finchington but in the end I was way too slow for his rush. I got whooped 2 games to none. It was my first chance to play against that deck and really see it shine, so I was excited about that. I have NO idea how the matchup would have gone had I played my Worlds deck. I suspect it would have been tough for both of us.
I did not play my third game against Jim as the results would not have mattered. He was playing mono Cthulhu and it looked like a fun deck.
On my Tech:
Interrogation Center is the awesome. That's all I'll say about that.
Richard Finchington is amazing against most decks if you can get him turn one and have a shotgun blast in hand or a Pistol on the board.
Peeler + Pistol + Beneath the Burning Sun is an amazing and brutal combo to start the game with. I got it 3 out of 4 games.
Beneath the Burnig Sun + Pistol is awesome all by itself
Dutch Courage makes your opponents removal much less usefull. I simply could NOT draw one against Tom and he was able to clean my characters off quite readily.
Low Blow is so much fun. Low Blow + Pistol/Shotgun Blast a toughness character out of the way. Low Blow just to exhaust a problem for the win.
Torch Singer + Pistol/Shotgun Blast is great as well. Some people questioned my choice of Singer over Tattoo Artist but honestly I feel that Tattoo Artist is a bit too narrow. I could be wrong--I regularly am.
That's about it. The general idea is to get everybody with toughness and Willpower doing the dirty work. Exhaust people that you cannot kill and rush with Investigation. Again, I love playing this deck but it is a bit slow still. If we can get the format down to a controllable pace it might do well.
Chevee
