New Zealand 2016 Nationals Report

4th NZ Nationals was the bomdigi! This year, the decision was made to host the event in the South Island (little ol' New Zealand is indeed divided into two major land masses), but the weekend was no less fantastic for it. 21 people ended up attending from all corners of the country. There were players from Christchurch (the hosting city), Wellington, Auckland, and even Hamilton present. Packs up to Blood Money were legal for the event. Suffice to say, there were a lot of Temujin Criminals present.

Temujin Contract - Bring on the Khannage!

Temujin Contract - Bring on the Khannage

Sometimes when evaluating cards, its easy to fall into the trap of thinking about it theoretically instead of practically. When Rumor Mill was spoiled, I was super excited despite not having played the card. When Temujin Contract was spoiled, I was like "This is good", but not as excited. Boy, was I wrong.

Something for the corps to fear

Rumor mill is bonkers!!!111one

Rumor Mill is bonkers!!!1

Since Order and Chaos dropped, we had our first hints of Princess Space Kitten in the flavour-text of Memstrips. This was continued further with Trope. The silly name alone sparkled a lot of delight. When blood money was first spoiled, all we could see was the art of Rumor Mill, depicting Princess Space Kitten's digital avatar - literally a kitten in an astronaut suit. People were excited enough about the card without even knowing what it did, but now that it has been spoiled, we have the rare combination of the best art in the data pack also being the strongest card.

The Cookbook to CI7 - Heuristics

Heuristics

This is just a list of general rules for how to deal with various situations. You will have to read the various full lists for a more comprehensive analysis. Think of this as a quick cheat-sheet.

The Cookbook to CI7 - Conclusion

Conclusion

In the previous article, we talked about how to run against CI7. With this out of the way, you should now know the majority of what you need when it comes to CI7, both in terms of playing it or playing against it, and what to expect on both sides.

In this article, we will go over a few alternate deck choices, list some heuristics to follow for general use, and provide some alternate resources to either extend your CI7 game further, or give alternate explanations (in case mine weren't good enough).

The Cookbook to CI7 - Part 4 Running against CI7

Running against CI7

A lot of runners don’t really have any practice against CI7. This typically means they don’t know any of the tricks to beat it, and CI7 often does a lot better than it really should. In the previous article, we talked about how to setup as a CI7 corp. This was the last of the articles on how to play CI7. This article is focused on the other side, running against CI7.

The Cookbook to CI7 - Part 3 Setting up as CI7

Welcome back. In the previous article we talked about how to combo through all the various hate a CI7 has to deal with on their winning turn. In this article we are talking about setting up to get the combo. It should be clear that most combinations of combo-hate that a runner-deck brings can be beaten, so getting through the setup phase is the main way that CI7 loses the game.

Setting up as CI7 is typically pretty simple, despite being the most skill intensive part of it. You have to draw cards until you have the combo - overdraw to trash any doubles (or play them outside of the combo turn), and generally have enough money to hold any of the cards you need. The skill in setting up comes from many things, such as knowing where to ice against who, what to mulligan against, and just gaining money and cards at the right times. Lastly there is also the factor of recognising whether or not you can combo early, and whether or not you can make any swaps to make it easier. In this, like all things, practice makes perfect, but here are some hints on things you can do.