Mindless Mind (2025 Winter Worlds, 7th place)

I seem to have a pathological aversion to playing good decks. I don't know why. But when I win with a known good deck (like a preconstructed deck, for example), I don't feel like I won -- I feel like the deck won. I do feel, however, that if the game is lost, it was definitely something I did wrong rather than there being a problem with the deck. So maybe I just want to play a bad deck so I can blame the deck for losing rather than myself.

Enough psychoanalysis.

I came across the deck Xanatos Gambit while researching Cybernetics Division for my podcast back in the spring, when the 2.1 group reached Chrome City. The concept for that deck is pretty simple. Quoting from tiedyedvortex's writeup:

"You play Mushin No Shin on either Cerebral Overwriter or Mandatory Upgrades. This leads to four outcomes, all of which are favorable:

• It's an Overwriter and they run it. With your ID ability, this gives them a 1 card hand for the rest of the game.

• It's an Overwriter, and they leave it alone. You now have the world's most secure server for your Shell Corporation.

• It's a Mandatory Upgrades and they leave it alone. You score, and immediately begin fast advancing like there's no tomorrow, occasionally dropping and using Melange Mining Corp. in the same turn for crazy amounts of money.

• It's a Mandatory Upgrades and they run it. You play a Media Blitz and start fast advancing anyway."

See, now, this is what I'm talking about. This is fun! (To me.)

At the time, since we only had Chrome City, the Media Blitz play wasn't an option. Taking inspiration from another commenter somewhere -- or maybe this was just my idea because new CybDiv has so much influence and I didn't have Media Blitz -- I swapped out all the NEXT ice for the grail suite, generating my deck But Brain Downgraded. I also wanted to see how Self-Destruct Chips and Gyri Labyrinth would play in this shell. Answer: Not so well. According to Reteki, this deck has only had 1 win in 7 games (though this does include at least a couple of games after we introduced Old Hollywood into the pool and I had a chance to use Back Channels).

Once Data and Destiny arrived in the pool, I was able to shift into a closer clone of the Xanatos Gambit deck, using the NEXT suite of ice rather than the grail suite and shifting that influence into Media Blitz and ... Shipment from SanSan...??? Okay, well that didn't work so well, either.

I mean, don't get me wrong: Mushining a ManUps that gets stolen and then playing a Media Blitz to get the extra click anyway is pretty awesome. But as we can all see, that is a 3-card combo, and that is probably not something that makes for a consistent deck.

With the extra tools in Reflections, I made a few changes. One was making room for an IPO. Being poor is a consistent issue for this deck, partly due to relying so heavily on Mushin + untouched Overwriter + Shell Corporation or Back Channels (another three card combo), partly due to hoping to get a ManUps and then use Melange, and partly due to the Mushin nerf now costing so much money (especially early). Another change was bringing in a NEXT Level Clearance, which did help me close out one of my wins in this iteration of the deck. Here's the result of these changes. This deck did twice as well as the original version, and I got 2 wins in 7 games. Progress!

Moving into Mind and Mayhem, I wanted to appropriate some of the tools for Echo Memvaults, especially Microtransactions and Vulcan 1.0 / Mind Maze. I dumped the Melanges (which almost never worked anyway) and the Special Offer I'd tried out for Microtransactions and a second IPO; the Architects made way for the Vulcans in a straight swap.

I didn't have a chance to play this version prior to Worlds. But as I was going back to the original Xanatos Gambit list to see if I'd made too many changes and drifted too far from the original premise, I noticed an open tab that's been sitting there for ... months, probably. It was for a deck derived from Xanatos that went in a slightly different direction, and it looked good to me after all of my experience with the deck so far. (Yes, for me 14 games is a lot of experience with a deck.)

This one is called Mindless Mind, and the deck's author is quite verbose -- almost as much as me -- so I won't reiterate everything said in the writeup there. But the key insight) that helped me unlock more performance in the deck was to embrace simple IAA.

Out went the Shell Corporation in favor of another Back Channels. In fact, out went the Archived Memories (since IAAing Vitruvius is easier) and the Media Blitzes (the logic being that agendas get stolen too frequently to make them worth it) to make room for a Neural EMP and the Junebugs that make IAAing more valuable

(I also made a couple of smaller ice changes: Pulling an Eli for a Heimdall so I could have a big taxing barrier (and more brain damage subs). Swapping out Turing for Viktor 1 and dipping my toe forward into Equity and Eternity by replacing Special Offer with Fairchild (to regain influence (and for even more brain damage subs))).

These changes really help the deck, as far as I can tell. It's still a little poor, especially if you don't see Back Channels. But if you do, it's pretty easy to get large influxes of money at the simple cost of IAAing a trap or an agenda (especially thanks to the Back Channels buff). Mushin makes it even better, with Back Channels' buff offsetting the Mushin nerf.

But even if Back Channels doesn't appear, shifting fully into operation economy puts things on a more solid footing. As I already said, I could never get Melange to pull its weight ... not to mention all the times it just got trashed straight out of R&D. And as much fun as Media Blitz on ManUps is -- and even though it is an operation -- as a current, it is probably too delicate.

I do think that the deck could still use more money, especially since so much of the econ of the deck is sunk into just 3 cards. Would one of the other clearances be a good addition? Maybe??? I don't know what I'd cut, and I'm not really sure I want or need the extra draw.

Perhaps the answer is that I don't need as much ice as I have. I freely admit that I don't really have a solid grasp of how best to put together a full ice suite (beyond just "about the same number of each type", which this deck very much does not have). I will say that this post by TBB was very useful to me, and some of the changes I made here were guided by it. But, is 14 the right number? Should I actually have 15? Could I get by with less? No clue.

Aside from the economy aspect, the other thing that seems to happen a lot when playing the deck is bleeding agendas. (This was exacerbated on the day by Refragmenter, a card outside of the current 2.1 cardpool and, therefore, one I'd never played against before.) I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories, but for as many times as I've been agenda flooded with this deck, it makes me wonder whether there's some flag in the jnet code that is set to "autolose" when playing with CybDiv. Though it's more likely I'm just really bad at managing where the agendas are, it was still tough for 6 of my agendas to appear in the top 16 cards of my deck in one of my losses on Sunday. (Although this was counterbalanced somewhat by one of my Runner wins where I went from 2 points to 8 on my final desperation turn by pulling 3 straight Posted Bountys off of R&D. Video proof of this here.)

Oh, so, how about a quick actual tournament report? I got smoked by Dunsch in round 1, flooded hard against Gob Lynn Mode in round 2, then turned it around and won against Lee in round 3 after he ran into an IAAed Overwriter turn 1 (and was on 0 hand size for a lot of the game -- though I couldn't find that Neural EMP), and capped it off in round 4 with a win against FlakManiak (off the IAAed Junebug); in one of those last two games, I actually scored two ManUps.

So 2-2 on the day, after previous versions of the deck had gone only 3-11. Small sample size, obviously, but it definitely felt a lot better. And a lot of that was down to the approach of being willing to naked IAA rather than wait for the hammer blow of Mushin.