Mad Bomber - 2nd Place Epitaph, Brea

Threw this deck together last minute in an attempt to field a toolbox for the current meta, and I'm still not sure what it's supposed to do. My deck plan was to pick fights on deeds and either blow them up (by Lighting The Fuse) if they were opposing or smash down (using Jael's Guile) if they were friendly, all in an attempt to choke economy in order to close with Allie Hensman (Exp.1) and/or The Union Casino. In practice, I found it difficult to actually stage the first part of that plan, as getting across Town Square proved to be difficult.

There were six of us at Brea, and a quick three rounds of swiss divided the three represented outfits (two Protection Racket, two Morgan Regulators, two 108 Drunken Masters) into the prize swag:

Round One Glen Smallman's Hydropunchy Exhibition Showboater. Luckily, as I had observed him in later games, I wasn't on the spectator end of gadgets and scientists coming up on control points - perhaps he just didn't draw/pull them - and this match-up was instead a long back-and-forth slugger, on and off deeds, with him cheating up a storm and me unable to play meaningful resolutions until one key turning point: That Yagn's Mechanical Skeleton's trait actually prevented him from absorbing the blow of Jael's Guile, resulting in him losing two key dudes in a trade for my last stud. I stopped fighting him at that point and was able to slowly chess out a win.

Round Two Tom Ramirez's "Sad Max: Extortion Road." Another long and exciting match, we both played a deed and stayed on our side of the street for several days, day three (I think) being a short double-passer, before finally crossing Townsquare to get our Protection Racket on. He played lots of high-value studs with upkeep (using Max Baine (Exp.1)), while I played cheap dudes to absorb ties, both of us making money to replace the many dudes lost in shootouts on both sides. But, I believe between using Walters Creek Distillery with Killer Bunnies Casino as well as both functions of One Good Turn… meant that my deck was able to sustain the attrition pace just a little longer to close out this game.

Round Three Lee's Drunken Gun Fu with Backpocket Straightflush. This game was basically over on turn one as I committed a play mistake and was unable to luck my way out of it's consequences, but, at the same time my opponent piloted this beast of a deck airtight. From what I could gather, this deck has a standard major structure (2 or 3 primary values) and a non-standard minor structure on clubs A-6. The punishment plan effectively combines Inner Struggle with An Accidental Reunion to threaten a likely 3 casualties, to me the critical number to sufficiently discourage cheating. Add to that the dude removal of Shotguns bolstered by the Tao of Zhu Bajie (Raking Dragons and Zhu's Ferocity), this deck can exert a great force in a shootout. I dropped Alice Stowe first turn and rushed in foolishly, forgetting to budget 1 ghost rock to pay for her upkeep next turn (!!!), and not only lost lowball but was unable to come up 3 using One Good Turn…. Discarding Barton Everest, I proceeded to get in a big saloon brawl, and lost most of my remaining dudes to the plan described above. Woops.

Over all a great tournament, though I was a little bummed I didn't get to play the other two folks who were present, Wes and Ryan, seein' as we all travelled at least an hour or two to show out, but it was a pleasure sitting next to Tom as we both continue to rep our favorite faction against all the Fu Horse Dogs that otherwise populate this season's meta.

As for the deck itself, I'm torn between completely scrapping it and significantly altering it by taking out it's namesake 5's, substituting as the third value either A's, 2's, or 4's... Any input here would be much appreciated. Cheers!