Hi everyone,
My name is Jimmy Risk (aka jimmypoopins) and I got 2nd at Netrunner nationals using Noise and Haas-Bioroid Engineering the Future.
I ended up winning my first big netrunner tournament I played in (a regionals tournament in Ohio), and got second in the next one (regionals tournament near Detroit, Michigan at RIW hobbies), scooping to my friend in the finals.
Around this time I was finishing up my masters in statistics at Michigan State, and I had a few regular friends that I was testing with. In May I moved back home and lost all of my testing partners, so my testing was fairly limited. I spent the week prior testing, but the lack of time invested made me uncomfortable playing anything other than the two decks I did well in regionals with, Noise and HB Fast Advance.
In testing, I had a sweet shaper list somewhat similar to the winners using Kit instead, with yog and atman as its only breakers. At this point I recognized that the combination of desperado + atman + datasucker is completely insane. I do think the yog portion was a bit cute, and Kate is probably the best choice for that type of deck just so that you can get to running as early as possible.
I also want to comment that in picking my decks, I went with what I was comfortable with. I think this is really important in figuring out what you want to play. I probably could have pursued a shaper deck or played criminal, but I didn’t have that much time to test them and I was happy with Noise. You should do the same if you are happy with a deck even if you think it may not be the best one. So much of this game comes down to individual skill and knowing your general match ups against certain identities.
You also have to take into account that no one (except for maybe your close friends) are going to know your decklist card for card. Bringing a rogue deck or a self-polished popular deck to a big tournament gives you a big advantage, because unlike magic, where one card isn’t going to sway a tournament, here it does, as you can simply die to the guy that put a scorched earth in his HB deck.
One thing I thought about when as I was playing this tournament and also brainstorming a tournament report is that I didn’t remember the play-by-play for any of my matches that well. My memory isn’t the greatest, but if I do well in a magic tournament I can usually give a very accurate play-by-play of the tournament. I think this has to do with the fact that making decisions in netrunner is a much more complicated process, and I think that’s a good thing. Netrunner in my opinion is extremely skill intensive, much more-so than Magic. It is definitely susceptible to variance, but I think you have a lot more influence over a game than variance will.
For that reason, instead of trying to write a play-by-play of each match, instead I’ll talk about my decklists, and give a few stories and neat plays about the tournament and some general strategy advice that I have. Here are my decklists:
Identity:
Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire (Core)
Total Cards: (45)
Event (8)
Stimhack (Core #4) x3
Sure Gamble (Core #50) x3
Deja Vu (Core #2) x2
Hardware (6)
Grimoire (Core #6) x3
Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead #9) x2
Clone Chip (Creation and Control #38) x1 ■■
Program (19)
Parasite (Core #12) x3
Wyrm (Core #13) x1
Nerve Agent (Cyber Exodus #41) x1
Djinn (Core #9) x2
Medium (Core #10) x3
Imp (What Lies Ahead #3) x3
Crypsis (Core #51) x3
Datasucker (Core #8) x3
Resource (12)
Wyldside (Core #16) x3
Daily Casts (Creation and Control #53) x3
Personal Workshop (Cyber Exodus #49) x2 ■■■■
Aesop’s Pawnshop (Core #47) x2 ■■
Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow #91) x2
I’ll talk about some of the (potentially) unusual card choices.
Stimhack #3: This can easily be cut down to two, and I think it is the first thing I’d consider cutting. I actually really like having three stimhack, but if you are facing a field of mostly Jinteki and Weyland, you don’t want to see multiples of this card. In fact, if you are facing one of these decks, or if you are facing a deck that you think focuses on a scorched kill, it is a wise idea to never play a second stimhack unless you are going for the kill yourself that turn. It isn’t very difficult with this deck to put a plascrete into play and keep your hand at 4 at all times to play around double scorched.
Deja vu #2: Not really unusual, but typically with Noise I like to sac as many viruses as possible for maximum milling. Two of this card is a good number, because I like to have one available to me as often as possible, but it does clog your hand up in multiples.
Plascretes: This is a no brainer and I will probably play two plascretes in almost any deck I bring to a tournament where I don’t know what I’m going to be playing against. I want to have one of these in play versus Weyland, Jinteki, and NBN if I have even the slightest idea that they want to blow me up.
Another thing I want to mention about this card is the timing of when to play it. Generally you want to save this card until later, like when you think they’re in range to come close to blowing you up. An obvious reason is that you’re saving three credits + one click that can be used in the early game. The more important reason in my opinion, is, particularly against Weyland, these decks can win through agendas. If you can convince your opponent that they have a chance to blow you up, they may go for that victory condition and slow down on trying to win through agendas. If you can make them think that, and then drop a plascrete (or then host it on workshop) you will have slowed them down significantly.
Wyrm: This is the card that is probably the most unusual choice. I explained it fairly well on a forum post, so I will just copy and paste that text here:
“Wyrm was a card that I kept from my older decklists. It actually performed extremely well for me back when I was playing at regionals, killing ice with parasite and being a backup emergency breaker, but it was fairly underwhelming at this tournament.
I’m not exactly sure why that was the case. I think it was a combination of playing against more aggressive corp opponents and of playing slightly more aggressive myself.”
I think this is another card that could be cut. If you haven’t played with wyrm, I think you should at least try it, though. I’m not 100% sure if it belongs here or not.
Medium / Nerve Agent: I was torn between playing 3/1 or 2/2. Generally when I am going for the kill, I like to have two mediums in play and make a big r&d access and then go to archives. On the other hand, running peoples hands is extremely underrated, and especially with imp it can be very effective. I like to run HQ against Weyland with nerve agent + imp, first to get an idea of what I’m playing, and second being able to trash scorched earths or sea sources if they have them.
Wyldside: I would not play any other card draw other than wyldside. This card is insane. Always leave it in play versus Jinteki, and almost always leave it in play versus Weyland. Otherwise, sac it to pawnshop as soon as you are happy with your board state.
Daily Casts: This card is also insane. I like it more than something like codebusting. The interaction with pawnshop is also very good. If you’re not familiar, if it has four counters on it, you can take two at the start of your turn and afterward pawn it off to gain three.
Personal Workshop: I also explained this choice on the forums. I will copy + paste it here:
“I didn’t have very much success testing sahasrara. It is a good card and it definitely helped a lot with econ in testing, but it felt kind of clunky and had some issues. Memory was an issue; it came up rarely, but enough that it contributed to me not wanting to play it.
The stimhack interaction with personal workshop is something that I really liked, and the ability to dump things drawn with wyldside is also very important, including the few pieces of hardware in the deck.
I think workshop is better early game as well, as it gives you time to set up and spend your money and clicks on resources rather than programs. Sahasrara may be better in a more aggressive build, but this deck generally spends a few turns getting economy going hard, and then spends the rest of the game running and doing noise shenanigans.
The familiarity with workshop is also something that made me want to play it. I didn’t test all that much for this event, and I had already won a regionals with a workshop list and got second in another one with the same list.”
Pawnshop: I would never play a noise deck with any less than two pawnshop. It synergizes with waaaaaay too many cards.
Kati Jones: When I first put this card in the deck I didn’t think it was going to be very good, but it actually performed very well. You have to gauge when to stop Kati’ing and to start playing the game. You also have to know that it isn’t the end of the world if you don’t use Kati in a turn, like if they play what you really think is an agenda, and the only way to access it is to not use Kati, then get your agenda points instead of your three credits.
I want to give a few concluding comments about Noise. First, Noise is an extremely difficult deck to play. This is for a variety of reasons. Noise is actually an extremely easy deck to play as a solitaire deck, at least in my opinion, but when you add running into the scenario, and in turn playing around your opponents cards, I think that is where many players fall apart.
Questions you need to ask yourself are: do I need to run early to make them spend money? What is the card they put in that remote, and is it worth my time running it (and can I even get to it if I tried)? If that advanced card is a trap can I just run into it and survive (and similarly with a snare)?
There are thousands of other questions you need to ask yourself during the course of a game, but these are fairly common ones. There are no clear cut answers to these questions, either. The answers come with experience and analysis, and you will never be right 100% of the time, but that is one of the beauties of netrunner.
One reason Noise is so complex is that with grimoire, crypsis, and stimhack in your deck, you can begin a turn with very few credits, and make a successful run against a remote (or a central, even) behind two unrezzed ice when the corp has like 15 credits. When you have to think about whether you want to do that at almost every turn of the game, you can see how complex the deck can get in terms of running.
Another thing I want to mention about this deck is that even though you are milling archives, you generally do not want to run archives until the endgame. There are exceptions to this, like if you are playing against HB and you don’t want them to archived memories something back, or if you are playing against Weyland and want to see if you can spot sea source or scorched earth to know what you need to play around. The reason you don’t want to run archives much, though, is for two reasons: first, you’re going to run archives anyways. If they have a 2 pointer in there as their first card, and you run it right away, you’d have the same outcome as if they mill 6 more cards and you make that same run 8 turns later, except this way you’d have an extra click. The other reason is that you shouldn’t be afraid about your opponent protecting archives. When you need to get into archives, you will. Whether it be with a lot of Kati credits or a stimhack, you can and will get into archives when you need to.
I know there are roughly a thousand things I want to say about this deck that I haven’t mentioned, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them.
Also, all of this may be somewhat useless post opening moves. I agree with everyone’s initial analysis of Jackson Howard, and that card is going to be really difficult for Noise to beat. It is extremely difficult to play around, and personally I will initially test for another deck for worlds over Noise for this reason.
My analysis for HB should be much more brief, as I think that deck is much simpler and more standard than Noise:
Identity:
Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core)
Total Cards: (49)
Agenda (11)
Accelerated Beta Test (Core #55) x3
Director Haas’ Pet Project (Creation and Control #4) x1
Efficiency Committee (Creation and Control #5) x3
Gila Hands Arcology (Creation and Control #23) x1
Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus #51) x3
Asset (6)
Adonis Campaign (Core #56) x3
Melange Mining Corp (Core #108) x3
ICE (19)
Rototurret (Core #64) x2
Bastion (Creation and Control #26) x2
Enigma (Core #111) x2
Wall of Static (Core #113) x3
Eli 1.0 (Future Proof #110) x3
Neural Katana (Core #77) x1 ■■
Ichi 1.0 (Core #62) x2
Ice Wall (Core #103) x3 ■
Viper (Cyber Exodus #52) x1
Operation (10)
Green Level Clearance (A Study in Static #70) x1
Biotic Labor (Core #59) x3
Archived Memories (Core #58) x3
Hedge Fund (Core #110) x3
Upgrade (3)
SanSan City Grid (Core #92) x3 ■■■
Director Haas’ Pet Project: This card is way better than I thought it was going to be. On top of getting tons of value (bring back two ice you discarded because you had too many cards, and get an adonis or a melange or a SanSan which is probably the best), it is also good for mind games, like putting an agenda from hand in play, or making them think you’re putting an agenda into play but putting an asset in play instead. It is also good for playing against noise, because it lets you play any of the milled cards.
Efficiency Committee: This card is absolutely busted. I’m surprised it was printed. It is probably one of the best agendas in the game. There are so so so many things you can do with it. Here are some common plays I made with this card: Take two extra clicks, archived memories melange, play melange, use melange. Take one extra click, play melange, use melange. Take three extra clicks, use melange twice.
Okay, most of the “busted” plays involve melange. Still, aside from melange this card is very good, like if you do the math and you need one additional credit to play + advance from your hand next turn, just take a click with this and get that credit. It also synergizes well with Gila Hands, and lastly if you are searching for something like a FA card or an agenda, it gives you the ability to get many extra draws to find that thing.
Gila Hands Arcology: Nothing special to say here. This card is very solid and the next best choice for your second 1-pt agenda.
I’ll talk about the ice in paragraph form instead of speaking of each piece individually. Obviously one strength of this deck is that it plays cheap ice, so that you can try to win early and use your money for advancing + fast advancing things. For that reason I really like ice wall and wall of static. I added the two bastion because I didn’t have any other choices that I like, and bastion is also fairly solid anyways because it makes people spend three per run with corroder rather than two with wall of static, for only one more credit upfront.
I tried to avoid code gates as much as possible because of the popularity of yog and potentially gordian blade. I think Enigma is good enough early game that a couple are fine. It certainly is nice for opponents to run into them turn one to get hurt pretty hard. The one viper is included because it diversifies ice strength, and dodges yog. I only played one because I expected Andromeda to be popular and I didn’t want to be weak to link.
I think 2 rototurret/ichi 1.0 is fairly standard. They can blow people up sometimes, which is nice. Ichi 1.0 sucks early, and you should probably never play it as one of your first ices at the beginning of the game. Rototurret is okay at that, though. Ichi and Eli are also both extremely weak versus e3 feedback implants, and you should try to avoid playing them if your opponent has that card.
Unfortunately I only got to Neural Katana a player once on first turn, but it is so much fun when you can pull it off. I also think Neural Katana is totally fine as a late game ice. Obviously it sucks when your opponent can just take the three damage and not care, but unlike something like Data Raven, they can’t repeatedly take three damage and live. They’ll only be able to bypass this once or twice without caring. The fact that you can completely blow people out with it is very nice, and I’m tempted to play two in my next tournament with this deck.
Biotic Labor/SanSan: Initially I had strong love for trick of light, but I slowly started loving SanSan more. I don’t think you can play any less than three of this card in this deck. I do think cutting a biotic labor is in the realm of possibilities, though, as they can clog up a hand pretty hard. I think I would cut a biotic labor for a green level clearance.
Green Level Clearance: This card is very good in this deck and I wish I had more room to play more. Immediate econ is great for this deck, but card draw is also important, as you want to win quickly which means you do want to see agendas early (unlike most other decks).
There are a few cards I want to comment on that I didn’t play but are worthy of discussion:
Haas Arcology AI: This card was in my initial draft of the deck, and it was performing very well, but I found that it is much worse against aggressive players (which you should probably encounter at the top tables), making it not worth it in my opinion.
Server Diagnostics: This card is vastly underrated in my opinion. I tried it in my Jinteki deck and it was very good. You have to set up timings to get it to work properly, but it is good when you are finally set up and want to just play agendas + advance them + play assets. The runner is going to want to trash it, and also it’s not the end of the world if you got 7+ credits off of it and you need to play a piece of ice. Assets are strong in this deck in general because of the identity’s ability.
Any other ice: I had success with Chum in this deck before c&c, but with the popularity of noise, datasucker + yog, and datasucker + atman, I am not a fan of this card anymore. It is possible that pop-up window is good in this deck, but I’m always afraid to play ice like that that can just let my opponent run my servers rampantly if they simply have a good economy.
I think HB:EtF is very good right now, unlike what the forums think and statistics lead to say. I do think that it is much better than any of the other HB identities by a long shot, and I did a good amount of testing Guarding the Net. My draws in my semifinal and finals matches were pretty abysmal, and I think if they were even slightly better in the finals I would have won the tournament.
My corp deck actually outperformed my runner deck this tournament (also contrary to the statistics), which was somewhat surprising because it was the other way around at regionals. I did feel very good about the deck, though. I do think decks like these have a lot of skill involved that is not immediately apparent. A lot of it is leading your opponent to run certain things because of feigning a weakness, while capitalizing on it later by scoring something or by simply wasting their time. With this deck you ideally want to score one or two agendas early on, and get the rest of your points by fast advancing things from hand.
There isn’t as much to be said about this deck as with Noise, but there is a lot more to the deck than I’ve stated here, so if you have any questions about it please let me know. I also think this is more relevant than the Noise list + discussion because of opening moves.
Now to talk about the tournament itself, simply put it was awesome but surprised me in a lot of ways. First of all, to put it lightly, most of my opponents plays were less than optimal. Part of me was surprised and part of me wasn’t. Netrunner is young and extremely complex, so that is why part of me wasn’t surprised. I was surprised, however, by the amount of people I played in top 32 that seemed to have actidentally gotten there. Three of my opponents in the top 32 entered this tournament on a whim, being at GenCon for various other reasons.
I would have liked to see more people come to the tournament specifically for the tournament (or at least with strong emphasis on this tournament), though I realize travelling and GenCon itself is very expensive. I definitely look forward to worlds.
Another thing I want to comment on is how imporant it is to watch your opponents. There were many instances that I experienced and friends told me about where an opponent got an extra credit or click out of something, whether by accident or intentionally. I can even say first hand that there were a couple of instances where I went too quickly and messed up my credits and my opponent corrected me. I think 99% of it is accidental, but still, it happens. Firstly, pay attention to your opponents, their credits, and their clicks. Try to keep track of their clicks somehow. Secondly, play methodically yourself. If you’re going to draw a card, use Kati, play a program, and place something on workshop, then do each of those things individually, or at least be very specific of your actions. Doing everything very quickly all at once is a very easy way to screw things up.
Also, even though they changed the scoring in the swiss, it is the same in single elimination. I think this is one of the reasons I did so well in the tournament. Every game I lost in this tournament except for two or three of them, I had six agenda points in the game that I lost. It doesn’t matter how well you do in the swiss if you are going to lose in the single elimination rounds. I’m not saying to cater your decks and only play decks that are good at that, but it’s definitely something that still exists and you should keep in mind when making your deck choices.
Another gameplay tip that I’d like to provide is to plan your turns out. It really surprised me the amount of people that would do a turn like “gain a credit, gain a credit, play corroder, draw a card, go.” There is absolutely no reason in that turn to not draw the card first, as you can probably see for many reasons. Before you take any action on your turn, try to plan the entire turn out so that you can get the most value out of your clicks.ഀ
I’ll finish this article by giving a few neat plays that occurred in the tournament, and to let you know what I personally plan on investigating deck wise after Opening Moves.
In the first round of the tournament (my opponent specifically asked to leave his name out of this one), my opponent had an atman at one counter and ran my r&d that consisted of ice wall, rototurret, and face down ice. It did not end well for him. The moral of the story is to do math in your head, and figure out everything that is going to happen as a consequence of your action. Also, don’t ever play an atman at more than one counter unless you already have an atman at zero, or if you have a really good reason to. You will run into rototurret and you will get punished.
Not a very special story, but I played against a LOT of Jinteki this tournament (which surprised me, by the way). I also beat every single one of them, except for two (first round of top 32, and in the finals, though he only needed 5 agenda points to win and I’m 99.999% sure I was winning that game if he needed 7). Beating Jinteki in general is not very hard. Don’t access too many cards if you don’t have to, and always have like six cards in hand if you are doing anything big. Otherwise have at least 3 (playing around snare + fetal ai), and always have at least 2 credits. It’s a general good rule of thumb to not run as your last action, in case of running into snare, or getting dumped to zero cards and getting tased by neural emp.
Near the end of the swiss rounds, I played against a Weyland player who had an agenda behind a server that I had tried to get in a couple turns in a row, being one credit short in my last attempt. I knew it was a 5/3, otherwise he would have scored it already. In the turn where he was going to score it, I started my turn with a hand full of no viruses, and five credits, I believe. I also couldn’t afford to run R&D or HQ, so instead I went draw a card (blank), draw a card (datasucker), play datasucker (mill one), run archives to get the priority requisition that I milled to win the game. Before you call me lucky, he had eight cards left in his deck, three of which were agendas, and I literally had no other ways to win the game. The moral here is to play to your outs. At that point in the game, that was my best chance of winning, and it ended up working for me.
Similarly there have been many games where I can’t get into a server, or at least it would be extremely difficult for me to given the board and what he could have, and my best chance at winning is to play a couple of viruses, run R&D, and then run archives. It’s better to take chances and hope to win (your chances are probably better than you think) than to run into a server that you have a 0% chance of penetrating.
Also in those situations, you should look for ways to make your opponents spend credits. If they have what you think is a 3/2, and you can drain them to 2 or less credits, you’ve bought yourself another turn (most of the time).
In my semi-finals match (which you can watch courtesy of Team Covenant), I played my HB game completely miserably. I came off to an extremely strong start, scoring 5 to 0, and then I made misplay after misplay. I think my first big misplay is when I had a hand full of agendas, my opponent wasn’t making any runs, and I scored a Director Haas’ Pet Project, and made a server of I think an adonis campaign and two pieces of ice. What I should have done is played a 3/2, given that my opponent wasn’t running, and then got the credits to score it and score it. Given that I was up 5-0, I could afford to lose two agenda points, and it was fairly likely that he wasn’t going to run anyways, and that I could close out the game right there.
Instead, if you watch, I get blown out by multiple account siphons and he wins 7-5. The other major misplay I make is when he runs HQ and I have six credits and don’t rez my SanSan. This is obviously just terrible, and I attribute it to being mildly on tilt, my lack of testing versus criminal, and the thought in my mind that I am just going win this game quickly thereafter anyways. I end up realizing that after the fact and I do it with another SanSan on another one of his account siphons, but it was too late. I also probably should have just scored the Gila Hands in my hand other than the Pet Project, because my economy was terrible that game and it gave me the best shot of winning in case things became disastrous (which they did).
When I won as runner I was completely surprised. I really had no business winning that game. I ended up doing what I said earlier, to play to my outs, and I made a big run on R&D and then archives to win. He had an agenda that he actually could have scored the turn before but didn’t even realize he had the win in his hand.
My game as corp in the finals was kind of a disaster as well. Basically, I got off to a decent start, getting an agenda scored quickly. Unfortunately, I ended up getting pretty dried of credits, and then he scored a couple of agendas off of the top, when he got me into a lock that I couldn’t really get out of. He had an atman at zero with a datasucker, shortly afterward getting an atman at three as well. I don’t remember exactly what was on my R&D aside from an ice wall with two counters, but a few things occured to me at this point:
He had so much ability to get into my servers that it was fairly pointless to actually try to protect R&D, because it’s only going to cost him one or two extra datasucker counters a turn.
It isn’t worth the time to advance ice wall for the same reason, especially since that will cost me credits upfront.
It is unlikely for me to win this game, and I need to try to at least score one or two more agendas if I want to have a chance of winning as runner.
After a couple of runs at HQ, he got an agenda out of my hand when I had two in there, and I managed to score the other one with biotic labor. At this point he was seeing the top card of my deck every turn and knew every card in my deck, so I made a pretty good play of drawing a card as my first click and using the other two clicks to gain credits.
This did two things for me; it put an unknown card in my hand to that he had to run my hand as well as R&D regardless of whether it was an agenda or not. It also gave me the small chance to get an agenda and the necessary economy to fast advance it. Unfortunately, he got an R&D interface out, and after a couple of turns of me drawing, the only agenda I got was an efficiency committee which I could not score out of hand, and he ended up getting one off of the top.
This put me in kind of an awkward spot in my runner game, since he only needed to score 5 points to win. He ended up mulliganing, and I think I mulliganed as well. My hand wasn’t stellar, but it was acceptable. I could tell by his appearance that the hand he mulliganed into was not very good, which gave me a little bit of hope in this game.
I think his first turn was play face down, protect it, and gain a credit. Given the lack of breakers that Noise has, I was pretty sure this was an agenda. I ended up having one of the best possible turns of run the remote, him rezzing chimera, me playing parasite (mill one) to kill the chimera, and scoring the agenda he played face down.
Like I said netrunner games are very difficult for me to remember (so watch the video to be sure), but I believe I ended up scoring a fetal AI that he played face down, and he ended up scoring a priority requisition. During this I made a few runs on his unprotected R&D and hit nothing. I also ran at his hand a few times and also hit blanks. I had a pretty good idea that his hand had an agenda or two, but the fact that I had no idea what was in his deck made me feel like it was better for me to not waste too much time making those runs and instead try to win by either running into his remotes or to get into his deck. It was too easy for me to just run into a snare or fetal and get really far behind and for him to score something and just win on the spot.
It was also unfortunate that my draws were pretty miserable. A lot of my turns involved making a run, use Kati, and draw two cards. I never got a djinn or a crypsis or a wyrm, so it was actually very difficult for me to run into his ice head first. Normally I would be okay with that, but against Jinteki I often avoid those runs. I at least got some viruses down, to mill some cards, and a medium as well, for when I wanted to start going deep.
When he played that I was pretty sure was the final agenda of the game, I had to make a move. I had three cards in hand, one of which was an imp. I wanted to play the imp because it would mill an unknown off the top of his deck, and also give me the ability to see an extra card (because I could trash a blank from his deck if I made two runs with medium), but I ended up being one click short, since if I played imp I would also have to draw a card because I only had 4 points and accessing either snare or fetal AI would kill me on the spot. Instead I made a couple of runs on r&d, accessed about seven cards, then ran archives and accessed a few, and I was one agenda point of scoring the game.
I do think Jinteki is fairly easy to play against, but it is really aggrivating at the same time because you have to go really far out of your way to play around things, and every now and again you can just randomly screwed and die. Like I said I am fairly confident that I would have won that game, and I think I actually played it very well, but he beat me too badly with his atman deck that he only needed five points to win.
Still, I got a lot of cool things for getting to second. 32nd was another copy of the promo private security force (whose art is completely awful by the way and I do not understand at all why those are going for any amount of $ whatsoever), 16th was a really cool looking playmat, 8th I can’t remember (maybe there was no prize?), 4th was a really cool bag, and 2nd/1st were runner up / champion plaques respectively.
In terms for what I’m planning for post opening moves, I think the Katie Atman deck is where you want to start your testing. Desperado and datasucker give that deck so much sustain and aggression. I’m looking forward to the chess pieces, but I don’t think they will be good until the identity and console come out for them, and even then I’m not sure if they’ll be great. I really want them to be good, though! And like I said earlier, I think Noise is probably going to be dead after opening moves. We’ll see, though.
As for corp, I think you should really play whatever you want to play. I tend to avoid flatlining decks, so personally I will begin investigations with HB or NBN. I think NBN is going to be where I initiate my testing, with some sort of fast advance using Jackson Howard. I am a huge fan of NEXT Bronze even by itself, however, and if they release any more NEXT ice, I think it’s going to be awesome.
Overall I had a really great time at the tournament. Everyone at Fantasy Flight was really nice and really cool to meet. I really look forward to Worlds and testing for it. Netrunner is such an awesome game, and I’m really glad that it is so popular. If any of you have any questions for me about anything, please feel free to ask.
I’m also really proud of the team that I’m on, Team RIW of RIW Hobbies in Livonia Michigan. Six of us made the top 32 (Jacob Gillham, Grant Nelson, Matt Wilson, John Reese), and two of us in the final four (Denny Early), and one in the finals (me). I’m sad that I wasn’t around to test with them specifically for this event, but I’m still glad that we all did so well. I think there was only one or two members that didn’t make top 32.
Also, I’m moving to Santa Barbara in the fall and have nowhere to go. If anyone has any stores that they know of in the area, please let me know, because as far as I can tell it unfortunately lacks any card shop in the area, and I really like playing this game in person over playing online.
Lastly I’d like to thank Alexfrog for letting me post this on stimhack. He is an awesome member of the community and I really appreciate his openness about decklists. I actually won my first regionals match with the HB Fast Advance list he posted awhile back card for card.
Thanks for reading and feel free to ask any questions!
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