Decklist of the week

Professional Dirt Eater - 2nd, 17th, 55th @ IRL EMEA 2025

Description by the author: koga 3661

...you know, getting to know the TAIB players I learned that there are different types of deckbuilders. There's the North American players, like sebastiank and coldlava, who do some exploration, find things that are a little bit out there, and so on. Then there's the European players, like koga and Baa Ram Wu, who are like... "y'all ever eat dirt?"

– Icecreamcollege

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Having fun with it

I never thought I'd enjoy retirement this much. The rotation of the entire FFG pool made me feel very emotional, making me think that it was time for me to stop competing. Last season's Netrunner burnout and this frustrating pre-banlist meta (not due to Egg, I actually really enjoyed playing both with and against it) made me quite negative about the game and its future. Things have gotten a lot better recently, don't underestimate the power of a good break! Disengaging from the competitive scene got a lot of weight off my shoulders and made me focus more on what really counts: having fun. While I do enjoy competing and proving what I'm capable of, I don't really get much of a kick out of winning, especially if it comes at the cost of repetitive deckbuilding choices and play patterns, favoring more casual play and exploratory deckbuilding.

That was my mindset assembling this absolute pile.

It turns out that playing for nearly 10 years building ungodly yet functional monstrosities has also made very sensitive to fundamental Runner deckbuilding rules and somewhat able to tune lists that seem total jank on paper but somehow manage to kick ass.

Now, in case you're wondering why I have such a long list of weird ass Runners...

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What even is Dirt?

Dirt is a high-tempo Criminal deck with good amounts of burst econ, steady draw, easy access to good permanent breaking solutions and cheap multiaccess. That's a pretty generic description, I know, but if you look past the oddities you'll notice that it's actually just that simple! You might instinctively think that all Runners are built starting from the same core concepts, but I think many people choose to make concessions by taking multiple tempo hits to set up stuff, something I was specifically trying to avoid.

Let's take a peek at some cards:

• LilyPAD, the only real tempo hit and influence sink. Ciminals notoriously lack steady draw and enjoy the extra MU to play various programs. This single handedly warps most of the following deckbuilding decisions.

• Prognostic Q-Loop, the second part of the engine. It's always been a lowkey cracked card that accelerates your setup tremendously given that you find the right shell for it.

• Spec Work, one of my favorite cards since 2019. It's the glue that lets you turn suboptimal installs into real gas, bridging from a phase to the next letting you keep up the pressure.

• A suite of cheap and useful programs, starting from Marjanah and Rising Tide in this iteration. They let you interact early, disrupt what the Corp is doing and don't mind being thrown under the bus too much.

• Lots of liquid cash, paired with some longevity. Every credit you earn can be spent on what you actually need to do rather than trading resources.

Once these key cards are estabilished, you'll find that most of the rest just comes naturally and becomes a matter of personal preferences, tech and meta optimization. Sporting a daring 42 cards decksize, every player is free to tinker and fine tune to balance out matchups. They're also free to make rookie mistakes like cutting bread winners and taking the coward's way out instead, just like the EMEA early adopters showed.

Note: This is just the OG list. The specific changes made for that event can be found in the Results section.

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Differences and similarities

At first glance, you may think that this is in some way related to Mulch due to the Simulchip import and cute tricks. Despite the similarities, I don't really see it that way. See, I never really vibed with Mulch. It was a sick, cracked deck, but something didn't feel right to me. The best way I can describe it is that it felt like a deck that I had to learn to pilot, rather than a deck that enabled me to play the way I wanted to. Maybe it's just because it was made by someone else, but I felt like the deck forced me to make choices that I sometimes disagreed with, leaving me a bit dissatisfied.

If I had to compare this to some other Runner, with how the deck flows and what it enables you to do, I'd probably look at some version of Trick Shot Lat with Creative Commission and SMC. Not like I've played those decks that much, but I've definitely played against them enough to know what level of freedom they gave you.

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Mulligan and Playstyle

This is undoubtedly an aggressive deck, but you must not lose sight of the bigger picture, which means making sure that you can move cleanly through the deck to make your early game clicks as efficient as possible. Here's some tips:

• LilyPAD + Q-Loop is your draw engine. It's not vital in every matchup, but you should try to assemble it early on if you get the chance. The rest of the deck is decent enough to let you steal wins by just playing your cards as they come up a lot of the times.

• In terms of starting hands, look for LilyPAD, Q-Loop, burst econ and draw. Spec Work's priority should be somewhat secondary to engine pieces. If you really have to start the game by taking the moot line of installing a Marjanah and eating it, so be it.

• Try to be mindful of liquid credits in the mid game. Go for blind guesses with Q-Loop either if you feel like you're on a timer or are full of cash.

• Try to optimize ID triggers. Stack Docklands and Cupellation triggers, try not to sweep HQ and WAKE R&D in the same turn, run ice with run events and/or Cezve if possible. We're not trying to reinstall Crowdfunding, we can take our time.

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A delicate balance

As always, with the idea of tweaking slots to make it better, you'll end up cutting things you think are simply debatable. Some changes might sound almost obvious or more intriguing, even freeing up lots of influence. The truth is that any change to the core will result in a completely different and, in my opinion, worse deck (outside of returning to monke with a reg build, which is still reasonable).

I would recommend getting your hands (and mouth) dirty before looking at card swaps, but just in case you feel like going on your own exploratory romp asap I'll try to preemptively answer some questions you may be asking yourself:

"What are some cards you considered but ended up not putting in the list?"

I've seen people mention quite a few cards that I actually find interesting for various reasons: Maintenance Access, Pinhole, Jailbreak, Alarm Clock, Lucky Charm, Zenit Chip, Airblades, Tranquilizer, Devadatta Drone, Fermenter and Propeller all make some sense to me, you just have to figure out if it's the right call for the meta and whether they mess up the core too much.

"Why not Masterwork? It's in faction and we can recover the LilyPAD influence for other cool toys!"

That's absolutely true! I've played it a lot in the past and I don't believe it actually works out as well, so let me pose some questions to highlight the pain points:

• Switching console means that installing programs stops giving us valuable resources. Sure, we can still accelerate with Q-Loop, but what do we do when we're stuck with a random Marjanah in hand? Do we even install it? Do we overdraw? Are we ok keeping blank cards in hand?

• Are we fine with just 5 MU? Are we willing to add cards like DZMZ Optimizer to recover some of that? If so, what are we cutting for it? Do we even think it gives us something valuable considering there's a bunch of 0c programs?

• Do we increase the number of Hardware in the deck? If so, do we decrease the number of programs (and likely the number of Spec Works)? Is the Hardware we're adding actually useful to what we're trying to do or is it just there to justify the console slot?

• Is drawing off of a Hardware as good as drawing after installing a breaker? If we move from breakers to Boomerangs, can we still set up permanent breaking solutions reliably?

• What cards are we spending the extra influence on? Do we need them or are they just nice to have?

"Why is there no Class Act? Isn't that the best card draw in the faction?"

It kinda is, but there are a few issues with it that aren't at all obvious:

• It's expensive. 4c to draw 4 cards is not a good rate, especially when we're trying to move through the deck as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Runners aren't exactly swimming in cash nowadays, especially early on, so installing one for the promise of cards can be backbreaking. If we depend on having econ cards to play it, we simply become slaves to variance.

• It's really clunky in Q-Loop decks. Getting its information completely wasted undoes lots of interesting tricks we can set up, which may sometimes even include choosing to not draw with LilyPAD.

• It's a resource. You may have noticed there are exactly 0 resources in the list, which is quite unusual. I prefer not having to clear tags unless strictly necessary and keep a good ratio of Q-Loop hits.

"What's 3x Blueberry!™ Diesel doing here? Isn't the card kind of bad?"

I'm not gonna claim Blueberry is a sick card that I would cram as 3x in every deck, but I do believe that it's generally a bit underrated and it does what we need it to here, though you could argue that 3x is too many. The common arguments regarding Blueberry are:

• it's good beacause it's an upgrade to the basic action card, so slotting some over decksize makes things better because we'd click to draw anyway

• it's bad beacause when you draw it you need to draw again to get to the cards you actually want, making it effectively act as a waste of click

My opinion is simply that I'd rather have this than many other forms of cards draw in my opening hand, especially when playing some sort of engine deck. Spending a single click and 0c to get a good start to a game is all I can ask for. I wouldn't feel good with The Class Act unless I had like 2 or 3 econ cards and don't feel confident having to invest a couple clicks and/or credits with Nuka, Lie Low or Bahia Bands without knowing what I'm getting myself into.

Again, it looks like you can do fine without them, so what do I know :P

"Why is there no Mutual Favor for Rising Tide? Isn't 1x too little?"

Oh I know what you're thinking. No, Marjanah is actually meant to be used here. Look, the fact that people will gladly Boomerang a Tatu-Bola to get rid of a Phật but also talk shit about this kitty is something I find kind of silly. Getting a fracter down - any fracter - just means we become able to interact with a lot of Corp ice and interact with their threats. I don't really care how we're doing it, we just need to. Sure, sometimes you'll find that it's better to make a silly run to save some money, which is not great, but it's better than not having the option of interacting altogether.

"This 2x Simulchip doesn't seem to be doing that much, is it fine to cut?"

You can. I like it because we can threaten Physarum to get out of awkward situations, recur Cupellation against kill decks to yoink their operations, draw to 6 cards in a pinch with LilyPAD or act as forbidden Regenesis tech in combination with Cup - the latter could also be done with an instant speed install from Q-Loop to overwrite Cup (#ProggyQgang), but it's a bit unreliable.

"Is Zahya even the best ID for the deck? Shouldn't we be playing Sable? What about MuslihaT?"

I think Zahya is correct (she's very versatile!). If we still had access to Info Bounty you'd probably be right about Sable, but Zahya currently reinforces some synergies and lets us get away with just enough additional value. If you find a way of adjusting some parts to make Sable work, great!

There's a chance MuslihaT is correct, as we can both draw the many breakers in the list or take a peek at the top of the stack to get some Q-Loop action before running. Ultimately I think that having a money ID just makes more sense considering we're assembling a draw engine.

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Initial reception

As you might expect, it wasn't particularly warm at first. The typical first impression is best described by one of the most profound sentences I've heard in quite some time:

but, like... why?

Thank you, Brandon. Poetic.

To be fair though, the deck was apparently easy to like after seeing it being piloted a little. Porkobolo, tuno and wowarlok were the first ones to witness it in action and almost immediately went 👀. Eventually they all decided to bring some variation of it to EMEA just a week after seeing it being played for the first time and giving it a go on jnet for a day or two. Here's tuno's reaction to trying out the list for a day, translated to english for you:

I had some doubts the deck would actually pick up steam in the TAIB group due to its excessive quirkiness, but I found myself pleasantly surprised! I've always found myself a little hesitant sharing some of my more outlandish ideas inside a competitive group, but the mix of reactions a good weird deck can cause is priceless:

Obviously, I had no doubt a certain fellow dirt eater would end up enjoying it:

Imagine getting a live reaction on stream too - just icing on the cake.

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Results

Clearly, the initial surge of adrenaline wasn't gonna be enough and the deck needed to prove itself on the big stage. Let's see how it performed so far:

EMEA Prep, Milan

The day I showed off the OG version of the list for the first time, going 2-1. I felt very well positioned in every game, losing due to a small but costly piloting error. The deck snatched 2 more wins in casual games, piloted by tuno.

jnet testing, online (duh)

Porkobolo, tuno and wowarlok got on jnet to jam the list a bit, to figure out if its performance in Milan could simply be a fluke. This is where the list showed real promise and the deck started getting tweaked, leading to the versions that actually make their way to EMEA Cologne.

All 3 players agreed on the following:
-3 Blueberry!™ Diesel
+1 Pinhole Threading

Porkobolo and tuno made an additional change:
-1 Carmen
+1 Revolver

The addition of Pinhole makes a lot of sense to me, not least because you're entirely fine making runs on archives for Q-Loop or Marjanah, though I believe it's often a bit of a crutch. The deck should allow you to get into servers when you need to without having to rely on it.

The Revolver / Carmen debate is mostly player preference and heavily depends on what matchups you expect the most. Carmen is pretty great to have against Sentry-heavy decks and Jinteki ice, letting you also use your Simulchips a little more freely.

EMEA Team Tournament, Cologne

The dirt eaters joined the unusual format and ended up with a combined 8-4 score, great result for a weird, 1 week old deck. I don't know how much the g-mods impacted the performance of the deck and the opponents' because, well, I wasn't there.

EMEA Main Event, Cologne

Despite additional practice the day prior, the W/L results aren't looking much better on paper, but the deck clearly showed it's got some legs, getting 2 out of 3 players in top cut contention: tuno and wowarlok. With the usual TAIB curse in action only one of them got to enter the final gauntlet and battle for additional style points and beans (which were very well earned by the end of the tournament). I won't pretend this is the side that got the most wins for any of the players involved, but I couldn't really ask for more as its first real test.

All things considered, I guess putting this in good hands also really helped it shine huh.

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Closing words

I never expected something like this could be picked up by THREE different players in a week and brought to one of the biggest tournaments of the year with this little testing. I'll forever be grateful to the people who believe in me and my creations and the ones who were willing to put up with my endless rants about the game when I struggled to find the fun in it. Additional shoutout to Porkobolo who even brought a variation of my Glacier Pravdivost list to EMEA and wowarlok who brought a variation of my Geisty Seb list to the Eternal side event.

Congrats to you all on your placements, you really fought like champs.

To everyone who's intrigued and wants to try this out, I hope you have as much fun playing this as I did building and trying out the first few versions.

Remember to eat dirt every now and then and stay safe, the dirt man could arrive at any moment!