The Tree of Death (4-2, 24th Overall)

The deck's name comes from a translation of the name Mti Mwekundu, which translates into Red Tree, but under a different dialect is Murder Tree. Or so I'm told. The Tree of Death sounded cooler, so I went with that.

The general gist of Jinteki of late can be best summed up by @Joseki: "If you score Nisei early, you win more." Strangely, I usually ended up scoring Obo first. Eh. Maybe I should try to include Fast Track...

The games I lost were the games that I was agenda flooded, in Round 1, to the memelord, metamate and friend @ctz and in Round 6, to the eventual fourth place finisher, Raj (whose SN I don't know).

I've returned to serious Netrunner after approximately three years of hiatus. I started playing in the middle of Opening Moves and played non-stop at high-level play until August of 2014. I credit the San Francisco meta for putting me through my paces and getting me roughly back to speed in about four months.

Still, my inexperience showed and cost me a game in Round 6 (on the runner's side), so I still have quite a ways to go.

This deck was loosely based on @phette23's Fresno winning build. Admittedly, I did not have time to test this variant before Seattle. 4-2 on a sight-read is pretty good. By my math at the time, I was in contention to make the cut until the final round. Then afterwards, I found out I was likely in an untenable position because of SoS.

I built this deck with three ideas in mind: 1) Rushing out Nisei Mark II is good. 2) MKUltra and Black Orchestra are incredibly inefficient so let's make Val (and other Anarchs) work for it. 3) Jinteki ICE has come a long was since Neural Katana.

Most of the deck is pretty self-explanatory.

The MVP of the deck: Inazuma. I have loved this card for a very long time. I was old-school Jinteki. Chum -> Data Mine was my signature corp play. (And of course, both were retired. Oh well.) With MTI's ability, Inazuma can be the lone ICE guarding a server and then a variety of interesting possibilities arise.

Inazuma -> Envelope. It's a hard ETF until they get both the Clip and Blorch. (Or burn bitey bois on the Inazuma). Plus, it discourages farming of the Wheel that Turns. Inazuma -> DNA. Ouch. Inazuma -> Anansi. OUCH. Inazuma -> Komainu. Child's dream. (Done in Round 2.)

But what about Datasucker/Ice Carver? Yes, that's a magic bullet that essentially renders Inazuma blank. Only one person ran that though in Round 6.

But what about EStrike? Yes, it's a card. It's moot until you play Scarcity or score. But that's true for any runner current. I played SoR defensively unless I was against a runner that looked to be Resource-Heavy.

Why Jua? Purely a meta call. MKUltra usually gets to enter the game but it's great early on the outer layer of the scoring server. If the subroutine fires, great. If not, just as well. Probably cutting to fit the 3rd Surveyor though.

Why no Data Loop or Kakugo? Well, I've played quite a bit with @westonodom's ATV ATV build and could never get comfortable playing with it. Nothing wrong with the deck, just personal preference. Plus, getting that dream server of DL -> DL -> K with Ash in the wings, never seemed to happen.

Why no GFI? Influence for starters but the notion that a good runner can always steal Obo on command is wrong. But the presence of Snare! makes more runners hesitant to snatch Obo unless they are prepared. And Film Critic has become less of a thing, so that's nice too.

Round Breakdown vs. @ctz. Loss. CV Maxx. Ugh. Had a scoring window that slammed shut when he finally found his MKUltra. I was flooded when CV attacked anyway. GG.

vs. Freedom. Win. Deck hummed like a dream. Stinson fired multiple times. Had the child's dream happen. Had my choice of outs.

vs. @paullama. Timed win. My play of the tournament occurred during this round. Time was declared during Paul's run on his last click of my scoring server, which had unrezzed Stinson, two Battys and a double advanced Obo. Made him spend just about everything to get through my Inazuma -> DNA Tracker -> unrezzed Envelope/Jua? -> Surveyor server. He had four cards in hand. Won the Batty psi to resolve a 1 net damage sub of tracker. Score out the Obo next turn.

Round 4 - vs. Val. Win. I was flooded but managed to rush it out. Nothing really important to report here.

Round 5 - vs. Timmy Wong. Win by concession. Tim Wong has forgotten more about Netrunner than most people will ever know. There are people who are better than deckbuilding than me. Then there's Timmy. Only played him three times. Great matches every time.

I'll admit I had no idea what was going on for most of this match. I just shrugged and decided to my thing anyway and let everything play out. It worked.

Jua fired a couple times for Film Critic...or Film Critic, then Film Critic or Net Mercer. At some point (and even I missed it), I got his barrier breaker through net damage and Envelope was impassible.

Round 6. Loss. CV Val. Agenda flooded. Mulligan. Even worse agenda flood. Oh well. GG. I lost to a better player on an inferior draw. No shame in that.

"What was your plan for CV?" I didn't really have one. Now I know Voter Intimidation is a card. My strategy was to take a credit every turn and try to keep my hand full of ICE and build enough redundancy into the deck where a five advanced CV wouldn't be fatal. It wasn't in Round 1, it was in Round 6.

"What was your plan for the turtle?" Hope that I didn't play @pj20! Haha. Seriously, it was rush and wishing I knew about Navi before the tournament haha.

"Why no Moons or MCA?" Admittedly, I didn't really know the cards very well. I liked the one design that took 7th. It's a better mousetrap than mine. My view was that it's better to go with what you know and what is pretty good than what is objectively better but what you have no idea how to pilot. Didn't want a game loss because I wasn't 100% sure how to use a card.

I was either on this or Jeff's PU Fresno build. I stand by this choice. Although the PU deck is pretty fun.

Thanks for reading!