This is the Apocalypse Hoshiko deck that I played to a 7th place finish at UK Nationals 2022. I was undefeated throughout the tournament, although I did only go 2-2 with it at President of Servers the day before. Thank you to Mike P/Leachrode for building it, and to Osclate/Laura for sharing her thoughts about the deck with me. She also played it on the day, although her list is slightly different.

Preamble

Going into the event we were all pretty set on playing Drago R+ Tempo/Prison as our Corp, but could not decide on a Runner. I played a bunch of test games with Freedom, but we ended up dismissing it because although it has a very strong matchup against all the HB decks, its generally weak against any NBN deck with Hard-Hitting News, particularly R+. I've never been very good at Shaper, so I decided to not even test with the Kabonesa Wu deck that was being considered. I did have success in testing games with the 419 list that most of the Process ended up taking, but I never perform quite as well with Criminal as it feels like I should.

A few days before the event, Mike P/Leachrode posted an Apocalypse Hoshiko deck that he was considering, as in theory, Apocalypse is good against the R+ decks, and the influence allows you to play 3 of them, along with 3 No Free Lunches and 3 Pinhole Threadings. I didn't get to test a lot of games with it, but the theory was solid and I did find that Apocalypse was pretty crushing against most of the random stuff I'd expect to see in Swiss. With that said, I still had no idea what the correct Runner pick was, so I just packed Freedom, 419 and Apoc Hoshiko for Nats and assured myself that once we were all together in person, we'd figure it out in plenty of time.

Cut to the night before UK Nats, and no one had any idea. We hung out at the pub for a while alternating between discussing what Runner to play and where to go for dinner, and failing to figure out either. A few people were locking in Wu, which I desperately did not want to play. At that point everyone seemed pretty down on 419, reasoning that his matchups are actually pretty similar to Apoc Hoshiko, but with a lower power level. I didn't want to go back to their AirBnB until 1am, so I decided that I'd probably play Apoc, and left.

In the morning it turned out that they'd all talked themselves back into 419 (see Mike's 419 writeup above), but by that point I knew in my heart that really, I wanted to play this. By the time I finished my morning shower, I knew what I was registering.

The Actual Deck

This deck revolves around the card Apocalypse, which is a good card because it trashes all of the Corp's installed cards, provided that you can run all of their centrals in one turn. I'm not a die-hard Apoc player, and haven't played it very much in tournaments in the past, but the logic behind playing it right now is very solid. The classic Apoc tech is pretty much at an all time low; defensive upgrades are getting cut because everyone has Pinhole Threading, Border Control doesn't have much of a home, Ag is only good if you're Whiteblade, and Crisium isn't seeing much play either. Plenty of Corps are focused on building a big remote while only putting 1 or 2 ice on centrals, which is where Apoc thrives. There are still some people playing asset heavy decks out of NEH, Asa, and CtM, and this is pretty much the best match up you can hope for. Of the decks you might expect to see, your worst matchups are Grinder PE and pure Fast Advance Sports Metal. There was not a lot of chatter about people playing these before the event, so I felt confident in this deck choice. I didn't play against either of those at any point.

For the most part, you just want to sit around making a bunch of money while occasionally making accesses so your ID flips. Once the Corp has installed enough cards and/or looks like they're about to actually advance their strategy, you Apoc them, reset and go back to making money. Its far more important to prevent the Corp from advancing their gameplan than it is attempting to win, so I'd recommend against Stargating aggressively or spending too many clicks running HQ. Its important to figure out what the Corps path to victory is as quickly as possible for this reason.

Pinhole Threading is a huge help here, because you can wait a little longer on pulling the Apoc trigger while avoiding being bated throughout a taxing remote server. This is particularly important against R+, because you really want to be killing at least 2 Funhouses/Endless Eulas on your first Apocalypse. No Free Lunch does a lot of work here too, you can wait and see if they actually have Drago before Apocing, and you can pull off a Apocalypse through tagging ice and simply remove the Tags with NFL before Apocing.

This list isn't perfectly tuned. By the end of testing I felt like 3 Botulus was too many, but hadn't tested any replacements. I wanted to play Imp to give you some hand attack and way to deal with defensive agendas, but Imp isn't a good enough card for it to be worth registering untested. In the end I just played a weird 1-of Gachapon, with the logic that it helped you deal with early gear checks in a similar way to the Botuluses, while also finding more permanent solutions, and even econ with Fermenter. It felt fine on the day, but I might experiment with some other options.

Osclate/Laura had a 2nd Mad Dash, which also might be better. You really want to have Dash when you find a 5/3, and you occasionally Pinhole Threading a newly installed card that you expect to be a Rashida and find an agenda instead. I also ended up cutting a Daily Casts for a Liberated Account, because the turns where the Corp doesn't install any new non-ice cards, letting you install and use a Liberated 3 times, really feel like they put you ahead.

You might feel tempted to cut some Icebreakers. I would strongly recommend against doing this. You need to find breakers early to contest 1 ice remote servers or prevent early Dragos/Agendas, and once you play Apocalypse you usually need to find more breakers again.

Thanks & Conclusion

Thank you to PaulyG and all of the judging/event team for a wonderful event. This was my first irl Netrunner tournament in 3 years, and despite initially feeling anxious about it, I ended up having a wonderful time. Thank you to the Process/Bears team - Binarydogs, ChrisFerg, CableCarnage, Kysra, MikeP, Nemamiah, Osclate RotomAppliance and Whiteblade for letting me hang out and test with them for the event. In particular, thank you to Mike for building this deck and Osclate for actually playing it a bunch.

Why is this deck called Dick's Boardstore

There was a shop near where we were staying called Big Dick's Boardstore, and to me this is very funny. Also the deck doesn't have boat I guess.