2019 U.S. Nationals 11th Place

This is the Corp I used to finish 11th at the 2019 U.S. National Championship. I found myself in the hole early and though the wins in the final Swiss rounds brought me level to 2nd place on points, my earlier Runner errors resulted in the worst strength of schedule among the 27-pointers. The deck finished 6-0 with matchups comprised of two Valencia Estevez, a MaxX, a Leela Patel, a Smoke, and an Adam.

I started from Hoclor’s list found here: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/57257/same-old-argus-8th-at-worlds. After testing out some cards and returning nearly full circle, I arrived at the iteration before you. The Prisecs were underwhelming and the Excalibur failed to make any kind of impact during testing. Additionally, my team and Whiteblade advanced development of Liza lists to the extent that I believed any attempt to actually win the tournament would necessitate winning the Liza matchup.

During testing I found a more stock Argus had a nigh unwinnable matchup against Liza were she to employ a general strategy of taking a mulligan for The Class Act, playing with patience, and drawing the lockout pieces with relative consistency. As such, tech was needed in order to swing the matchup back to Argus. To this end, I cut the already underwhelming Prisec, shaved the number of Data Ravens due to their ineffectiveness as slowing Liza, and leaned into Consulting Visit. After testing Corporate Town to some extent but finding it too vulnerable to Political Operative and remote lock, I settled on Self-Growth Program (SGP) based on my past experiences with the card concerning its effectiveness at combating specifically Paparazzi. On the day I failed to face any Liza, but in testing the SGP dramatically swung back the Liza matchup to favor Argus.

Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to share in some games of Original Netrunner, and a special thanks to all of my friends who made the weekend such an incredible experience.