Man, I have played in too many store champs this season. I have been continuously bashing my head against the tournament wall, having missed the cut in 5 previous store champs on SoS. Bristol definitely shouldn't have been the tournament I broke the streak in - aside from the one world champ and 4 national champs (I am told), the remainder of the field was super strong. Thankfully, this deck managed to do the business for me and carried me into the cut and a match against Chris Dyer's CTM.

I was quickly stomped like the upstart I am, but it was a great experience and I had a fantastic day meeting some more of the many, many, many wonderful people that play netrunner in the UK.

You guys are all the best <3

Y U TRY HARD?

Chris - that guy is pretty good at this Netrunner thing, right? This is card-for-card the same list that went undefeated at the Reading Store Champs. Quorum was not legal for this tournament, so it felt like this was going to be CTM's swansong before Aaron Maron comes along to ruin the fun. I liked the fact that this was a leaner, no-nonsense version of CTM and it can close games even without a SanSan on the board, or threaten a breaking news into punishment from hand. It is super poor, but that just requires you to be very willing to let the runner dig in R&D. I trusted in the heart of the cards and they didn't let me down on the day.

Tournament Performance

The deck went 4-1 in the Swiss and 0-1 in the Cut, losing to Laurie Poulter's Power Tap Andy on both occasions. The first match was the classic CTM v criminal wash where I couldn't land a tag and he had exactly a billion credits for most of the game. The "fun-bracket" game was closer. I manged to land the HHN and rush out to 5 points before his board was set up.

I then got cocky and Icarus'd the match.

I had the Beale and a biotic in hand with no money. 7 credits away from the win, I drew into a GFI. I had pitched one in the bin already and decided to click for 3 and toss it, expecting Laurie to sec test archives rather than run it. With JHow in hand, I was hoping to install and pop him the next turn to get them back and then go for the win. Instead, Laurie correctly ran archives and scored 4 points, then leg worked me and hit the Beale which combined with the BN he had sniped early to win him the game.

The wins it scored came against Dumblefork, Temujian Whizz, Smoke, and "Stealth" Hayley.

It was a good time.

Changes

Abandon all hope for CTM. Just play something else.

But if you insist then Macrophage is probably a good include. Maybe?

Obviously, any and all suggestions are welcome :)