Well, well, well. Look at us gals. Here's my seasonal "CTZ Gunna Cook on Runner for Cascadia" tradition. I took this list to 5-2 across Swiss and the Throwback tournament at Cascadia (everyone please GO TO CASCADIA next year!)

Before we get into the who, the what, the when, and the why - let's start with the how. The where has been sufficiently covered above.

Like most of my more modern tournament writeups, we'll jump into a bit of Netrunner history and norms to properly set the stage.

THE SEBSTITUTE

ACT I - Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

When traveling for Netrunner tournaments, players have to fight a known and deep, dark evil that plagues the mind. It takes over the host, breaking down its established principles and morals. Isolation from the rest of the (testing) group sets in. However, most cases are resolved after a few rounds of playtesting, returning players back to the "correct" path.

The encounter usually starts about twenty minutes into the long car, bus, and/or plane ride in the journey. Due to players intense ideation on their perfected decklists for the event, there's a natural inclination to beg the following questions:

1. What have I missed? What cards am I not thinking about?
2. Did anybody else play against "BurgerKing" on Jnet? I had this crazy game against them at 2 AM where I think they were playing Dewi?
3. Maybe I should modify my no-breakers Mercury deck?

This first domino is what ultimately kicks off an unstoppable Rabbit Hole downspin, mutating and corrupting everything in its reach. Now you recognize the evil - the massive deck pivot that you know you shouldn't switch to with nearly no testing, no sense, and no endorsement from anyone with a sane mind.

En route to Seattle, at a ripe 6:10 AM takeoff time, I began my fight. The Wifi on the plane was actually working and loading things. I was recalling and laughing to myself about one of the first messages I sent to my teammate and great friend, ManInTheMoon. This was a previous artifact of an old battle:

Without viewing the list, you can gather what BS I was on. A hectic and non-caring Seb list that was "taking advantage" of a meager kickflip. Moon has always piloted exceptional Seb decks that experienced excellent tournament performance, most recently in Vancouver. I descended into madness, trying to figure out how I replicate some of his magic with my Evel Knievel-like tendencies.

I was struggling to find what I wanted. This was mainly due to my guesstimation that "ice-flourished" Weyland would be popular on the day. I was already on, and feeling great, about Sable, as one would / could / should do in this current meta. And then it hit me -

1. All these Seb decks play Transfer of Wealth
2. They are entirely disrpectful towards ice
3. Connection-entrenched and drawing machines
4. Recursion

"If it is to be said, so it be, so it is"

It was time to marry the two (really the 3 if you are counting my old bad Seb). I was no longer fighting the fear - I am the FEAR

Act II: What in Tarnation

The last major "card slot(s)" I was trying to evaluate in my pre-seb Sable was roughly 3 influence. The lines looked like this:

1. 1x Harmony AR Therapy: A classic "Safety Blanket" (-Dee) that is ultimately pretty dang good slot in Sable, where you can get value + programs that are trashed. If you aren't worried about program trashing, you can easily play this card early for more copies of already great cards. This was the leading horse in the race.
2. 1x Echelon & GameDragon PRO: While this certainly helps the criminal's lower base-strength breakers, it is ultimately unnecessary with in-house tools. Please enjoy the below exchange from Jai and I, where he correctly pushes me away from the cliff. It is still not known to this day if he is at the cliff himself.
3. 1x Knickknack O'Brien: I love this card! Draw and Money on a stick is rare these days and you look cool doing it. Especially amazing if you get this early. I still think of you O'Brien.
4. 1x Katorga Breakout: You already know what it is (and if you don't https://youtu.be/VlcGyPjBUdc?t=2243)

With my mind in the "right" place, I ventured into the wretched process of "reading" cards. Even "evaluating" value and execution lines. Here are the cards that entered and why:

1. Privileged Access has a big 'ole ZERO in the top left, and satiated the recursion requirements for replacing Harmony / Katorga.
2. Physarum entered the equation due to its printed play cost of ZERO and not needing to have a reduced discount that PA offers your resource install. I also longed for the days of "**Win*side Job" and something to help out Shibboleth and my lonely copy of Revolver.
3. Isolation was my cheap cigarette version of my lover O'Brien. At a minimum it grants "more real fake money" from Open Market; At maximum it is a faster and profit-generating delivery service for valuable resources and PA. This card would also instill fear in my opponents and stream commentators. A mandatory include.
4. Valentina Ferreira Carvalho offers some coupons for tags that you would proactively (ToW, PA) and reactively (Oppo) take. Additionally this card can use stated "real fake money", be sold once tagless, or mitigate the PA tag if you are tight on clicks (the most edge-case and poor use of PA)

Aside from those choices, the thing that made me go "What in Tarnation?" was Criminals getting lax about Cupellation. For the love of God - please, please, please do not remove this card from your deck, especially when you get it INFLUENCE FREE FOLKS.

Act III: When Bend

When (get it?) I think about this list and the games I've played with it, it maximizes on changing "the when" of the game. In line with previous commentator takes of "I know it looks like he is bending time"-Neuropantser, 2023, these cards directly enable you to do so. Another list:

1. Isolation allows for earlier econ generation/recovery, at credit levels most don't expect crim to execute without a run. As previously stated, it also allows you to get things into the bin that you'd like to. I want to shout-out Not-Yeti's incredible Mag list featuring "Rejig" to demonstrate a similar, and superior mindset https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/5d11188d-bbbe-48fc-9b03-3d45a3fd7d72/straight-up-jigging-it-6th-emea-2025
2. Physarum gives you the 0.5 Boomerang and/or the option to not pay the break cost of a beefy boy, all for no install cost. Ice is typically 1-2 subs. At worst you can click for 2 and then go where you need to.
3. Privileged Access used optimally gets you more card draw without having to draw. Heck yeah. That also changes "card damage math" quite a bit. It also brings forth the need to protect archives, which is even better when stacked with Hermes (aka less ice for other servers overall). On top of the Sable click, corps are getting hit re tempo left, right, and center. Bingo
4. Cupellation should be used to take those "burning a hole" cards in HQ or host high trash cost installed assets and upgrades. This also messes up corporate timelines as it pertains to Oppo, which will most likely still have a large-scale presence in top-tier decks.

Bend your time, but more importantly, bend your opponents'

ACT IV: Who Would Do This?

For folks that haven't heard my answer - Timmy Wong is without a doubt, my Netrunner GOAT. We've been spiritual siblings since we both took Gabe and Blue Sun to Worlds 2014, cementing the universe interchange that our brains meet at. They have the penultimate slot selections, commitment to "this is how I win"(cool) vs. "this is how I don't lose"(still cool, but slightly less cool), and ability to make their opponents question reality. All of the above, on top of an insane performance record and humanity that threatens to be god-like. This is what, no who, makes my GOAT.

As it always happens, I was ecstatic to be asked on stream, featured with an amazing teammate FAC3L355 (Austin). We are both very Netrunner aligned and I always hop at a chance to sling some cards with you. It was even better when I knew that Timmy would be commentating. It was time to win and kickflip so goddamn hard that I break my board. Here's your preview:

Please enjoy the match and see if you are someone who would play and/or extend a list like this - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2529302893?t=01h29m03s

Note: The entire tournament will be available at https://www.youtube.com/@TheJacksonHoward in a few days from this post, with the link commented by me down below once it is up

FINAL ACT: Why Tho?

Great question and one that I get all of the time. Ultimately, I'm a solid competitive Netrunner player when I am having fun and when I am causing my opponents and/or the audience to experience something they haven't before. If I'm not doing those two things, it is not "+EV" as the poker kids say. Nor does my performance benefit.

"The Tools Make the Man". This couldn't be more relevant and will forever power my netrunner goal - of putting on a goddamn show.

I'll be sticking with this deck in my rotation of 3 runners, already making a whole slew of fun changes. I promise I'll try to stream some of those soon. I've had the pleasure of traveling for 3 big tournaments thus far this year, and I'll be capping it off with Montreal and Worlds. I hope to see y'all at both and please come up and introduce me to you, or resume our previously started Netrunner journey together. More importantly - If you want me to show you the ropes of playing pinball at either of those tournaments, please partner with me. I have spots secured, people already interested, and you can ask the folks that joined me at Cascadia about that experience. I promise it rips.

Kiss Kiss and stay in trouble friends.

Extra-Credit: For throwback, I slightly modified this deck, adding 3x Account Siphon, a 2nd Valentina, and swapped out the Hermes for Detentes. My best "kickflip" in throwback was winning a game, with 8 hosted corporation cards on my side of the table. They had 10 installed cards. If only I could have had 2 or 3 more!