... what does Hermes do again? (1-2 @ Netbrummers Startup)

I've been playing Netrunner regularly for about 3 and a half years now. I wouldn't exactly call myself a veteran player, but I like to think I'm at least a cut above the average new player. So, if you're a new player reading this or, indeed, if you're any kind of player seeking advice from a semi-experienced player with generally middling tournament results, I have one piece of advice to give:

This tournament, I was absolutely on fire with my triggers: I remembered to get my clicks back with Sable, I remembered to draw cards off of Zenit Chip, I even remembered to put virus counters on Fermenter most of the time.

However, there was 1 very important trigger I, for the life of me, could not remember. One so important it was most of the reason I brought this deck to the tournament in the first place. One that probably cost me at least one whole game that I played this tournament.

For some reason I, could not for the life of me, remember to trigger Hermes.

I don't know whether it was because I was tired from an insomnia fuelled night and a big lunch, because I hadn't played the card before except on Jnet, or because I just installed it on turn 1 or 2 and proceeded to forget about its existence. Probably a mix of all three. All that I know is that I didn't meaningfully trigger Hermes once this tournament mainly due to missing its triggers. Don't be fooled by that, it's a really good card that can absolutely single handedly win you the game; it did plenty of times in my playtesting with this deck. But, if you were to bring it to an in person tournament, I would thoroughly recommend getting at least 1 paper practice game in so you hit all your triggers properly.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled deck writeup:

Strategy?

The idea of this deck is similar to a lot of Sable decks running around in both Startup and Standard: try to get as much value from a run as you can so you can get that sweet sweet value from running your mark every single turn. To that end, we're running Info Bounty, Zenit Chip, Red Team, Dirty Laundry and Carpe Diem. We don't have access to Aumakua in Startup, so we instead run S-Dobrado and Inside Job to get us through any particularly tricky ice early, Fermenter gives us a way to get good money against R+, Nuka is more raw cards than Diesel would be and way cheaper than Earthrise Hotel, and the one of Deep Dive can absolutely win you games against corps who think they can run you out of steam.

Results?

Round 1: Loss against Epiphany

I knew that at least 1 person amongst the group would be on asset spam. I knew I should've had a practice game against it. Did I? No, of course I didn't! As a result, I only learned that Federal Fundraising was an absolute must trash after I'd seen the same god damn Unsmiling Tsarevna on R&D 3 times and my econ had been ground into the dirt doing it. The game went to time, and I almost won due to my opponent stacking R&D incorrectly and giving me an Offworld Office, but I was just 1 point short of it by the end.

Round 2: Loss against Restoring Humanity

This is probably where my forgetting to trigger Hermes shined through the most. It was a very tense game, I stole up to 6 points and my opponent scored up to 5, and during all this I only remembered to trigger Hermes one time. After running Archives and being turned back by a Nanisivik revealing Tatu-Bola, I found my only option to stop my opponent sneaking out a 3/2 was to run the remote with 5 cards in hand, and hope that I wouldn't die to whatever was on there. 1 Attini and 1 Nanisivik Grid revealing Bathynomus later, it became apparent that the Tucana that was the facedown card in that server was not worth taking a look at.

Round 3: Win against Built to Last This was a tricky matchup, as a Pharos on HQ and a Tree Line on the remote proved incredibly tricky for my Curupira to get through. Nevertheless, through the lack of ice on the other remote servers and Inside Job allowing for regular remote checks, I managed to get the points required to win the game fairly quickly.

Conclusion?

While I think this deck is a little clunky and unoptimized, I think the main takeaway from this tournament is that I could've pilotted it a hell of a lot better. While it's quite difficult to get in person games in for me due to my current situation, I think having my decks proxied earlier and doing a little bit of self play could've gone a long way to eeking out 1 or 2 more wins in this 3 round tournament.