Punitive Azmari (13th @ CBI)

Background

I started playing netrunner earlier this year and really struggled to find a corp deck that I liked. I finally tried playing Azmari glacier, and found out I really like the glacier playstyle, where ice placement and future planning can be rewarded. I ran into an issue when preparing for the tournament play though, where playing pure glacier in timed rounds felt really difficult. So I played around with trying to make the deck faster, but it didn't really feel like the same deck anymore (it slowly slid into a deck that should just be R+ tag spam). So I decided to try adding Punitive Counterstrike as a second plan and it worked out!

Deck Strategy

My personal way of playing the deck is to not treat scoring out or Punitive as a main or backup plan. Depending on the matchup and the board state determines which gameplan you should be pivoting to. The scoring gameplan is to get a single 5/3 scored, and then use Echo Chamber to break the tie before time. If the runner sets up faster than you, then Punitive can help play from behind. Both strategies require a lot of credits, so try to focus on keeping up money on the runner. I've been going back and forth on whether 3 Punitive is better than 2 Punitive 1 Gaslight. Being able to slot more virus tech helps in some matchups, but if the Gaslight doesn't fire then it feels pretty bad.

@ The CBI:

The deck performed really well at the CBI, going 3-1. The game I lost was to DoomRat on the Loup Bufferdrive deck, which is a terrible matchup. Infinite Imp plus Tranq sealed the game very quickly. The three wins were against Sable, Zahya, and Arrisanna.

The Sable and Zahya games were very similar in approach. Try to build up a defense on servers and deny the run based value. In the Sable game we went to time, and I won 4 points to 3 (following the plan above of score once then echo chamber). In the Zahya game, they made a twinning run on R&D to steal a Send a Message. On my turn I had exactly enough credits to click Regolith, double Punitive for the win. Arissana played out very similarly to the Zahya game funny enough. They set up a big conduit dig on R&D, stole 6 points in one turn, then died to Punitive.

Thanks

I very recently got into playing Netrunner and this was my second tournament (first one online). Huge shoutout to all the judges who helped run the event smoothly and help explain things I was unsure about. Also huge thanks to all of my opponents for the great games and a lovely tournament. I came into this without much confidence on how I'd do and everyone was great. I made it tantalizingly close to top 8, which just gives me more motivation for next time!!