Yes You! You can win! Find your local meta, go to tournaments, play games, have fun, gain an eternal nemesis, Everybody wins.

My Corp Deck write up can be found Here! It’s much shorter than this. I promise.

Before I get into my long ramble/rant I NEED to point y'all in the direction of my arch-nemeses Mercury deck which went UNDEFEATED in both swiss and top cut. The link to SpaceIce's deck is HERE

The Ramble

Gonna get a bit sappy here for a second, still hasn't set in that I won a tournament, let alone my first in person tournament of any kind. I've been playing Netrunner as a kitchen table game with my brothers and friends for 7 years now and only discovered the wonderful Melbourne Netrunner Scene last year when I attended PAX. Ty Kror, HaverofFun, Darqk and everyone else for being so wonderful from the get go. It was a blast playing with the new cards in gateway, then expanding to startup and finally starting to play standard a couple months ago. (The first thank you to Andrej of The Metropole Grid whose hours of content let me absorb Standard without taking the plunge all at once)

I love the Netrunner community so much, I found y'all after my main online community of Blaseball (RIV) perished under the heel of capitalism and burnout. It was so reassuring to be reminded that multiple diverse, queer, welcoming, and cool AF spaces exist online and just because the one I was engaged with went away, doesn't mean they didn't exist anymore.

Never thought I was going to win the whole event. But I built the best decks I could, practiced them until I knew them inside and out, and played the best goddamned Netrunner of my life. Turns out that was enough!

The Deck

Onto the deck! Second Thank You to Andrej for the inspiration! Watched his Alice Merchant list kick ass (Link Here) and thought "hey! I could do something like that!" and then imported it to Hoshiko Shiro and made some other changes. I'm gonna try my best to give analysis of why the deck works but please know the core idea wasn't mine.

Going into my first Tournament I wanted a simple deck that is robust enough to survive misplays into flatline decks and reliable enough to let me play through bad draws.

The Plan is to mill our deck as fast as possible, install our doomrig (or just as much as we need for the matchup) while playing as many economy events as possible and trying to get a companion or two down + The Twinning for infinite econ and multiaccess late game

The core of the deck that supports this plan is Lago Paranoá Shelter, aided by Aniccam and the Anarch econ package of Steelskin Scarrings and Strike Funds. Let me tell you, flipping a Steelskin off Lago, drawing 4 and then Hosh at start of turn to 10 cards in hand feels INCREDIBLE. (bonus points if the Buffer Drive gets it back to the bottom for you to do it again later) I'm convinced that with world tree gone Anarch has the best econ package available. I think it runs out faster than Aesops Shaper due to their sheer scale of recursion, but this gets so much payoff so fast that it doesn’t matter that it technically can run out.

The Price gets its own note here because IT IS SO GOOD. every card in the deck is equally my favourite, but The Price more equal than the others. I'm trying to get through my deck as fast as possible to assemble economy and the rig, and this card does both at once, and was usually my first DJ Steve target if I still had half my deck left.

I saw many cool breaker suites in the format, but Buzzsaw Cleaver Echelon Turbine is still so unfair, I added an Ice Carver because it’s even more unfair in the matchups its needed in. and if I don't then it can just stay in the bin.

The deck should probably not be 48 cards. and possible edits I was considering up until the day include: The Fermenters are the worst cards in the deck, get another Daily Casts or some extra Tech like Light the Fire! or early aggression like Bankar Echelon could be Mimic so I can play at least one Miss Bones. But I knew that any edits I made to the deck would make them worse. It wouldn't be the deck I tested anymore, it would play different and have different capabilities and be more complicated. I have very little experience playing standard and need as much of my brainspace free to work out what my opponents plan is, I need to run my deck on autopilot (and I also knew I'd misspend credits somewhere and fermenter is a good failsafe against that eventuality)

The Meta?

On the meta: (not that I understand it at all) Runners are very strong and Corps are trying to go lightning fast to pull out bizarre kills out of nowhere. see Djupstad Azmari. I played a couple games which suggested I could produce my rig fast enough into Azmari, it didn't show up so I don't truly know how it would have played out. on the other hand there were a LOT of Punitive decks, and Aniccam + Steelskin makes you unkillable against them… unless you accidentally steal 6 points… like in my first game against the dastardly SpaceIce, luckily after that loss I CRUSHED his poor RH into the ground through sheer card draw (and only making single accesses until his punitive window had passed)

I was pretty boned if someone went assets. The practice I did into Oppo Research NBN showed me I play bad into it and the deck doesn’t have the economy to clear multiple Oppo's and the board. no bones is tough. Against Thule and Ob I fare better. Luckily none of these matchups showed up on my path to first! (Ob did but we ID'd and I won the friendly)

I don't think this deck solves the meta. but it is a blast to play and is way more forgiving than Sokka's Lat and less prone to bad draw like Grug Kit. both of which are probably more powerful in the right hands but not suited for me, I just didnt think i could reliably play them at a high enough level.

Closing Remarks

Final notes on the tourney. I think I am very lucky. I was lucky to discover NSG cards when I did, lucky to consume standard content like no tomorrow even when I wasn't playing, lucky to get into standard just in time for nationals, lucky to see the agendas when I needed to. but holy hell am I proud of myself, Netrunner has been in my head for 7 years and I always knew I was good at it, the external validation from becoming a National Champion is vindicating and anxiety inducing in equal measures. But it doesnt change that I feel proud of my games that weekend, it was the best Netrunner I've ever played, against the toughest decks and strongest players I've seen. It truly could have been anyone's tournament and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Love Y’all. Hope to play much more netrunner in the future!

In a twist that is deeply funny to me, National tournaments are going away next year, so just like my beloved Hellmouth Sunbeams (RIV) there will never be anyone to take the championship off me. STARE INTO THE SUN. THE SUN STARES BACK!!!

Worlds next? (jkjkjk please don't hold me to this)