Getting Zwicky with it[2-1 at APAC and Melbourne Megacities]

My journey with Netrunner began this year, I planned on waiting until elevation came out and dive in deep with the new set. However my good friend, Snarky, convinced me to jump in a bit earlier. So I started playing in late Feb/early March this year (2025). I played in the last Melbourne Districts of the pre-elevation standard with a couple of netdecks, and still didn't feel like I had a complete grasp of the rules of the game. I was pretty stoked to come out with 2 wins (and a pretty set of Spin Doctors). Once elevation was released I went pretty hard. I worked on playing frequently, learning the intricacies of the timing rules and learning the cards in the pool. Before long I was truly in love with this game and couldn't shut up about it, trying to get everyone I know into it (which would come back to haunt me).


Now onto the deck. I started off with allieflx's ZwickyModernism deck and had a lot of fun with that, but wasn't getting the results I wanted. At the Melbourne elevation launch event I only came out with 1 win, but still had a great time. First thing to go were the Byte!'s, freeing up valuable influence and giving me extra slots to work with. First I used this to splash for 2 copies of Seamless Launch because I still prefer to score out than kill. Following along with this mindset I dropped the End of the Lines and the Public Trails, though I did decide to add an extra Measured Response. With the spare 4 influence and my disappointment with the Valentão I decided to drop one Afshar and make things a lil weird by bringing in my old friend M.I.C.. This was a fantastic choice as my opponents rarely saw this coming and were usually ill prepared for the 4 strength, 3 sub click eater. With the Cleaver ban I felt the big Logjam wasn't quite worth it so I cut and decided to run 3 Tree Line instead. I then played around a lil with sentry spreads and was pretty happy with where I settled, and a quick swap from SDS to Basalt to add some nice recursion. This was the deck as I ran it for a couple of months to pretty decent success but I still felt something was missing. I began some coaching with a member of the Avatar's own party and he recommended I try out a little upgrade action. Enter Isaac. From the first game I knew it was right, using the Isaac to pump a Tree Line to 5 strength before expending another to make it 8. I was almost giddy with the result and realised, sadly, I no longer needed the Seamless (plus at this point I was flirting with deck size and extra agendas). Cutting 2 Seamless to add 1 Void felt so right. Having Isaac and anoetic on a remote just felt good.


To be honest, I wasn't expecting much when I signed up for the APAC online megacity (though I did have to take a day of leave from work). My goal was just to at least match my first tournament performance of two wins. But once I reached 3 wins I realised I could make the cut. Unfortunately my next corp game delivered me 10 agendas in the top 17 cards (after a mulligan) and I was unable to dig myself out of the hole. I ended up going 4 and 3 and was very happy with this result.


Next came the Melbourne Megacity. I once again went 2 and 1 with my corp, losing a game against a very well set up Hosh. However was let down a bit by my runner and my own stupidity. I realised halfway through my first game that I had left a bunch of my cards in my teaching decks I had used to teach a mate to play the day before, so took an automatic game loss. Big shoutout to everyone who came together to help me rebuild my decks and continue to play. (Kror, y.pro, Vale and snarky especially). I managed to salvage the situation and end the day with 3 wins and 3 losses, but I had an excellent time and am very much looking forward to what my future in Netrunner may look like.