Oops All Barriers (3-2, 19th@ Scottish Regionals)

oor_mate_vlad 10

Explaining The Deck

One thing I'm known for in tournaments is bringing meme decks, and this is up there in the meme stakes.
This deck started life based on the Netrunner Carcinogenesis joke that "all Netrunner decks eventually evolve into PD".
A crab smoking a cigarette

This deck is really just Reg PD, but with a few changes based on personal preference and my current card pool, which is only missing Downfall (Dear, netrunnercards.co.uk, get stock in for the Ashes cycle already).
Major changes were:

  • I swapped out the Anoetic Voids for Adrian Seis. "Why?" I hear nobody ask. Well, Anoetic costs credits and cards to use, Adrian only costs as much as you want to spend and costs the runner more to trash. I don't think I had a single game where Adrian's ability didn't do the job I needed it to, whether that was protecting the scoring server or protecting himself when the runner tried trashing him. My only real issue with Adrian is that the card could be better templated to make his ability both easier to parse and to make his textbox look less like a Yu-Gi-Oh card.
    The "At What Cost" Thanos meme, describing how expensive it was for the runner to trash Adrian Seis

  • I also replaced all ICE with Barriers. Probably not the best decision for deckbuilding, but it was a meta call. SparKit is a popular deck in the Scottish meta, and I find it eternally frustrating that a deck is allowed to exist that can pull 18c worth of breakers out for 6c that can then break everything for pennies. My solution to this problem was thus: Orca can't charge things if there are no Killers to break, and Lobisomem can only charge itself once a run if there are no Code Gates on the board. It definitely did it's job against the one Kit deck I got paired in to, and to my surprise outperformed my expectations against other runners.

The MVP cards in this deck were, IMO, Adrian Seis, Brân, and Seidr. With the caveat that Adrian probably only works best in a paper environment where you can get a better read on your opponent. I 100% believe that this deck could place higher if it was being piloted by someone who was better at Netrunner than I am, because at the end of the day, I'm someone who slipped on some ice 10,000 years ago and was recently thawed out by scientists.
Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer explaining to the jury that he's just a caveman

OK, But How Did The Games Go?

Game 1: Didn't get to play the deck as my runner side game ended up going to time
Game 2: Corp split. This deck goes fast, and the tax to get through Brân and Seidr was too much for Self Defence Zahya (shout out to that deck, it's fun and I almost brought it to the event myself) to get through. Finished out the game with a double Seamless on an Ikawah for the win.
Game 3: Another game against Self Defence Zahya. PD went fast again, but I was struggling to find my Agendas so couldn't go as fast as it can. Round went to time, and I managed to bait the runner into making an expensive run on my remote by installing a Rashida (I was sure my Agendas were hiding in R&D) and fired Adrian's ability in order to force the access to only be on him.
Game 4: I've been mainlining Akiko since I got back in to Netrunner last year, and had developed my own version of girls independently, and without knowledge, of Harmonbee's own girls deck, so it was cool to finally go against that deck. Round ended up going to time with both myself and the runner having scored one Agenda each, unfortunately the runner had scored an Ikawah vs the OffOff I'd scored and I had done maths bad which meant I couldn't score out a last turn Agenda to get me the points for the win.
Akiko Nisei with sunglasses
Game 5: The deck finally got to play against a deck it had been built to face, and did exactly what it set out to do. Rapid fire scoring of Agendas paired with SparKit having to go slow due to Lob having to charge up before it could crack servers let me comfortably take my time. The only time I lost Agendas was due to an un-ICEd HQ getting hit with Burner while I had 2 in hand, the runner putting them on top of R&D and having enough counters on Lob to get through the server as well as a cataloguer to scoop the second.

Shoutouts

Firstly, to all my opponents! You folks played some amazing games, and it was cool to see you all.
Secondly to Tabletop Scotland for hosting the event.
And, finally, the most important shoutout. RoRo and the rest of the organisers for running the event, you're all champions and legends!

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