The Last Best Outfit

I’ve never actually been to Montana. I hear it’s beautiful - the stark, windswept high plains slowly giving way to the sheer grandeur of the Rockies. I’m particularly struck by their state motto, “The Last Best Place.” It’s truly poignant - the idea that not only is it the best place in the world, but it’s the last one there’ll ever be - nowhere else will ever top it. It’s sad, too, when you stop to think about it. In a world so full of beauty and natural splendor, this is it. There’s nothing left to find. No more hidden valleys or grand ranges you can stumble upon that make you go, “wow - nothing could ever top this.” We already found the Best Place, and it’s Montana. There won’t ever be another chance to find it anew.

This deck is the Last Best Outfit. At 5-2 and 28th place (1 win off top cut, give or take some SoS), this was the highest ranked Outfit in the last Main Event at Worlds it will be legal to play, and as such is the last deck that can ever lay claim (however poorly) the title 'Best Outfit in the World.'

The Story

The Outfit and I go way back - relatively speaking. I’ve only been playing Netrunner competitively for a little over a year now, despite playing for a little over two years. I built my first standard decks right before The Automata Initiative released (rip Deuces Wild, gone too soon) - before that, I had just been playing kitchen-table netrunner with my friend and the person who got me into the game, Will (@frondlyplatyus, who also designed those lovely Outfit Business cards that you should definitely buy if you haven't already).

Will’s corporation of choice was always some flavor of Weyland. I cut my teeth playing against his Big Deal Outfit, learning the ropes of standard using net-decked Reg Hosh and Q-Loop Arissana lists, and eventually testing out my own brews, like a central pressure Sable list that served me well at my first real tournament (shout out to the folks down in Austin, TX for knowing how to throw a tournament!). Fast forward a few months, and Lady Killer has just dropped - a couple of players in our local meta sleeve it up and don’t unsleeve it for months. It feels unstoppable, especially to my now irreparably crim-addled sensibilities. We start hosting some tournaments ourselves here in DFW, and there’s always some Outfit - usually only 1 or 2 players out of the 20 or so attendees, but they’re always around.

Despite having all that exposure to Outfit, by the time Worlds Season rolled around, I’d never actually sleeved up an Outfit list myself - it was always the BBEG, that terrifying opponent with a seemingly obscure line always jumping out of nowhere to steal the win.

That said, I felt it was going to be a really good meta pick going into Worlds. I had a gut feeling from playing jnet in the few weeks leading to worlds that there were going to be a lot of ice destruction decks running around, and as it turns out, The Outfit can install more cheap 6 strength ice than there can be Devil Charms in a deck. I still wasn’t totally sold (the siren song of FA 5/3s is real), but then I brought [this] deck to our last tournament pre-worlds and swept. That was when I started feeling like I had something with real potential to go the distance.

The Deck

Kill Line One

The main aim of this deck is to murder the runner. You have a number of tools at your disposal to achieve this. Primarily, and most reliably* (we’ll get to the Shaper Problem in a bit), is the tried and true City Works Project → Punitive Counterstrike fork. Pretty much any combination of upgrades in the server will amplify the damage a City Works can deal on steal, as the omnipresent threat of an anemone pull can slap the runner 2 more damage than expected, severely hindering their ability to properly do Punitive math.

Kill Line Two

The secondary kill line is much more exciting, and is the whole reason the deck exists: Threat Level Alpha → End of the Line. TLA is a card that Should Not Exist. Being able to slap the runner with a tag off of an operation that requires no prior interaction is already quite rough. Once you add in that to follow up with an EOTL, you only need 6 more credits total than the runner? Well, that’s just plain mean. The original idea with the deck was to tag the runner with 2 core damage off of Djupstad Grid, and then just kill the runner, straight up. Getting practice in against Lat leading up to Worlds disabused me of the effectiveness of that strategy, but it is still remarkably effective versus crim - out of all of the games I’ve played with this deck, in and out of tournaments, I’ve dropped a total of one game to a 419, and haven’t lost to any other criminal.

Kill Line Three?

Djupstad Grid was the original kill engine of the deck, but as I played and developed it more, it became more the garnish to an already delicious meal - excellent to find and use, but by no means necessary for the win. Tagging the runner with random damage in a Deep Dive meta is surprisingly effective at slowing the game down - in every game I played with this deck versus a DD deck in Swiss, I was able to snipe at least 1 DD and delay the runner’s wincon by a good number of turns. Beyond that, denying Lat his draw, and bring anarchs and crims who are relying on installed cards other than SCR to avoid lethal, it can be devastating.

Small Tech Includes

Pivot - great card. I used it to find Too Big To Fail a surprising number of times, and the flexibility it gives you to find or threaten kills is great.

Hammer - This is a lifesaver in the Esa matchup. It's also relatively taxing for revolver, so I like it.

Regolith - I took out the hedge funds at one point to fit a bit more ice, and felt that the deck was too reliant on finding your Hostile Takeovers and TBTFs. I ended up using it several times, and it always felt good. 7/10 would include again.

Standoff - This is a great card when Hermes is not as much of a meta force. Even then, Tucana allows you to somewhat negate the issue of Hermes, as long as you have enough ice already on the table. Just pull an Archer and put it on the server you care most about, and eventually it doesn't matter what they bounce. Just don't forget you discarded it if they do install that Hermes, as that bounce can hurt if you're not expecting it.

The Takeaway, aka The Shaper Problem

If there’s anything I’d change if I were to bring this deck back for another round, I’d improve the quality of the ice suite, and maybe cut the Djupstad. Only having 13 ice in the deck makes you very reliant on your Tucana - the game I dropped versis chih's Esa in Round 7, I failed to draw much ice other than a Hammer very early, and I couldn’t keep a server on the table long enough to outlast the sabotage. Sometimes, your deck is just upside-down, and you just lose.

The only other loss - versus Kysra’s Lat in Round 11 - I feel was not a deck loss, but a player loss. As the last game of the night, with both of us having already made Day 2, we were both playing very loosely, and I at least was not on my A-game. It came down to Kysra having more reps and more experience on their deck than I did on mine, and they used it to great effect. Not only did I misplay at a critical moment, dropping 4 points to a trickshot (never install the Above the Law over the Standoff late in the game if you have a tucana already on the table), but I lost the weighted coinflip to trash the deep dive that they used to win it - 2/3rds chance to hit it with the installed angelique, and I missed.

The Shaper Problem

And so we come to The Shaper Problem - "blurbie," you might ask, "isn’t bad pub a terrible," terrible thing to give to a run-based shaper engine?

Yes. It is. It’s devastating and awful and feels terrible.

That said, with every rep I got in versus Lat, I started seeing more and more lines to consistently win. Scoring out an early City Works eases the pressure considerably, and doggedly staying on only 4 bad pub really keeps your ice feeling properly chunky. There are lines, and with sufficient practice, I think this deck can have, if not a favorable, at least a mostly even matchup into shaper, which is honestly fine considering how dominant it is into reg anarch and crim.

Also, fun fact - if the only card you have installed in the root of the server is a rezzed Angelique, turns out the runner is forced to access if they pinhole. It feels great every single time.

Closing Thoughts

All in all, I feel that I failed this deck more than this deck failed me, due to my insufficient prep. I wish I could take this deck for another round, but unfortunately, there won’t be another opportunity. It’s the Last Best Outfit, complete with all the regret and baggage and could-have-beens that come along with that kind of finality. I hope I did the ID justice with my final send-off!

Big thanks to everyone involved with putting on this amazing tournament, with a special thanks to Kyle and Ryan for being my worlds-prep punching bags and playing those Lat decks you hate over and over for me.