Pond viruses

I haven't played Netrunner seriously for months, and I miss trying (medium-)hard. As a consequence, I haven't felt proud of any deck I put together or any net-deck I tried. Until this.

This deck was inspired by the ever-great Andrej at Métropole grid, who a while back tried to make Avgustina work in an Esâ shell. While his effort was commendable, I think Esâ alone is already so slot-hungry that adding Avgustina, viruses, and support to trigger Av during the corp's turn is just not feasible. I decided to try this in Hoshiko instead. With the incredible help of former meta-mate and great friend Functor, I've polished this list for a while and took it to a recent CO in NJ. The deck feels great.

It's full of decision points, and puts an immense pressure on the corp from early on.

Some notable cards and absences

• No breakers, no problem: breakerless Hosh was one of the first decks I had fun with when getting into the game through the Startup format. Botulus, Chisel/Charm, and Turtle are more than enough to get into remotes and pressure some centrals. A lot of our plan is non-interactive, so we need to pick our runs carefully. I experimented with Yusuf at one point, but the 2 mu is annoying. Audrey v2 was an idea at one point, but we don't trash cards reliably enough (we let the corp do that).

• Console: After trying a few options, LilyPAD emerged as a clear winner. We want to keep installing viruses, and need to keep drawing for more viruses. The +2 is necessary for our virus colony to thrive.

• A pet card: the card I'm most excited by in the deck is Heliamphora. Purge protection, wincon/pesky card removal (bye 1x End of the Line, Punitive Counterstrikes, Sting! etc). Hosting sabotaged SpinDos feels filthy. Most times, hosting Mavirus feels good, but running into it to trigger a purge when the corp has been holding cards in HQ for a while is priceless.

Thanks to Lucas/Functor for always being down to work on whacky ideas, to Kyle/Aurates for TOing a flawless event, and to Sanjay, Dee, and Theo for the fun carpooling to/from the event. It feels good to jack back in.