Poutine (1st place @ NorCal regionals)

tmoiynmwg 6329

The 2017 Berkeley regional took place on May 13th and boasted a field of 48 competitive players from the west coast. This runner deck had 5 wins and 2 timed losses. Its corp counterpart was Nightmare Moon.

Swiss standings and pairings are temporarily available here.

Edit (5/20/17): @bluebird503 won the 34-person Seattle regional with a 46-card version of this deck, adding 1 Political Operative.

A little over a month ago I participated in a team unified tournament with @jimmypoopins and @crfluency. I was the criminal player and did a fair bit of testing with Jimmy's Nexus DLR Andy deck (based on this Canadian special) before the tournament. We all thought the deck was very strong, but we had some card conflicts and the deck really clashed with my own playstyle, so I ended up switching to a Gabe deck at the last minute. (I faced 2 HB glaciers and a PE so this turned out to be a terrible choice)

If you've never seen this type of Data Leak Reversal deck, the full combo goes like this:

  1. Use Jak Sinclair to make a run. Use either Nexus or John Masanori to end the run and take a tag.
  2. Activate DLR 4 times.
  3. Trigger Citadel Sanctuary to remove the tag. If the corp pays a bunch into the trace, use an Aaron counter.
  4. Repeat until there is no R&D.

Fast forward to 3 days before the tournament when I jammed some test games against @beyoken playing Mooninites. I stayed up until 3am trying about 6 different runners and succeeded in winning a grand total of one game. OK, so maybe I need a new plan for my runner...

Despite my own lack of skill at piloting DLR Andy, it seemed like an increasingly attractive option for a lot of reasons: Horizontal HB draws so many cards that they practically mill themselves out every game. Glacier has trouble outracing DLR while defending against siphons. Against Skorpios rigshooter you have a powerful win condition that doesn't require breaking any ice and dodges Hunter Seeker. And the combo of Citadel Sanctuary plus Power Taps singlehandedly beats just about every NBN deck.

A few words on individual card choices.

  • Mammon: Significantly more expensive to use than Overmind or Vamadeva, but it's still the strongest AI option in a vacuum. You only really use it to beat gear checks and land siphons, so just put it down and don't touch it until the corp tries something funny.
  • Fisk Investment Seminar: Turns out that you can't actually beat Marilyn Campaign without this card
  • Dr. Lovegood: Blank Drug Dealer most turns, The Source when you want to steal an agenda, Masanori when you're afraid of taking too many tags, Black File while the corp is threatening to win, and Mammon to assert dominance

Quick tournament recap:

  • Swiss round 1 against @tzeentchling on EtF fast advance. My corp game took a long time and the extent of my practice with DLR Andy in the last month was 1 game on Jnet. Turns out that I am completely unprepared for how many fucking triggers both of my decks have. Kris rushed to 6 points and put a card into his impenetrable Holmegaard server before time is called, I only have 2 points and no way to get 2 more agendas in one turn. I can play The Source and/or Black File to extend the game and deny Kris the full win, but that would directly hurt my strength of schedule, so I let Kris score out instead.
  • Round 2 against @alexstevens on Blue Sun. Again I played corp first and again it wasn't over quickly. Blue Sun got off to a pretty slow start and I managed to snipe 1 early agenda. Then he rushed to 4 points before time in the round. I DLR'd a couple times and whiffed on Archives; 2-4 timed loss. I wasn't feeling too great about my deck choices at this point...
  • Round 3 against @dickoff on Personal Evolution. This was probably my favorite game of the day. Matt mushins a card and ices HQ on turn 1; I CF'd a Supplier and hosted Temujin before siphoning to play around Komainu, but the ice is actually Mind Game! Mind Game redirected me to the mushined server and I reluctantly decided to jack out by putting both resources on the bottom of my stack. Of course it turns out to be an agenda. :( Later on The Source saved me by giving me extra warning to use Aaron counters before Matt can Trick out a Philotic to deal 5 damage. Then we started a race where I mill 4 cards a turn while Matt draws 4 cards looking for 24/7. He finally found it near the bottom of R&D and slammed it - the Philotic ability emptied my grip and stack exactly. I can't run any more because I know he plays Neural. Fortunately it turns out that Matt didn't have any Jacksons in his deck, so he just decked out over the next 3 turns. IMO it's games like this that really showcase why Netrunner is so great!
  • Round 4 against @Segin on SYNC Fiery Informant. This matchup seems pretty much unloseable for Andy, Citadel and Taps blank all of SYNC's ice as well as their win condition.
  • Round 5 against @westonodom on NEH railgun, another matchup that is difficult to lose. I balanced setting up my resource rig with pressuring Wes's economy and sniping agendas. When time was called Wes confidently fired off the combo, but he forgot about the second ability on Citadel Sanctuary! To kill through Sports Hopper + Citadel NEH needs to double Diagnostics into triple Boom - that's incredibly expensive, and doesn't even work if Andy has an Aaron counter.

  • Cut round 1 against @bluebird503 on EtF glacier. I assumed that Kyle would be on Mooninites because I knew that he'd been helping test the deck for weeks. Later he told me that he had played his first physical Moons game the night before and immediately switched to a @simonmoon Foodcoats list. The triggers were just way too much XD Anyway, once he rezzed an Adonis his actual gameplan became evident, so I switched from purely setting up my combo to pressuring his economy. Turns out that Kyle had gotten the worst corp draw in the history of Netrunner, with 5 agendas in his HQ for most of the game and a million tracer ice that were worse than useless against double Power Tap. Not the most glamorous game to win, but I'll take it...

  • Grand finals against @sirris on Skorpios shell game. Jon played this game really well whereas I'm screwing up left and right due to intense sleep deprivation. Luckily for me, Jon wasn't too far off the mark when he quipped that Citadel Sanctuary singlehandedly beats his deck. He landed a bunch of tags through various scary tricks but he can't float enough credits to punish me or trash my Fall Guys without opening himself up to siphon, so my Citadel just merrily dropped all the tags while giving me credits. Eventually I set up the full DLR combo and milled him out for the win!

Bonus props to:

  • @lopert and @dien for creating the original deck, and @beyoken for sharing his updated version with me. It's a real terror!
  • @jimmypoopins for his tips on how to play DLR Andy, without which I would have been completely clueless
  • The Eudemonia game store for hosting the regional in a beautiful location and giving out tons of door prizes and store credit. (I grabbed Mice & Mystics with my winnings - so excited to try it out!) I would totally attend a repeat tournament again next year.
  • @aleph_c for TOing the tournament and giving up his chance to play. Adam is a true rules guru and ran everything super smoothly.
  • @Murphy for recording games from the top cut. Look forward to seeing the videos on his channel!
  • @mike.summers for streaming many of the later games in the top cut through his phone, holding the stream with his hands even though he was smack dab in the middle of a solid 24 hours of driving and playing Netrunner. Bravo to Mike, a real hero (and a real human being).
23 comments
15 May 2017 Murse

I've been seeing Dr. Lovegood/black file in a lot of decks. How exactly does that interaction work?

15 May 2017 rubyvr00m

@Murse basically you can blank the black file and it loses the text that tells it to remove a counter. This basically keeps it in play indefinitely until the corp has 7 or more points, at which point blanking it would also erase the text that prevents them from winning. Practically, this means you don't have to let the Black File tick down until the corp has already met their win condition and then it buys you two more turns to close the game.

15 May 2017 StarlightCrusade

Saw the name, stopped to read, very interested! Do you find the deck works better with Temujin and the Source included instead of more copies of the essential combo cards?

16 May 2017 x3r0h0ur

What beats it?

16 May 2017 ZiNOS

@x3r0h0ur HB rush? Blue Sun Rush with Atlas Train? Acute nausea that results in the runner unable to continue the game? Cannot think of anything else actually.

16 May 2017 clercqie

"Fisk Investment Seminar: Turns out that you can't actually beat Marilyn Campaign without this card"

Walk me through this, would you?

Congrats on the win!

16 May 2017 Hallenbach

Nice deck!

Could somebody explain the interaction between Dr. Lovegood and Mammon, please?

16 May 2017 nutritionalzero

Félicitations, monsieur Wong. Parmi toute les poutines, la votre est certainement la plus belle. Congrats, I think this deck is the best of its type.

16 May 2017 webster

@hallenbach like Timmy indicated, it asserts dominance. It allows you to forego the need for language in indicating to your opponent that the game is beyond the event horizon. It's something akin to a start of turn wink. In a significantly winning position, it allows for you to inform your opponent that there can be time saved for both of you. In a significantly losing position, it allows for you to inform your opponent that while you recognize there can time saved, you require that they be the one to swing the sword of your demise.

16 May 2017 adquen

@clercqie: Not sure, but I think the thing with Marilyn Campaign is that is shuffled in R&D if overinstalled. So while the corp can ensure they can do this at the end of their turn, they can not deck themselves. The way to do this in HB asset spam would be Advanced Assembly Lines - as long as you can have one of them stick on the table, you don't lose, even when milled to zero cards.

16 May 2017 Klopstock

@adquen: What I think is important here, is that you overinstall one Marilyn Campaign with another one, thereby creating an infinte loop in which you can't get decked. The only way to beat this loop is to get into R&D and trash the Campaign from there. Or use Fisk Investment Seminar to deck your opponent.

17 May 2017 tmoiynmwg

@StarlightCrusade: Definitely. Temujin provides the startup capital necessary to set up Security Nexus, while The Source has a huge impact on the corp's ability to score safely.

@clercquie: @adquen hit it on the head. If the corp can endlessly reshuffle Marilyn into their deck then they can't lose by decking.

@Hallenback: Load up Mammon with credits and then Lovegood it so that they don't go away at the end of your turn. I recommend slowly assembling one giant menacing stack while never breaking eye contact.

@nutritionalzero: Vous me flattez, monsieur!

17 May 2017 SyncHole

It looks like MCA informant really hurts this deck. MCA on Supplier! So many juicy connection targets.

17 May 2017 h0bb35

@SyncHole Actually, having so many targets makes MCA Informant less of a threat. All connections have small effects that add up, without being back-breaking in case of trash. The only case which I find annoying is when you're hosting lots of cards on Supplier and you get MCA'd.

17 May 2017 CactusJack

@tmoiynmwgI've seen this archetype before. It appears you've made it quite legitimate.

18 May 2017 Snowscoran

I don't think Fisk Investment Seminar should be necessary to beat Marilyn Campaign recursion. If the corp is running out of cards to draw, they need to stock one into R&D after the runner's last click in order to beat Data Leak Reversal trashing, Remember, Marilyn doesn't recur itself when trashed from R&D and it doesn't have any means to trash itself other than running out of credits. Cards like Advanced Assembly Lines can keep the corp from decking by installing something over an installed Marilyn after the runner's last click, but it's hardly going to save the corp long term.

Then again, Fisk does great work in a DLR deck, so I don't see a pressing need to cut it. Loving this list altogether!

21 May 2017 toiry

I hate the game for allowing such things:)

23 May 2017 Badeesh

Better in Iain Stirling: Retired Spook

JK XD. Grats dude.

23 May 2017 DrTalos

I suspect that including Paper Trail would hurt this deck a lot, assuming the corp could score it.

26 May 2017 Snowscoran

Paper trail doesn't see much play but it still wouldn't be the end of this deck. Early on, you don't have that much to trash, unless you've been hosting excessive amounts of stuff on your Supplier. Later on, you should be trace-resistant and flush on cash. Either way, you can prevent a key resource of two from being trashed with Fall Guy, the corp will have to pay enough into the trace to prevent you from just matching them to save your stuff, and the key pieces of your game plan- Nexus, Citadel Security, DLR and Power Tap- aren't affected.

A bigger problem in my opinion is Foxfire or Best Defense which has the potential to snipe your DLRs. If both of them wind up in the trash, you'll have to settle with a more conventional win condition.

26 May 2017 Mechanoise

I remember a few Worlds Tournaments ago you used to bring Blue Sun and built-the-night-before-Whizzard decks. You were the underdog. Nexus DLR? What happened to you?...Who corrupted you?...

Congrats on the win! I still root for you!

30 May 2017 konradh

I tried to learn how to play this deck, but I was always to slow to set up. Usually I wass looking for Supplier in my starting hand to load it up with the resourcers, and too often I found there are already two ICE on HQ and my Siphon pressure is gone.

13 Jun 2017 FreqKing

Fantastic deck, well done and thanks for posting. I piloted this in my local regional, it was undefeated going in to the cut and then beat Hasty CI7 (barely) and lost a close final match against Blue Sun: Powering the Future. My one change was to drop John Masanori for one Armitage Codebusting which I was very happy with. I found that a slow start could sometimes leave you far behind in credits, making it dangerous to fire the combo, sometimes even Account Siphon wasn't enough to bounce back given the cost of Mammon. Also, failing a trace with Security Nexus and John Masanori installed leaves you with the awkward double tag, which I didn't enjoy (although I recognize Dr. Lovegood helps that, I found I often wanted him for other targets). I was happy with the change and it swung the game for me at least twice. The Black File was key in nearly all my victories.