1st APAC: Clutch Shiko [Swiss: 0-3, Cut: 3-0]

Santa 1608

I can guarantee you that no one from Bost will be playing this again!

Story time:

This deck was simply a quickly slapped together rotated BlitzShiko, with no testing.
- Credit to @maninthemoon for making them swaps.

Swiss:

The three losses:

I went into APAC with this list, and consequently lost my first three rounds on this deck in rather fun ways:

R1 (Loss): vs CyberStein on Ag [Replay]
R2 (Loss): vs Dragons1rule on Prav [Replay]
R3 (Loss): vs wiley on Ob [Replay]
  • Game Report:
    • I lot to rotated version of Bost Ob. My opponent played great, and I rightfully lost.
    • Love to see the deck adapted for the new rotation, and played!
    • I did think one turn was particularly funny when I installed Botulus mid run to get hit by a Mavirus accessing R&D, only to run back and spot a Magnet on top of the deck lol. I was not having the luck I needed, yet...

The 241s lol

At that point, the Bost members and I had already recognized that APAC was going to run until 6am our time.

I really didn't want to play another game on Hosh, and had very little confidence in her. So, I decided to 241 my 4th round, jokingly saying I'd drop out of APAC if I rolled Hosh. I rolled Outfit, and while it was a girder game vs Lat I came out victorious going into the lunch break at 1am.

During the break we discussed as a team if it made sense to play our matches normally, or call for 241's. I joked with @ThatsNoMun that I could just go for the 1/8 of rolling Outfit for all the rest of my games in swiss.

I ultimately decided that I would go for a 241 again, as if I rolled Outfit I had high confidence I could pull out a W, and if I rolled Hosh I'd hopefully have enough time playing a 241 that I might actually be able to think out the lines to win at 2am+ in the morning.

R5 I went for the 241 again
  • I rolled Outfit again, and got a clean W.
R6 I went for the 241 again
  • I was absolutely ecstatic when I rolled Outfit for the 3rd time in a row lolol, and then cleaned up another win.
R7 (the final round of Swiss)
  • I was at Table 4 vs enkoder and we both were figuring out the math if we wanted to ID, 241 or play it.
    • We decided the 241 made the most sense. I rolled Outfit for the 4th time in a row, pulling the true 1/16 on my 241 side bias lolol.
    • Even though it was into a Clot control Lat probably the worst possible matchup, I felt better on that than playing my Hosh into anything at 5am.
    • Props to enkoder playing at 5am on the west coast as well.
    • It was a great final game of swiss, which I ended up clutching out, and also my first ever experience being streamed.
  • Go checkout my game analysis on my outfit list 1st APAC: Santa's Workshop [Swiss: 7-0, Cut: 3-1] if you want to see more. Also, the NSG steam, plus a link to enkoder's youtube video for his perspective are both linked there as well!

The Cut!!

So, I ended day one of swiss with 0 wins on Hosh, and not feeling great about the cut lol, as even if I rolled Outfit as many times as possible through the cut I was required to win 1x game on this Hosh if I wanted to win APAC.

Props to @xFWx FIREBIRD (aka FireRL) for giving me 2x prep games on Hosh the day of the cut, particularly against "anything yellow" as I put it lol.

R1, I was on Outfit
  • I was higher seed, so got to chose Outfit, and claimed a nice W.
R2, I was on Outfit again lol
  • My opponent played corp R1 too, so I had a 50:50 for runner, or corp. I rolled Outfit, and got this nice response from the team lol:

Winning APAC with only corp

  • Sadly, that was the one and only match I lost on Outfit. The luck runs out eventually lol!

Now it was time for Hosh to clutch!

R3 (Win): vs sebastiank on RH [Replay] [Streamed]
  • This was a very cool deck that had taken out 2x Bost players in Swiss. With open deck lists, and my teams analysis I able to be very cognicent of the forks and threats, as the decks has a lot of punishing flatline potential with Bacterial + Your Digital Life + Punitive Counterstrike.
  • Game Report:
    • I sniped an early Regenesis, and while I could have run the bin for a potential 5/3 the risk was far too big, so I played it safe and let sebastiank spin it back if desired. With the 1x Regenesis scored my plan was to pressure R&D until I stole a 5/3, and then go clear out archives for another 5/3 which I expected sebastiank would have waiting there as a combo kill/Regenesis fork. I played for this line and it eventually paid off with a W.
R4 (Win): vs MrStyx on Epiphany [Replay] [Streamed]
  • Game Report:
    • Open decks helped again here, but clutching two early AR-Enhanced Security steals really helped seal up this game, and eventually won on time. Feels bad to win on time, but I still feel I was in a pretty solid position towards the end.
R5, I got to play another game as Outfit
  • Although, I had a terrible start, I pulled out a solid W!
R6 (Win): vs Jia on R+ [Replay]
  • This gameplay was 100% based off of open deck list.
  • Game Report:
    • I stole an early Tomorrow's Headline, and Jia scored 3x AR-Enhanced Security's, which is not a fun time vs R+.
    • However, from the open deck list, I recognized that so long as I was never tagged on Jia's turn they had no way of scoring out as the only agendas that were left were 3x Bellona + 2x Freedom of Information.
    • Because of this info, I went into the extremely long game, just sitting back, gaining money occasionally, while poking some servers and remotes on occasion.
    • Eventually there was a threat rez'ed Lady Liberty which I had to trash; otherwise, Jia could get a score out. I had 1x Bahia Bands which allowed me to trash the Lady Liberty + get one more card trashed since I could use the Bahia Bands to run other server + clear a tag, still leaving myself with 0 tags at the end of the turn.
    • I chose to clear the SanSan City Grid, which was the most questionable, and potentially biggest mistake of the game. However, my thinking for the like was as follows:
      • I cleared the SanSan as if they install on it, install new remote and Oppo, than I can’t guaranteed clear an agenda score:
      • I do think it was arguably, and probably my biggest mistake of the game, as clearing a Bladderwort would have probably been correct for the long term as there wasn't much threat for a score out. The Bladderwort's became far more of a time pressure as the game went on, than the remote possible score out. However, at that the time I was concerned about another possible fork, and thought the Bladderwort's wouldn't consistently be able to be ticking as much as they ended up being. In retrospect the Bladderwort's were far more of a threat than I expected, and cleaning out one of them was probably correct.
    • I let the game stall out longer, until I only had a few cards left.
    • I would have actually like to wait even longer, but ended up triggering a shuffle off of Spin Doctor, which was going to be my best opportunity to capitalize on since R&D was completely fresh cards.
    • I ran, and was able to pull a Bellona + Freedom of Information to win the game using 2x Twinning counters.
  • After the tournament I got a lot of congratulatory messages in the ECG (Emerald City Grid) Discord, but this one about the Hosh particularly stood out:

clinical hosh

R7 (grand finals): was a rematch on Outfit vs Jia on Tāo:
  • I learned a lot from our first game, and was able to pull out the W in an amazing grands. I'll let you read more about on my outfit writeup, and/or watch the linked stream!

So...

This Hosh deck might have been terrible in swiss, but it clutched up in the cut once I had open deck lists, and praise for the RNG gods giving me the 1/16 to roll Outfit in swiss once I decided to start 241'ing :)

Thanks

  • Thanks to Team Muntal Bost for:
    • Helping me refine my play over the past months
    • Getting me prep games day of the cut on Hosh, as I had 0 wins on in swiss lmao
    • Going over the top cut deck lists with me and importing them into netrunnerdb for easy reference as I still don't know cards by name
    • And all around the wonderful support! <3
  • Thanks to all the members of my netrunner community for cheering me on throughout!
  • Thanks to all the players in the event! What a turnout! :)
  • Thanks to the APAC judges for running a wonderful tournament!
  • Thanks to the commentators for streaming 6/17 of my total APAC games :)
1 comments
12 Aug 2023 maninthemoon

Congrats on the placement. Happy to help with this semifunctional list XD