Magnetizing Humanity [4th, 3-0 at November AMC]

Spiph 3

Whew! What a tournament! This was my first netrunner tournament and I had a great time. I got 4th place and a CB invite since 2 of the top 3 already had invites! Not bad if I do say so myself.

The tournament was full of flatlines and funtimes. I think the first two rounds, all games ended by runner death. On runner, I played a version on Bridgeman's Worlds Hoshiko deck from worlds. There was a lot of room for improvement on Hosh - I went 1-3 on the runner side.

The first round started at 5:00am EST. Since I would likely be low on sleep, I figured Baa Ram Wu's SnaRH deck would be easy enough to play since I already had a bunch of reps on it. The deck turned out to be a great choice! I made a couple of changes against the meta we saw at Worlds. Expecting a bunch of mulchmulchmulchmulchmulch with Botulus, I found some room for 2 Magnets, dropping a Saisentan which feels worse as the game goes on and 1 Attini, which I did miss a bit, but wanted to bring my avg ice cost down. Magnet, which turned out to be a great call! And since I was going up to 7 Code Gates, I switched out the 2 Tatu-Bola for 2 Ivik, a change that I didn't feel confident about, but I liked the idea of more damaging ice. I had to drop 1 Your Digital Life for influence, but it was not missed. The last change I made was 1 Snare! for 1 NGO Front. I never felt confident installing snare because failing to bait the runner feels really bad, so I thought NGO Front would fit a similar role by looking even more like an agenda. Install double advance became a threatening line without the wasted install of Snare!.

My early gameplan was to scare runners off of central servers early. The worst position to be in with this deck is for the runner to snatch an early agenda before you are set up with credits and punitive. This makes mulligans pretty straightforward - does it have 2 ice? If not, probably mull.

Round 1 vs jan tuno on Arissana (replay unavailable)

I got 2 Bacterial Programmings into the bin with a Punitive Counterstrike in hand. Caught jan getting impatient and thinking that 18 credits was enough to run archives. Spoilers: it was not. Your Digital Life(/en/card/34056) with 22 card in hand off 2 Bacterial Programmings and a Rashida Jaheem turns out to make enough money.

Round 2 vs HaverOfFun on Loup

Kept a hand with 2 Magnets, which was enough to hold back a scary Imp opener for long enough for me to set up. Win by flatline. Got a Bacterial Programming stolen from HQ which found my second Punitive Counterstrike

Round 5 Runner 241

I got my one-and-only win as runner, putting me in a pretty good spot in the standings.

Round 4 vs slobberMcGee on Hoshiko

Another discard double Bacterial Programming game. Hard to lose from that position if you can convince the runner that Archives is their only good run. I left myself a quick score-out win without should slobberMcGee have decided not to run Archives by installing and double advancing a Fujii Asset Retrieval on my second last turn. It made for a pretty tough fork. Win by flatline. Starting the turn with 19 cards, a Punitive Counterstrikes and a Your Digital Life feels like cheating.

Overall, his deck did great! Unfortunately, my runner game is still pretty weak. I think a second win on runner would have put me into the top 3. I'll keep working at it and try to get to where I can feel more comfortable on decks other than Hosh! XD

3 comments
21 Nov 2023 Council

For your first tournament? That's an incredible achievement, glad to hear that the list is working well for you.

21 Nov 2023 Spiph

Thanks!

22 Nov 2023 slobberMcGee

Oh man it was an agenda? I was sure it was an NGO. Could I have got in with just buzzsaw?