I had no intention of doing well at nats. I wanted to have a nice time, win some Netrunner games and say a formal goodbye to the official community and play my favourite IDs, CTM and Smoke.

I had a brief chat with Tamijo on Slack a couple of weeks before nats kicked off, as they had been testing a cool Smoke deck that was competent in the current (horrible) meta. I liked the look of it, especially the use of Paragon for even more reliable draw. Smoke is my all time favourite runner, and I was locked on this deck from the moment I sleeved the ID.

Game One

Mark, on Gagarin, Win.

Mark was building a glacier in Weyland. Weyland has an ice called Surveyor, which is a really, really good card (you may have heard of it). It also costs 1 stealth credit to break once you've got your livestreams up and running. This is very sad for your opponent, as you can Index their nigh impenetrable R&D into the ground.

Game Two

Ian G, on PU, Win

In my first turn, I put down a Film Criticand I'm pretty sure that I could see Ian deflate a little. He tried to bait me with a few traps, but I just slowly stole off R&D as he milled me. I won the race, and had a very confusing internal moment when I remembered that I didn't need to do a psi game for the Future Perfect. A really fun game, all told.

Game Three

Theo, on CTM, Loss

Theo was really good at giving me pointers for the CTM matchup, and I really should have respected hard-hitting news more, and waited until I had misdirection up before making any runs. I was too nervous about the speed that my own CTM threatened to take my time before making an attack.

Game Four

Phil, on Skorp, Loss

Phil, you're a great guy but if you take all my breakers and make me use Dai V as my sole breaker, I'm going to have to concede.

Game Five

Kar-Fai, on Cybernetics Division, Loss

I do not like having my hand size reduced. I'm relying on stimhacks for sudden bursts of power already, and then I couldn't find any decent stealth econ. Not being confident enough to draw at pace meant that I was low on credits, low on utility cards, had a hand size of 3, and didn't have the critic down in order to steal the Ikawahs. Then I was wrecked by urban renewal after a pair of very panicked turns.

Game Six

Mazza on Azmari, Win.

Azmari wants to be rich and build a punishing glacier. Smoke doesn't care how rich you are, and she's a big fan of her best mate Beth giving her that fifth click. I even ended up paying the iron price for a degree mill, after my critic had her attitude adjusted. Mazza was running 6x 3 point agendas and echo chamber so that the runner had to steal 3 times to win. The thing is When you're this good, it's hard not to grow a fan base.

Game Seven

Duncan on Acme, ID

I sat down opposite actual friend Duncan at the start of Round 7 with both of us on 6-6, and we gave each other a sad, deflated look and agreed to ID rather than wrecking someone’s record whilst playing a sad, tired Netrunner game. We both finished 7-7 and went for a lovely pint.

Always Be Running