Waffle Val (1st Place Belgian Nationals)

Ollie 252

Okay so this is a pretty normal reg Val list, except it’s not. After quite quickly settling on a 45 card skeleton for the list (everything except Turntable, d4v1d, 2x Hippo and Archivist) team UK spent a very long time trying to work out what we should do with the remaining 5 slots, we all wanted an Archivist because it’s insane if you get it against CtM turn 1 since it triggers on all of their agendas except Project Beale and 15 mins, importantly if they score an ARES you’ll most likely end up with a bad pub which can help to offset any extra tags you’ll be taking, also having a link makes tracing through IP Blocks and resistors a lot more palatable. The other reason to run archivist and probably what pushed us over the edge was that it also does a lot of work against Mti, since Nisei Mk.2, Philotic Entanglement, Global Food Initiative, Future Perfect that is all of their most common agendas except Obokata, while you won’t often get a bad pub against mti, you will force them to spend credits and the key to the mti matchup seems to be getting as much value out of runs as you can while the corp is poor.

However, there was no standard list from team UK since other people took slight variations on the 5 ‘flex slots’ but at the end of the day we pretty much agreed on 1 hippo, 1 turntable, 1 archivist and 1 d4v1d with the final card to be decided.

Some people say reg val is ‘dull’ or ‘boring’ and I couldn’t disagree more, it’s netrunner distilled down to it’s basic essence and the bad pub really enables a form of aggression, a good example of this is in the finals game against mti where I’m able to apply pressure to centrals, trashing rashidas/NGOs/battys without losing any real tempo. This match was streamed on Trace Five.

In the tournament the deck went 6-1, losing it’s first game to punitive Azmari (after accidentally stealing 6 points in one turn) but then winning against Argus, Mti, Titan and Mti in swiss, followed by Argus and Mti in the cut

I am extremely grateful to all the UK players who came to Belgian nats and/or helped me to test games and refine the decks, especially to team AirBnB where we did a lot of discussion about lines against mti and Argus which I was able to apply directly in the cut the next day.

Thanks to @clusterfox for organising and running the whole event as well as convincing me to make the trip over for the weekend. Thanks to the runner up @michiel.questier who is an exceptional player who two years ago beat me in the finals at Belgian nationals when our places in the winners/losers bracket were reversed. Finally thanks to all the people on slack who sent me messages of support over the weekend!

6 comments
25 Sep 2018 Cluster Fox

Was glad to have you over :) Congratulations!

25 Sep 2018 vesper

Congrats and well done! :)

26 Sep 2018 Pete2

was an honour to play against you ! congrats ! (played in swiss with 419 and Titan-first tourney ever)

27 Sep 2018 Ollie

@Cluster Fox Thanks! @vesperThanks! @Pete2 Thanks, it was nice to meet you and play against you, good luck in future tournaments!

6 Oct 2018 rexi112

Hey, was wondering what are the choices for Rebirth that you usually pick? Could you provide when/why you would choose a particular ID over another? Thanks!

8 Oct 2018 Ollie

@rexi112Roughly speaking, most of the time you are looking into rebirthing into Omar as the pressure he provides is hugely significant most of the time. However, every game of netrunner is different and there are sometimes where you might pick a different target. For example against Argus I sometimes find myself rebirthing into Kim, usually after I've been forced to go tag me/ I think I will be forced to go tag me soon, as this allows you to get more accesses in compared to Omar (as their ice is usually porous after you go tag me) and obviously killing a HPT /convis can be big in that matchup. I've seen null as a situational rebirth as it has some synergy with aumakua / ice carver/ bin breakers.

So in summary, Omar is your main rebirth target but sometimes the game might call for a different one.