ΤραΠαλάνα (2nd Place Greek Nationals)

(TraPalana)

Link to my Runner deck

3rd place @ Regionals 2018 @ Thessaloniki, Greece

2nd place @ Nationals 2018 @ Athens, Greece

So, here's a personal opinion; I can't stand the current meta (but then again, I never really could xD). MTI and CtM just make me wanna concede and go for the next game, so I knew that even if I wanted to go full "tryhard" I would still play something personal and not one of those things as my Corp of choice, no matter how powerful I've come to realize they are through a bit of testing.

So the only solution for me was more mind games. I love Jinteki and I feel like it's always a challenge to go against both players you know and you don't know, trying to outsmart them in a somewhat different game of Netrunner.

Greek Nationals ended up having only 10 people attending, but boy was it competitive. 8 or 9 out of those 10 people are regional winners from some past event and they had all brought their A+ game.

Oldgeorge's Report

Even though my Smoke went undefeated, my Jinteki deck, which used to be what I relied on in the past, lost 3 games. One loss in the swiss and two in the cut.

I have recorded all of my games and will post them in less than a week on YouTube, but till then, here's the written report.

Here are my matchups:

Round 1: Kostas Retalis (Fabregus) - Hayley Kaplan I did most of my practice against Kostas, so it was weird to be matched up against him first round. I knew he had Feedback Filter in his deck and he also made lots of money. On top of all of that, he also knew how to play against my deck because he knew my playstyle. So what he (very correctly) did was just take 4-5 credits each turn and then pass while I tried to set up some weird mind games for him to run into. With over 25 credits though and an equivocation installed, the game was eventually just gonna end in his favor. I managed to score out 3 points and then played my tricks and lies on him while having Mushined a GFI and a House of Knives with 4 advancements on each one. I told him things like "why run it? you won't die even if it's a Ronin and there is no point wasting your credits for avoiding Junebug damage, just run R&D once and then take credits to be safe. No need to rush." Lil' bit of conversation later and that was exactly what he did, allowing me to score both for 4 points the next turn and take the game.

Kostas was a bit annoyed, but hey, it's all part of the game! ^^

Round 2: Chris Oldgeorge - Freedom Khumalo I tried out Chris's deck a couple days before the nationals and I found it to be working really well when things come the right way for you with drawing....and that is exactly what happened for Chris. He drew perfectly with an inject giving him breakers and 2 more injects to find more things later. He had an early Plague installed, giving him all the virus counters he needs from the open servers and was generally running perfectly on his extreme virus extraordinaire engine. I thankfully managed to install a bunch of Junebugs that he ended up running with a Ronin and a Junebug advanced 3 and 4 times (like that on purpose) so that he eventually runs both (thinking it is x2 Ronin). I made a couple mistakes, but he eventually fell for the mushined trap and gave me the game.

Round 3: Fotis Giakoump - Valencia Estevez Fotis is the only person (next to Zinos once) who has beaten my TraPalana in the last couple of months. Not only that, but he did it repeatedly as well. He played it very carefully and managed to always be 1 credit or 1 card exactly ahead so that he doesn't die. Little bit of luck on R&D to find early agendas when I was already flooded and had to work on shuffling them back in with Preemptive and he eventually took the game when my hand was filled with useless [Punitive Counterstrikes]. (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/20091). The most important part of the match-up was actually the fact that he ran Falsified Credentials allowing him to avoid a big part of the mind game tricks that I tried to play with him by installing things on the board.

I told my friend Kostas before the tournament and also told Fotis himself after the tournament, that he is by far the nicest and kindest person I've had the chance of playing in a tournament. This encounter was no exception with him having been the person that makes me feel the most at ease while playing a competitive game.

Round 4: TheM1ke - Jesminder Man oh man. I did not expect Jesminder and not only had I never practiced or even played against it, I did not even know what she could be running. There was a bunch of easy money going on through Hot Pursuit and a bunch of other shenanigans that allowed him to run quite fast and easy. I saw him also do DJ Fenris for Liza in some other match-ups he had in previous rounds and it just looked like an amazing deck. I basically had to mill his entire deck and get him really low before i can start baiting him with traps behind a server with Kakugo installed.

Top Cut Round 2: Fotis - Valencia Yet again, Fotis played it carefully and got a couple agendas early, allowing Punitive to be a dead a card and therefore being able to just lay back and slowly grind for the rest while I cried in a corner. Was a much closer match-up than the first one though.

Top Cut Round 4 - Grand Finals: Fotis - Valencia This was the worst out of the 3 with me making the mistake of not trashing all my agendas to just preemptive them after a mulligan which led to an agenda flooded hand. I tried my best, but I believe Fotis played it even better than the previous two match-ups and even without the luck of finding early agendas, he still won the game quite easily. Falsified played a big role once again, not allowing me to get back into the game at any point with any tricks.

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Overall an amazingly fun and competitive tournament with some very intense games. I cannot wait to post the videos for all my friends to watch. Thank you to all the beautiful people of the Greek Netrunner community and once again Congratulations to the awesome person that is Fotis! Well deserved and well played my friend!

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Changes to the deck? I don't know. I mean, I cannot even think of deckbuilding at this point. It works just fine so I am not sure if I would change much. It's the simplest and at the same time most versatile form of mind games deck I've built in a while.

Feedback always welcome of course! :)