Paragon Bonezeki - 2nd place at Bristol Regional

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This is a straight copy of @motionblur's latest iteration of Bonezeki, with a few small tweaks mostly down to personal taste - Paragons in for Gauntlets, and a Kati Jones for an Earthrise (as I find that the econ denial plan often takes games long, where it's helpful to have a big injection of cash). All credit to Pete for devising a deck that's an absolute blast to play.

I was really happy with how it performed in swiss, beating Steff's Sportsmetal and Swiftie's "Fun Gagarin" (and you should believe the hype - it really is fun) and losing to Chris's (less fun, at least for the runner) Gagarin in a short, tough game.

In the cut it lost two equally short and tough games to the same Gagarin and recorded an incredibly fortunate win against Aaryn's Gagarin, finding 9 points during a cursory check of Archives. (I thought that this was a really unfortunate way for Aaryn to lose a match that they'd played perfectly. Aaryn had clearly had a very difficult set of draws, but despite this was still able to skillfully manage the game, keeping me under a huge amount of pressure and preventing me from setting up properly.)

Miss Bones was great against the various Gagarii but also provided tonnes of value elsewhere, helping take out a whole range of cards that are usually a pain to trash such as Teamspos and unrezzed Marilyns. Two is absolutely the right number here, and she deserves her place in the deck's name. Emergency Shutdowns were never relevant and would have been better as Inside Jobs or Embezzles on the day, but in practice games they were clutch against Palana and other more vertical Corps - so the jury is still out. After our game, Swiftie suggested swapping the Diesel for an IHW, which I think is a great suggestion.

And the Gagarin question? Dunno. The list seems decently teched against it, and I felt that the biggest obstacle in the Gagarin games (apart from the considerable skill of my opponents) was my lack of experience playing against it. In retrospect, I think that moneying up and digging for Miss Bones / Class Act would be a better strategy than the disruption / denial lines I tried to take. On the other hand, Gagarin is often able to pressure the runner very early (a theme throughout most of my games with Chris) and this deck struggles to control an explosive Gaga start without risking a HHN.

Congratulations to the extremely worthy winner, @Nemamiah, and congratulations to Andy for running such a smooth and fun tournament (and on such a hot day, too!). Thanks to everyone I played against and chatted with. And I want to say a particular thanks to the rest of the top 4 - I was feeling pretty daunted about my first taste of top table Netrunner, but I was immediately put at ease by my opponents, who could not have been more friendly, patient and encouraging. What a phenomenal game this is, with such phenomenal people playing it.

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