Yomi and everyone we know - Undefeated at Worlds 2023

I almost didn’t go to Worlds. I’d become very disaffected with the meta and was just not putting in the necessary amount of grind-time one needs to do well in a world class competition. So a few weeks out I gave up on my dreams of making top 32 and decided to play something that would be fun and simple to pilot, as I languished on the lower tables. Specifically, I decided it would be fun to play a PE asset spam/traps deck whilst wearing a top hat and moustache, twirling the latter and cackling maniacally all the while.

I emphatically did not expect this deck to do well. We all know how to beat shell game, right? Draw up and run, over and over, even as it's killing you inside. Do not let me have a board state, not even if you have to sacrifice your own mother to net damage. And on Jnet, runners who had the tools tended to tear me apart and pick their teeth with my bones. No matter, I thought. Playing a defeated villain is even more fun than playing a victorious one, and I looked forward to shaking many the hand of folks who passed this skill test.

But then I sat down and started winning. And kept winning. Whilst my clumsy Arissana deck could never seem to find the accesses, PE felt smooth and pure. My win rate with this on Jnet is about 65%, bolstered by turn 1 concessions and ragequits. My record on the day is 100%. I put this down largely to the added psychological pressure of playing face to face, at Worlds, against some prat dressed as Dick Dastardly. The mind games are real.

This deck is a spin on Bluestar’s shell, with a couple of key changes. His and Diogene’s creations definitely have a scoring plan. I seek merely to kill and, more importantly, to have a good time doing it. So, even in an age when agenda density is supposedly king, I took out 2 Bacterial Programming and replaced them with 3x Blood in the Water. This decision won me several games on the day, dropping the relevant BITW from hand or scoring it off table to do the last, lethal bit of net damage. I also removed a Neurospike, to make the numbers work, and because it has lower utility in a deck with fewer 5/3s. This card also won me games, and was usually in my hand by the time I was pondering it.

As I said before, a winning runner stops me having a board state. So my counter strategy, in game after game, was to break their will to do so. Mitosis is the key card here, with NGO Front + Cerebral Overwriter being the ideal pair of targets. This opener brings you value whether they decide to run your board or not, which is the line you should be looking for, turn after turn. Bear in mind you can use Mitosis to advance anything, so if your opponent has no appetite for running double advanced stuff, you should certainly consider Mitosis-ing out a Reaper Function. Clearinghouse and Urtica Cipher are also great targets for this, though the synergy with Moon Pool proved entirely hypothetical on the day.

Your opponent has a pattern. Work out what it is and how to change it if you need to. If their pattern is ‘run everything’, find Cerebrals and Urticas to IAA. Or just put out more stuff than they can afford to trash. You can’t, usually, kill the runner this way, but just making them take a turn off usually engenders a change in behaviour. Likewise, put out enough expensive to trash stuff that they need to take an econ break. Once you’ve built a board state that the runner cannot effectively wipe in a single turn, they’re much less likely to revert to a ‘run everything’ mentality.

All that said, a lot comes down to reading your opponent. In one of my final games with this deck, I sat across from Pinsel. He’d seen a Clearinghouse in HQ and was keen enough on getting it off the board that he Light the Fire!-d it later on a hunch. Sadly, he had left my Cerebral Overwriter alone. Having not seen another copy, I decided to whack a piece of ice in front of it and begin advancing, feigning misery when he dropped a Boomerang and went in to take it out. The former world champion took a total of seven core damage that turn, six of it all at once, in what is simultaneously my proudest Netrunner moment and my most shameful one.

I took this deck to have fun and, boy howdy, did I. It’s tempting to wonder if I’d have done ‘even better’ with decks that were a little more tuned, a little more serious. But the secret to success here was playing what I love. I couldn’t have asked for a better first Worlds experience.