Lust for Metal - 1st Place West Coast US Nationals (4-2)

This is the deck I played at US West Coast Nationals in Los Angeles on Sept 16th, 2023, a list by my good pal and fellow I Think You Should Leave enthusiast hams, a deck that he built (this show is the source of the image and deck name). I went 4-2 with the deck on the day, landing 1st place overall, for my second Nationals title (NZ Nationals in 2020 was the other one, also with NBN and Anarch [CTM and Hoshiko]). NBN: Reality Plus was my corp deck.

Floundering with runner before this event, especially given that this tournament still had Dr. Vientiane Keeling legal, and finding little success with various Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist lists I was trying, Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist struck me as a good call in a meta where corps felt dominant. Disruption never seems like a bad out when runners aren’t favored, so when I tried @hams’ list here a few days before the event, and then promptly panic-jammed about 15-20 games online, I was moved and delighted. I added 1x Mad Dash to his list and called it a day.

This list is pure gas: drawing cards, taking damage (and drawing more cards), facechecking everything with impunity and getting money and cards for it, sabotaging like hell, and just lusting for disruption. It’s metal af. Usually by turn two or three, Esâ is zippin' around, crazily, like a bug. Having to play against it sucks.

While the Thule Subsea: Safety Below matchup is maybe the most awkward, I found with @hams’ coaching that just sticking to the Esâ gameplan is the way to go, hoping to bin all of the Ontological Dependences and getting to them before the corp can. The breaker suite is fairly awkward, but between Botulus and Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga, breakers are seldom needed. The absence of Fermenter is purely due to trying to win quickly and hoping the game doesn’t go past turn 5 or 6 anyway, as this deck can win games fast by crippling the corp on turns 1-2, and steamrolling them from there.

Matchups in LA were against A Teia: IP Recovery (HQ flood), NBN: Reality Plus (nearly milled them out), A Teia: IP Recovery (Begemot broke the Brân 1.0 on HQ for 1 credit to hit the winning agenda), and finally against Ebrey's insane Thule Subsea: Safety Below deck in the winners finals, which I’d lost twice to previously on the day, once in Swiss and once early in the cut, for a 4-2 record.

Swapping the 2x Pinhole Threading for 2x No Free Lunch due to Dr. Vientiane Keeling now being banned, I played this deck in the main event at Worlds in Barcelona on October 14-15, 2023, going 3-5 with it, losing to two Jinteki: Personal Evolutions due to my poor decision-making, a Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design on time, and Sokka's Worlds-winning Built to Last deck (congrats, buddy!), and an A Teia: IP Recovery, and beating two Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel. and a Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design. Between this and my NBN: Reality Plus deck, I went 87th overall out of 254 players with a 9-9 record.

Huge thanks to all of my lovely opponents in LA and at Worlds, especially runner-up Ebrey, who I had to play about five games with in LA (three of them my Esa vs his Thule Subsea: Safety Below, which is a wild matchup), to @rickrage for running such a great event, and to fellow House Hippos hams and sindarin for coaxing me down to LA for the tournament and being the best wingmen and cheerleaders on the day. Turns out LA is far cheaper to get to than Montreal (it was between this and East Coast Canadian Nationals). Huge thanks too to meta-mate hotelfoxtrot for all the in-person testing before LA and Worlds, and for bearing with all the sabotage. Glad to have poached a title back from the Americans, since they stole both Canadian ones this year.

Links to commentated games from LA:

Round 3 Swiss

Winners Final

Grand Finals

You can see my recent LA and Barcelona adventures on Instagram @Netrunner in the Wlyd