Give Nuka Research Funding Today! [4th@Notts H2 '23]

yes okay Zack you're right I can win at Netrunner sometimes :P

Despite most of my competitive Netrunner time being put towards running tournaments, I actually got to play in this one! This deck, alongside my corp, took me to 4th place in the recent Nottingham CO, which is frankly a bit of a miracle but we're going to gently skip past that because otherwise AceEmpress will come into my room, bop me with a toy hammer and tell me to not self-deprecate so much.

The last time I played in a normal Standard tournament was the previous Nottingham CO where I also played Padma and Ob. I've been iterating on those decks since then, both because they're still fun but also because I don't have loads of time for tinkering and testing with my PhD deadline drawing ever-closer.

Deck Summary

The aim is to use WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ to get easy four-deep digs of R&D via runs on HQ and charging via Padma's ability, but can also challenge remotes with an efficient breaker suite. It's rare for HQ and R&D to both be punishing to run - if HQ is cheap then we can gather WAKE counters to make our R&D runs worth it, and if R&D is cheap then we can get a bunch of free charges via Padma. We can also challenge the remote, but it is less preferable.

Most of the deck is just good money and draw so that we can get in enough to get the required WAKE charges and accesses. Dr. Nuka Vrolyck is gold dust in a charge deck, and is worth mulliganing for. Environmental Testing as a 1x is really nice in a deck with Simulchip and a fair few small programs, and can be charged in a pinch. Liberated Account is debatable, but I really like it - it's not vulnerable to purge like Fermenter and we can install it with a Pantograph trigger when the Corp scores and spend our next turn emptying it so we are ready to pressure the Corp's next score. When AceEmpress and I tested this deck against R+, we found that it lived or died on being able to get early money, and Liberated allows us to get that money as early as possible.

The breaker suite is a little interesting. Rather than relying on Cleaver and Buzzsaw alongside strength boosting like most Shaper and Anarch decks right now, this deck uses breakers that are less reliant on separate strength boosting so that we're able to break ice off a single Overclock + Self-modifying Code without spending roughly a billion credits.

Pelangi also helps us pressure when we've only got one breaker, and allows for some flexible breaking when needing. When used with Propeller we can break any ice exactly once for very little money, allowing for excellent facechecking - I used it to break a Trebuchet for 2c and a Pelangi counter during my game vs The Outfit. In the late game, you can use it to paint an ice into a code gate to break with Unity cheaply, or into a barrier if you have a Gauss at four strength.

We're also taking a leaf from ExtraC's worlds deck by using Mimic and Ika as our killer suite, which proved very useful, particularly against Drafter. We finally have Takobi for the late game, allowing us to sail through even the most expensive of servers. It can also be charged in a pinch.

Tournament Report

This was six games of Single-Sided Swiss, so this deck was only played in half of the rounds.

Round 1 vs cursor (Win as Ob vs Lat): I rushed pretty hard and managed to score an SDS via a Seamless. If I was one or two turns slower, I think they could have easily caught up with me and caused problems.

Round 2 vs MattOhNo (Win as Padma vs R+): I was delighted to win this game because R+ has been a bit of a bugbear for me recently. As I said earlier, finding early money is key, and I found and emptied a Liberated pretty quickly. The final three points were stolen from a remote protected by Funhouse backed up by B-1001 by popping a No Free Lunch just after the encounter.

Round 3 vs Russell (Loss as Padma vs Outfit): Outfit should be a good matchup for me, as bad publicity really helps you make the multiple runs needed to charge WAKE. This plan can be ruined by not finding WAKE. Despite that, I managed to find five points via a bunch of accesses from remotes and through Jailbreak, but couldn't get over the finish line before Regulatory Capture did its thing. I should maybe run a Clot but the influence is slightly tied up. Still, a great game which was fought really well vs a delightful opponent!

Round 4 vs Cobalt (Loss as Ob vs Sable): Honestly wasn't very happy with how I played this one, and I'm not sure why. My Ob seems a little inconsistent at times, and I certainly felt it in this game. Ah well, can't feel bad being beaten by a strong opponent!

Round 5 vs Lap (Win as Padma vs PD): Built up the rig and got lots of WAKE accesses. Mimic was key in this matchup due to Drafter, although there was also an Ansel 1.0 which I facechecked on click 2 of turn 1 (click 1 being installing Nuka), which was a nasty surprise.

Round 6 vs slandernlies (Win as Ob vs Reina): Ob performed like a dream here - I scored a Hostile Takeover on a Tucana on turn 3 to grab an Archer, and then scored behind that as fast as I could.

Special Thanks

Thanks to QEH for providing a nice chill space to do some testing in! Also thanks to dreadmaw for running the event - it was my first single-sided swiss event, and it's just so much more pleasant to play in than double-sided swiss - getting a short break between every game rather than every two games to de-tilt and generally discuss the game with my opponents was lovely. And finally, thanks to my opponents, who were all great!