(replays and corp writeup here, in which I demonstrate my competency with basic arithmetic.)

Welcome to Green Paradise.

After an entire TAI season under the thumb of our overlord Empress Hoshiko, RWR has landed and taken The Greens to the best place they've been in years. (we don't talk about the boat meta)

If you're not familiar with what World Tree Ari does, you should definitely check out this decklist and the links provided therein. Now that you've done that...

13 players brought Ari to APAC. 5 of those players made the top 16, the highest cut conversion percentage of any ID (corp or runner!) with more than 2 representatives. All 5 of those players (including my TAIB brother xiaat) played 60+ card decks with World Tree in them. If you're still having any doubts about the consistency or power level of the archetype, you can dispel them now; this deck is extremely real, and has a very strong claim to being the best runner deck in the current format.

The deck went 3-2 in Swiss and 4-0 in the cut, dropping games vs Wikignometry and xiaat, both on PD. In related news, if I were to rerun the event again, I'd absolutely swap out the Cupellation for a Light the Fire!. xiaat's WT variation was on the latter card, and it absolutely smashed there as a WT target against PD. Burnering Seamlesses goes a long way to slowing down their NA cheese, but in my experience the deck is good enough to Just Get There even without Seamless if you're not able to crack the remote at least once.

[An aside: massive shoutout to xiaat for the excellent meta call and performance at APAC, after cruelly bubbling out of the ACC cut at 19th. Sucks that you ended up bubbling out of ICC this time at 6th. Sending you all my 🍕, friendo.]

shoutout to this legendary Metropole clip, thanks asphyxia

Despite not getting any use out of the card the whole day, I'd still slot the Clot; it's too important a card to stop you from getting cheesed out by FA on your slower draws. That being said, if you're confident in not running into any Audacity or The Holo Man, sure you can slot the Cup; it's excellent into Warroids and Danielas and is tutorable HQ pressure.

No One Home is an extremely influence- and cost-efficient splash, taking the place of the second Stoneship Chart Room and being an excellent tech card vs Public Trail and Mutually Assured Destruction. Between that and Airblades, it's also really difficult to get flatlined against PE (or Neurospike Azmari).

Environmental Testing was a late suggestion from the king, and the jury is still out on how many copies is optimal. I appreciate it as a mid-game Telework/Casts target with a faster payoff for contesting Corp remote pushes, but it’s somewhat bricky in the early turns and doesn’t continue the tutor chain. 1 is what I’m comfortable with.

The second LilyPAD came from KyraWNY, who suggested it as a failsafe against Wake Up Call. The added consistency of naturally drawing into it is of course nice as well. The redundancy slot was originally filled by Harmony AR Therapy, which ended up being completely overkill (but reloading Bones/Coal/Chip/+2 and watching the despair on the Corp face is always a good laugh).

Only 1 K2CP Turbine: I expected most hyperglacier to be scared off by the low opportunity cost of playing double Turbine/Turbine Takobi and decided to greed a little. Also, I just hate drawing the damn card.

I'm never gonna be able to watch Dune 2 the same way again

APAC Continentals has always been somewhat of a pet tournament of mine, and this result feels like the culmination of three years’ worth of hard work and perseverance. More than anything, I’m glad that I was able to fulfil the prophecy and deliver Arrakis - I mean, APAC - from the cruel subjugation of the Harkonnens - er, the NA West Coast. Catching up on the Twitch vod, it was incredibly heartening to see the outpouring of support from everybody, as invested as they were in the storyline.

I’ve honestly no clue what I’ve done to deserve this level of community support, but I’m extremely thankful to each and every one of you all the same. The Netrunner family is amazing, and I look forward to meeting so many of you for the first time at Worlds.

Long Live The Friendos

Lisan al-Jaib out