Here is the AGInfusion list I took to German Nats. The name is a reference to the late Austrian Empress Sissi - and our include of 1x Sisyphus Protocol as the cornerstone of this deck.

Inspiration

There are 2 people without whom this list would not exist:

SebastianK: We have a pretty similar deckbuilding vibe, highly experimental and enjoying decks that are off-beat and challenge the base logics of what Netrunner even is (and can be). Sebastian approached me while preparing for East Coast Nationals trying to solve a runner meta of sokka and Reg Hoshiko, the latter of which seemed like a rough matchup for a large cup of coffee in no small part due to Maw. (shoutout to Maw - love you!)

Sebastian devised an angle of attack - exploiting Lat’s limited use of Revolver counters by overwhelming the runner with sentry encounters. Thus was born the idea of using Sisyphus Protocol.

London: When RWR hit, I helped London develop an AGInfusion deck whose rough shape looked quite similar to this one. We ended up shelving it when Brandon - TheKing, came up with what looked like a more solid AGInfusion deck.

This writeup is dedicated to both of them, but also supposed to be a gentle call-out. Much like Burna Boy would say, not believing in your ideas is a form of cheating on yourself.

Is This Deck Good?

I strongly believe so. Your matchups are generally quite good, the logic is sound, your agenda density is low enough to let you get away with scoring pretty late, and being AGInfusion insulates you against a lot of nonsense. As a bonus, you also don’t fold against the metawarper that is Arissana by virtue of being able to make all your servers pretty taxing to run.

That being said, it was definitely still a meta call. I figured Germans are Shaper fans, and a lot of people would prefer to play Lat over Arissana for being less complex to pilot on the surface of things. This analysis was also informed by Kikai’s amazing datasheet surveying the meta.

The Kit Gamble

I took a calculated gamble on Kit which is probably the lone meta deck that this deck has an unfavored matchup against. This is just theory, as I’ve never actually played against the deck, but Orca seems like a card that could give our ice suite trouble. I wasn’t worried about Kit piloted by newer players, as they would probably make inefficient runs and be taxed out that way, but a highly skilled Kit player would have been a very dangerous opponent.

My rationale, then, was that people able to pilot Kit at a dangerously high level would prefer to play Lat (or Ari) due to those decks having a higher skill ceiling. If cablecarnage had been coming to German Nats this would not have been a safe gambit, but since he wasn’t I think my meta read was more or less accurate.

Oh, the Bridgeman Lat MU is also super bad. That deck is designed to roll slow-ish decks.

Mind Scaping

Crude Jokes aside, Mindscaping won 2 games killing the runner, once in swiss against RubenPieters in the most cursed / unlucky succession of events I’ve seen in a long time, and once in the cut against Tradon where it was probably more for style points, but still good to end the match then and there.

I had a lot of people doubt the Mindscaping slots while deckbuilding - it’s less efficient than Hedge/Hansei, it’s insufficient tag punishment, and so on. To them I say, if you want efficiency, play HB. Mindscaping opens up a couple tricks that regular econ operations don’t allow for, such as shuffling back a total of 3 agendas with a rezzed Spin Doctor. As others have pointed out, it also allows for a better bounceback from a low credit total, which we will sometimes end up on while defending our key econ assets. Finally, imagine if Hedge Fund could kill. Mindscaping’s latent threat means that taking tags from Cloud Eater is highly discomfortable to the runner. Now they could clear enough tags to survive a potential double Mindscaping line, but staying a little tagged means we get to trash their Twinnings and DJ Fenrii. So full clear, partial clear and keeping the tags all come with their own significant downsides.

Why I Run

I’m supposed to be in retirement, and I still feel like my time trying to win competitive events is largely over, but I did treat German Nats with the full attention of an event I tried to do well in, and the one person responsible for that is AugustusCaesar.

Playing a practice game for Interconts, Esa vs AG, my lyrical brain latched onto the Begemot install asking him “Would you Beg?”

When Augustus, entirely unaware of the song reference, replied “I never beg!”, oh, it was on. It was like an old extinguished candle in my heart was being re-lit. My goal for the 2024 competitive season was clear:
Make Augustus Beg.

Looking back now, I’ve always been spurred on by the idea of playing against the best players in the world. And I think core to that was always a desire to learn something new, every defeat a lesson. The Criminal identity pool has a few such runners, such as Andromeda and Ken who seem, at least in part, motivated by the thrill of the challenge, unlike Leela for whom it’s just too easy I guess. ;)

I’m happy to announce that Augustus begged me for an ID in the last round of swiss, and thus I have achieved everything I wanted to for the season. I did however write a certain someone’s name in the script for winning worlds 2024, and I hope they make it happen.

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Big thank you to:

Augustus, for being awesome at Netrunner AND Arkham Aksu, J0NALD, RubenPieters and wowarlok, they know why RustRyder trucy awildturtok Girometics Valkia Mathilda LukeNukem Mihaustunet Watzlav And everyone who made German Nats the killer event it ended up being

Yours Truly

Council