AKA Blue-Crew Hoshiko

This deck is the latest iteration of the orange criminal crew Hoshiko build I have been playing for the last few months and the one that ultimately took me top of swiss at the East Anglian Regionals.

After a pretty rough start to the year tournament wise I was starting to make jokes about retiring from competitive netrunner and going into commentary. I'm glad I didn't because this run of UK regionals has been incredibly fun and culminated in going undefeated in swiss on home turf.

What's new?

As we noted in the previous writeup, DooF wasn't pulling it's weight in the list. Sometimes it was huge and would give you blowout games, but a lot of the time it wasn't having the desired impact. Cutting it gave us a lot of influence to play with and it was time to experiment.

Boomerang was first up and firmly earns it's place.
1. It's blue.
2. It costs 2 for Patchwork.
3. It gets us into servers in the early game and after a purge.

With boomerang in the list and smart careful use of crew/charm it feels near impossible to lock the deck out now.

Cupellation took a little longer to come up but once we got there it really felt like we'd unlocked the secret sauce. It has a lot going for it.
1. It's blue.
2. It allows us to trash things while still gaining Aumakua counters.
3. It gives us HQ multiaccess, and when we're breaking down remotes server that's where the agendas are.

The remaining influence is a little flexible. Miss Bones felt right for the day when I was expecting more asset decks following the World Tree ban, but it has been a Zenit Chip for keeping up sustained pressure or a Dr. Nuka for acceleration (This card is not blue and is therefore categorically wrong).
The second Pinhole was the third Aumakua for a while, but ultimately I felt 2 turtle was enough with the other ways to break ice in the deck and drawing a pinhole can buy us time in the EAzmari matchup.

Why this?

I don't know if this is the best deck in the meta, or an S-tier deck, but damn it feels fun to play. If I've learned one thing in the last year of netrunner it's that you've got to play a deck where you enjoy playing out of tight spots. When the games get tough you feel like locking in, not checking out. For me it's this deck.

It's disruptive. It forces the corp to react to your gameplan and play defense because if they don't you can really pull them apart. A lot of decks in the current meta do not like to do this. It feels like a classic criminal deck.

Also you get to Patchwork a Strike Fund to play a Sure Gamble from 1 credit to go to 9 in a single click and feel like a genius.

Shoutouts

All my opponents on the day were as excellent as we've come to expect from the netrunner community. Yes this game is great, but it's the fact that this group of people is so friendly, welcoming and good spirited that has kept me playing and coming to these events for 10+ years.

Special mention to the Sheffield gang for being my opponents in rounds 1, 2 and 3. New rivalry starts here?

And to Kikai, who has been knocking me out of tournaments for the last decade and meeting all my attempts at starting beef with his kind, supportive and friendly nature, even to the point of becoming teammates. Our games are always some of my absolute favourites. Winning that last game in Swiss was a real moment for me and getting knocked out of the cut by you just means I have a little more mountain left to climb. At least he had the good grace to go on and win the whole thing.

And of course to the incredibly handsome and charming TOs for the day. Absolute pillars of the community.