His Dark Materials — 1st @ UK Ranking Finals

Aggressive Crim is one of the great joys of netrunner. It's a constant fight for board control, every run and ice rez needing deep consideration. Ever since cerberus's (the Dark Lord, Dave Hoyland) Wine me, dine me, 419 me, I've occasionally returned to Apoc 419, even after all it's lost: Dean Lister, Maxwell James, Crowdfunding. Even at its lowest point, I decided now would be a good time to pull it out of retirement. It was a meta call that there wouldn't be any Jinteki glacier in the group, and boy did it pay off, finding four asset decks and carrying me to a 5-1 finish.

The core conceit is to run aggressively, keeping the corp from being able to score by forcing them to protect centrals and threatening to Apoc them every turn. When it looks like you're about to be locked out, push the reset button and start again, except this time HQ is probably full of agendas.

Swift is the new star thanks to Uprising. It gives flexibility, letting you use Same Old Thing or install Eater on the Apoc turn, and gives you game against Jinteki allowing you to Apoc from the heap with Same Old Thing.

Thanks

• To boot, fellow Azmari and apoc Crim lover.
• To the London crew, for being a welcoming and friendly lot, despite the disappointing chips.
• To rotage for TOing.
• To johno for tirelessly organising the dinner afterwards.

And apologies to Kabonesa Wu for betraying her in the last tournament of the season. You're still my favourite runner! I just got tired of losing all the time...

Matches

• R1 L vs rotage on Pingu Sports: I wasn't paranoid enough and stole two 2-pointers off R&D with three cards in hand. Whoops died to Punitive.
• R2 W vs steffmonkey on NEH: Double Bankroll carried me through the early game and I Apoc'd after the second TeamSpo rez.
• R3 W vs kikai on tempo Gagarin: I obfuscated being on Apoc for as long as possible, then pulled the plug when he put his second ice on his scoring remote. Bankrolls did work after the Apoc allowing an SDS steal (followed by having a pocket Aumakua for the re-steal after a Divested Trust trigger).
• R4 W vs twisty_b on BOOM! CTM: Aggressively checking remotes meant he never was able to stick an ARES. After the Apoc, it was a long slog to find agendas through single accesses, and he generously conceded so we'd have time for the second game.

• R5 W vs rusefus on combo ASA: This was the matchup I chose the deck for! A great mulligan into Inside Job, Spear Phishing, and Apoc meant he was never going to keep a board presence, so it was matter of pressuring until the last possible moment to pull the plug. He didn't quite draw ice in the right order after the Apoc and ended up with a Vanilla on HQ. He then drew a few too many unscorable EffComs, which led to his Crisium getting trashed while stealing one of his EffComs, along with a followup Embezzle hitting Dedication Ceremony and Fully Operational. Ouch.

• Cut W vs nemamiah on AgInfusion: The nightmare matchup! Jinteki glacier is hard enough, and now there's AgInfusion's agility to contend with! The game would end up revolving around what ice he drew (the wrong ones in the wrong order). With two Obokatas piling up in HQ, I pulled the plug on Apoc with Swift threatening the extra click to turn off AgInfusion's agility, and then after that it was picking off agendas from centrals. A terrifying matchup where I got tremendously lucky!