This is the deck I brought to UK Nationals, it is an evolution of the deck that went on a tear Scottish regionals, simply swapping Degree Mill for Send a Message a Message because "decline to steal" is a brutal thing to hear in a Punitive Counterstrike deck.

Crown of Servers

I played alongside the People's Front of Reading (not to be confused with the splitters in the Reading People's Front) and won its first game against Sixtyten from Arthritis Campaign, who was on a very neat Reina deck, filling out a full suite of System Update IDs with the rest of the team. After he stole a Send a Message on R&D, I topdecked a Punitive and landed the kill. I was set up for the triple advance kill threat that turn if not for the topdeck, and so the deck did essentially exactly what it intends to.

Game two saw me facing off into Aceempress of Qtmqehish, which was a delightful matchup of queer team on queer team violence! I somehow managed to draw an alarming number of agendas in a deck with only 6 agendas, and took the loss. This is a recurring theme which will come back later. Needless to say this is the Crown of Servers loss, as my opponent piloted Zahya expertly and navigated through my flood to pick me apart piece by piece.

Game three had us against Belmont Biscuits Milk Chocolate Seal Bars (which were delicious and kept my sugar levels up through a lot of the long weekend). I was against ChonkySeal, and unfortunately for Tagme Freedom touches agendas, which is a death sentence against a Punitive Deck. Despite the alarming amount of money that deck is able to make.

The final round has us against We Traided Quagsire for Kikai, with me facing up against J0NALD. I am afraid after so much netrunner I do not recall exactly what happened in the game, but I do remember it being a short one. Being the last game of the day, my notetaking was poor and my note document simply reads "Puni".

Main Event

In round one I paired against α who was playing Sable. Send a Message was stolen, with a Class Act to protect against the punitive response. At which point unable to murder I put the combo in the remote. With no way to contest it, a death by The Holo Man Reeducation Djupstad Grid followed on my next turn.

For round three, I played against Olive on Kit. You may recall some foreshadowing earlier, but this game was a masterwork in flooding. I somehow managed to draw 7 out of 6 agendas (via shuffling some back with attitude adjustment or spin doctor, I don't recall which) in the top 17 cards of the deck. Olive was successfully able to touch three of these agendas before I could assemble an economy to threaten Punitive.

Round five began with a flood, not on the scale of round three, but in a way that was giving me an unfortunate vibe that the deck had decided to be cursed. Fortunately there was some money and punitives alongside the flood (which did not happen the previous game). I also recalled that every game I had tabled a spin doctor so far my opponents had contested it quickly, so I installed an undefended Reeducation, bluffing it as a spin doctor. It was run, and a punitive counterstrike landed.

In round seven I paired against Azran, who catalogued a Reeducation. I only had one punitive in hand, but through Sudden Commandment into Red Level Clearance I was able to find the second one for the kill!

Round ten did not last long at all. I paired against Countzer0 on 419 and played responsible Netrunner by icing HQ to avoid the Doof. This turned out to be bad play, as a dirty laundry for value onto R&D touched a Reeducation and from there Countzer0 promptly pulled my entire game plan apart, helped by the follow up upgrade flood I managed to find myself in (I have never flooded with upgrades before, there are only four of them in the deck, and somehow I found them all in the top 10 cards).

Final Thoughts

On a 3-2 record, let down by a poor runner side performance, I was still happy with the decks overall day two performance, combined with an excellent day one performance I was more than happy with the deck, and with some better draws and some better plays (particularly learning to play the deck through some very aggressive flood) I may have turned out a better result. My runner side managed to win only a single game, and so my final placement was quite poor, but I still felt it worth writing up the experience because it was an excellent one :)