Wow! Another reg Hoshiko list doing well at a tournament? How anticlimactic! This list may not be the most original, but it is special to me. I'm going to write about it, because I'm a writing major and that's what I do, but first some technical stuff in case you --like me-- obsessively track changes in the Hoshiko Meta.

Meta Stuff

This list is heavily based off of Cobalt''s List from Summer Showdown, with a couple changes to the influence spread

• I really wanted Cup. With so many high priority assets running around with inconvenient trash costs (e.g. Phat, Hostile Architecture, Svytagor Extractor, Manegarm, La Costa, Djupstad) the ability to pick something up and put it in a cup seemed really nice. So I removed a Bahia Bands and a Pinhole
• Then I kept dying to dumb shit, most of it egg shaped. So I traded the last two Bahia Bands for stoneships

There are also some changes to the actual cards, but it's mostly preference. I do want to highligh Climactic Showdown, a card I think is criminally underrated. Ice destruction is always good, and if they choose not to trash, two extra accesses on top of twinning is also always good. It's also incredibly thematic, which is important to me. It shouldn't go in every list, but in a list like this that sets up and dominates the board state, it's a very potent closer. It also helped me justify taking Eye for and Eye and Finality out of Cobalt's list, which is good because I was bad at using those cards :p

Other than that the list is fairly standard. There's no Bankhar because in testing I kept losing important things like icebreakers to poorly timed runs, and I didn't want to do that at a tournament. Hannah and Fencer help with asset spam, and they're also surprisingly useful against LEO. The clicks from Hannah are a gift when the corp can shut down any run, and Fencer can help trash their upgrades and/or regoliths.

I will say, if you pick up this list, get your leeches installed and charged. Odore and Buzzsaw feel a lot better when you can drag ice down to 3 strength, and rising tide appreciates the assist as well

Edit: one more card decision I wanted to mention is Gachapon instead of The Price. Gachapon is more restrictive: I would love to be able to install Keiko or Boomerang with it. But Gachapon is a lot more forgiving since you can shuffle important events back. What ultimately sold me on it is the ability to fish for virtual resources to get Odore set up. Cobalt figured this out first, but if you're curious about the rationale those are my thoughts :3

Rounds

• R2 -> loss vs Issuaq. My bad for not expecting neurospike kill combo Issuaq. Skill issue I think
• R3 -> win vs AU Co. Got set up, kept five in hand, held steelskin, got multi-accesses with Twinning and Climactic Showdown and squeezed the corp out of life
• R6 -> win vs Zwicky. Same story, plus or minus big lizard

Story Tme!

I found NetRunner in 2018 when a friend snagged a revised core set from a game store. We had a great time together slowly discovering that Magnum Opus was a crazy card and that rezzing Hadrian's Wall was much easier said than done. Learning the game was out of print was a unique tragedy. NetRunner scratches my brain in a way no other game has, it's truly the best game I've ever played. But such is life.

Late last year I wander into a local game stop and, much to my surprise, find NetRunner cards! The employee tells me about the local meet ups, I buy some cards, and swan dive into the local scene

Hoshiko is the first runner I ever built for. In part, this is because the identity comes with so much value that's easy to understand and access as a new player. Specifically, the card draw was a huge boon. The game is easier when you see more cards.

But if I wanted card draw I'd play Lat. I know NetRunner isn't a roleplaying game, and at a top competitive level there's no prize for having the most thematic deck. But Hoshiko is special to me. Between my first encounter with this game in 2018 and now, I left the church I grew up in and finally grew into the person I'd only dreamed I could be in 2018. And so much of that was because of the friends I've made and the support they've given me. When I'm with them I feel strong, and without them I feel weak. Hoshiko spoke to me in a way no other runner did.

So, four months after picking up the game I bring Hoshiko and a boring PD list to my first tournament: the Boulder District championship. PD goes 2-1, a respectable finish. Hoshiko goes 0-3.

Two months later, with another district championship coming up in a neighboring state, I have my corp locked in: funny kill combo Nuvem. But I can't find a runner I like. So I brew up another Hosh list and drive to Omaha. Nuvem goes 3-1, Hosh goes 0-3.

At this point I give up on Hoshiko. It's too popular, people are teched against it, I'm not good enough at it, some combination of the above. It doesn't matter. The Hoshiko dream is dead.

Two months after the Omaha districts is the Denver Megacity. I tried a lot of runners for this event. Esa, Seb, Topan (I love Anarchs :p)
The whole time I see Hoshiko lists show up on NRDB that did well at tournaments. I branch out and try MuslihaT, Az, Magdalene, Arisanna. The Surveyor keeps reporting that Hoshiko is a top tier deck. Hoshiko is incredible and powerful, and I'm not.

I don't know what to do. On the one hand, making a deep Hoshiko run would feel incredible. I know Hoshiko can do it. But if I bring her to another tournament, the biggest I've been to in my short NetRunner career, and turn my 0-6 Tournament record into an 0-10 record, that would be devastating.

So I reach out to my friends. I want to play Hosh, but I just don't win with Hosh. I don't know what to do. Here I have to give a huge shoutout to wigglestick and palo malo from my local meta for helping me realize a couple things.

First, I do win with Hoshiko. Not always, but nobody wins always. And the games I lose with Hoshiko I wouldn't have won with a different runner. Second, it doesn't matter if I win with Hoshiko or not. I love her, and that's enough. This is a hard pill to swallow, and something I still struggle with. The goal of the game is to have fun, but winning is fun. There's a balance here, and the factor that swings the balance is work. There are no NetRunner ID's or strategies that are incapable of winning. Put the work in, and you'll get better. Third, I don't suck at NetRunner, but I am pretty bad at playing Hoshiko specifically. The goal of Hoshiko is to make one very important run on turns where you don't need to flip the id to stop bleeding credits. If I wanted to howl like a wolf and do eco-terrorism, there are other identities for that style. But not Hoshiko. So I start practicing on jnet, and start winning. And when I lose, the loss feels controlled, and not like something mystical and out of my control went wrong. Maybe there's hope for the untold protagonist

The week before the tournament, I organized a small event to let people practice their decks. I make myself a deal. Take Hoshiko to this event. If I do well, the practice and power of friendship paid off and I can take it to Megacity. If not, friendship is a lie, I netdeck a boring MuslihaT list to take to Megacity and see what happens. So I sleeve up this list (minus the stoneships). While I do, I watch WolfeyVGC's Perish Trap video. Towards the end he talks about how rewarding flying in the face of the meta and winning with his favorite strategy and unused Pokemon was. So I get fired up and add Climactic Showdown to the list. It's not much, but it's enough to make the list feel distinctly mine

The tournament starts and I lose my first game with Hosh because I forgot that AU Co could run End of the Line.

This was always going to happen. I don't win with Hosh

But the next round, Climactic Showdown and The Twinning lets me see five out of R&D against a Prav list and I score four points and win abruptly. This was the turning point for me I think. I had officially won a tournament game with my favorite runner, and I'd done it with an under-used card that I thought was neat. In the last round I get paired against a currently undefeated LEO list. I know from experience that this list is on Cold Site Server and a host of other unpleasant upgrades. Climactic Showdown puts in work, trashing an Ansel. I get my engine up while LEO is stalling for time, and win again. That's enough for me to lock this in for megacity. My record may be 2-7 but I'm on a two game win streak, so if you think about it....

The tournament rolls around and I immediately lose round a close round one with my AU Co list, then take a dumb loss with Hoshiko in round 2. There were 5 separate things I could've done differently. I can feel myself start to spiral, so I take a lap around the store and calm myself down. I have a round off to kill someone with egg, I just need to breathe. The next round gets paired, and I'm running again. I make myself lock in. No more dumb mistakes. I slowly dismantle an opposing AU Co, with an assist from my beloved showdown, and get on the board. I only lose one game the rest of the day, and finish 10th out of 22. Definitely good enough to rest on. Then two players drop, and suddenly I'm in top cut.

I only got one runner game in the top cut, but I won it, and that win locked in a top 4 finish and brought my lifetime Hoshiko tournament record to 5-8. Still not glamorous, and honestly nothing to brag about, but miles better than the 0-6 it started at. My record within the past month is 5-2 which is something to brag about :p

Then I immediately lost the AU Co vs Maggie match-up and got eliminated in 4th.

I am, honestly and truly, overjoyed with this outcome. Hoshiko may be a basic-bitch runner chocie in the meta, but I see mysef in Hoshiko, and I didn't want to put her in the box until I'd given her a good run. This definitely counts. I didn't win, but this run felt like a miracle. And it was proof that if I worked hard and focused, I could hang with the best. I can play what I want and win. I'll be back to Hoshiko eventually, but for now I can rest.

Huge thank you again to all my friends here in Boulder, and for the incredible Colorado meta. Special thanks to lukifer and wigglestick for organizing this tournament and all the work that went in behind the scenes.