Poutine (1st place @ NorCal regionals)

The 2017 Berkeley regional took place on May 13th and boasted a field of 48 competitive players from the west coast. This runner deck had 5 wins and 2 timed losses. Its corp counterpart was Nightmare Moon.

Swiss standings and pairings are temporarily available here.

Edit (5/20/17): @bluebird503 won the 34-person Seattle regional with a 46-card version of this deck, adding 1 Political Operative.

A little over a month ago I participated in a team unified tournament with @jimmypoopins and @crfluency. I was the criminal player and did a fair bit of testing with Jimmy's Nexus DLR Andy deck (based on this Canadian special) before the tournament. We all thought the deck was very strong, but we had some card conflicts and the deck really clashed with my own playstyle, so I ended up switching to a Gabe deck at the last minute. (I faced 2 HB glaciers and a PE so this turned out to be a terrible choice)

If you've never seen this type of Data Leak Reversal deck, the full combo goes like this:

1. Use Jak Sinclair to make a run. Use either Nexus or John Masanori to end the run and take a tag.
2. Activate DLR 4 times.
3. Trigger Citadel Sanctuary to remove the tag. If the corp pays a bunch into the trace, use an Aaron counter.
4. Repeat until there is no R&D.

Fast forward to 3 days before the tournament when I jammed some test games against @beyoken playing Mooninites. I stayed up until 3am trying about 6 different runners and succeeded in winning a grand total of one game. OK, so maybe I need a new plan for my runner...

Despite my own lack of skill at piloting DLR Andy, it seemed like an increasingly attractive option for a lot of reasons: Horizontal HB draws so many cards that they practically mill themselves out every game. Glacier has trouble outracing DLR while defending against siphons. Against Skorpios rigshooter you have a powerful win condition that doesn't require breaking any ice and dodges Hunter Seeker. And the combo of Citadel Sanctuary plus Power Taps singlehandedly beats just about every NBN deck.

A few words on individual card choices.

• Mammon: Significantly more expensive to use than Overmind or Vamadeva, but it's still the strongest AI option in a vacuum. You only really use it to beat gear checks and land siphons, so just put it down and don't touch it until the corp tries something funny.
• Fisk Investment Seminar: Turns out that you can't actually beat Marilyn Campaign without this card
• Dr. Lovegood: Blank Drug Dealer most turns, The Source when you want to steal an agenda, Masanori when you're afraid of taking too many tags, Black File while the corp is threatening to win, and Mammon to assert dominance

Quick tournament recap:

• Swiss round 1 against @tzeentchling on EtF fast advance. My corp game took a long time and the extent of my practice with DLR Andy in the last month was 1 game on Jnet. Turns out that I am completely unprepared for how many fucking triggers both of my decks have. Kris rushed to 6 points and put a card into his impenetrable Holmegaard server before time is called, I only have 2 points and no way to get 2 more agendas in one turn. I can play The Source and/or Black File to extend the game and deny Kris the full win, but that would directly hurt my strength of schedule, so I let Kris score out instead.
• Round 2 against @alexstevens on Blue Sun. Again I played corp first and again it wasn't over quickly. Blue Sun got off to a pretty slow start and I managed to snipe 1 early agenda. Then he rushed to 4 points before time in the round. I DLR'd a couple times and whiffed on Archives; 2-4 timed loss. I wasn't feeling too great about my deck choices at this point...
• Round 3 against @dickoff on Personal Evolution. This was probably my favorite game of the day. Matt mushins a card and ices HQ on turn 1; I CF'd a Supplier and hosted Temujin before siphoning to play around Komainu, but the ice is actually Mind Game! Mind Game redirected me to the mushined server and I reluctantly decided to jack out by putting both resources on the bottom of my stack. Of course it turns out to be an agenda. :( Later on The Source saved me by giving me extra warning to use Aaron counters before Matt can Trick out a Philotic to deal 5 damage. Then we started a race where I mill 4 cards a turn while Matt draws 4 cards looking for 24/7. He finally found it near the bottom of R&D and slammed it - the Philotic ability emptied my grip and stack exactly. I can't run any more because I know he plays Neural. Fortunately it turns out that Matt didn't have any Jacksons in his deck, so he just decked out over the next 3 turns. IMO it's games like this that really showcase why Netrunner is so great!
• Round 4 against @Segin on SYNC Fiery Informant. This matchup seems pretty much unloseable for Andy, Citadel and Taps blank all of SYNC's ice as well as their win condition.

• Round 5 against @westonodom on NEH railgun, another matchup that is difficult to lose. I balanced setting up my resource rig with pressuring Wes's economy and sniping agendas. When time was called Wes confidently fired off the combo, but he forgot about the second ability on Citadel Sanctuary! To kill through Sports Hopper + Citadel NEH needs to double Diagnostics into triple Boom - that's incredibly expensive, and doesn't even work if Andy has an Aaron counter.

• Cut round 1 against @bluebird503 on EtF glacier. I assumed that Kyle would be on Mooninites because I knew that he'd been helping test the deck for weeks. Later he told me that he had played his first physical Moons game the night before and immediately switched to a @simonmoon Foodcoats list. The triggers were just way too much XD Anyway, once he rezzed an Adonis his actual gameplan became evident, so I switched from purely setting up my combo to pressuring his economy. Turns out that Kyle had gotten the worst corp draw in the history of Netrunner, with 5 agendas in his HQ for most of the game and a million tracer ice that were worse than useless against double Power Tap. Not the most glamorous game to win, but I'll take it...

• Grand finals against @sirris on Skorpios shell game. Jon played this game really well whereas I'm screwing up left and right due to intense sleep deprivation. Luckily for me, Jon wasn't too far off the mark when he quipped that Citadel Sanctuary singlehandedly beats his deck. He landed a bunch of tags through various scary tricks but he can't float enough credits to punish me or trash my Fall Guys without opening himself up to siphon, so my Citadel just merrily dropped all the tags while giving me credits. Eventually I set up the full DLR combo and milled him out for the win!

Bonus props to:

• @lopert and @dien for creating the original deck, and @beyoken for sharing his updated version with me. It's a real terror!
• @jimmypoopins for his tips on how to play DLR Andy, without which I would have been completely clueless
• The Eudemonia game store for hosting the regional in a beautiful location and giving out tons of door prizes and store credit. (I grabbed Mice & Mystics with my winnings - so excited to try it out!) I would totally attend a repeat tournament again next year.
• @aleph_c for TOing the tournament and giving up his chance to play. Adam is a true rules guru and ran everything super smoothly.
• @Murphy for recording games from the top cut. Look forward to seeing the videos on his channel!
• @mike.summers for streaming many of the later games in the top cut through his phone, holding the stream with his hands even though he was smack dab in the middle of a solid 24 hours of driving and playing Netrunner. Bravo to Mike, a real hero (and a real human being).