Bristol Blue Sun - 1st at Bristol SC

This deck is dedicated in loving memory to the Netrunner career of Dr. Tagore Nakornchai, 2013 to 2018. May your head always have a prize mat to shelter under, my friend. Another win.

I was going in to Bristol pretty cold, having not played at all in four months and with a brand new meta to interpret. In my flailing fumblings to find a Corp I liked (apologies to all those people I've incessantly bugged and forced to play test games on my behalf for the past week) we came up with a dubious Mirrormorph concoction that might one day be good, a CtM list that only made me yearn for better times, an EoI Azmari deck that was beguiling but probably bad, and then finally this. The reasons for ending up with Blue Sun were partly out of a spirit of experimentation, partly so that we could test new cards but mostly because we ran out of time before the event.

Anyway, the theory behind playing this is that my early guess is that Reduced Servers and Daily Quest are probably the best two Corp cards in downfall. Sandstone (at least in Blue Sun) and Afshar are reasonable pieces of ice, and all these cards fit well in Blue Sun. Daily Quest can be picked up when you need the remote and then put back once you're done, and Reduced Service can be reset when you need to. Crisium Grid has synergy with both those cards and also felt like a strong inclusion in in an anticipated meta full of Apocalypse Anarchs and Criminal (this, at least, was correct), and Border Control combined with Reduced Service presents a late game scoring server that is extremely hard to crack.

The upshot is a deck that I think is extremely hard to play optimally and is moderately strong when you do so. If you want to save yourself a headache you can probably play Mti with a similar level of success, but this is more interesting and still has some potential to be improved.

If you're looking for changes I would recommend starting with the ice. I asked Seamus, who in theory is knowledgeable about Weyland stuff, for advice but his reply was to tell me about a Netrunner related dream he'd had. You also might want to consider a Preemptive Action, because if something happens to your Border Controls and Reduced Services you're left looking a bit silly.

In general you want to rush the first few points, before using defensive tricks to finish up. Try to leave yourself needing two points instead of three to win, as it's much easier when you can install Reduced Service and the agenda on the same turn.

You have to be extremely careful with ice placement. You can't overcommit ice to centrals, and just have to make them moderately taxing enough to discourage too many runs. The first Border Control should go on the remote, but consider using the second one for R&D to prevent Turning Wheel deep digs. Veritas is best as the outer ice on HQ and R&D. Sandstone (of which you probably want only two in the deck) is good as the only ice on Archives (bonus points if there's a Cyberdex Virus Suite in the bin) or on the scoring server, but should never be the outer ice on HQ or R&D.

Reduced Service and Daily Quest did prove to be very good cards and if you want to experiment with Downfall Corps I'd suggest that's a good place to start, in this or other ID's.

Shout outs to all the people kind enough to talk theory with me over the last few days. That's the best bit of Netrunner.