*CORRECTION: there is no Anansi. Those are supposed to be Anemone

(It’s SteveTouille)

First of all, if I haven’t said it enough and you don’t already know, Netrunner has an amazing community. This tournament was the first that I’ve played in person outside of Alberta and after this experience I will be making every effort to make it out to events because this was worth every penny (and Canada doesn’t even have pennies anymore). If you’re on the edge about attending an event, I highly encourage you to go even if you don’t know anyone. I know there are many people that I’ll be keeping in touch with and talking to more after this event.

Before going into the deck write up, I will start by saying that I do enjoy playing and playing against grinder. I know I’m probably among a minority but I will do my best to explain below how I find playing/playing against this deck very interesting. Also, there’s only 24 more days of this being legal so should I even do a writeup? I will anyways

Also check out my runner: The 2021/22 Undefeated Apoc MaxX

The Deck

I, among a few others that I was testing with, was extremely close to bringing grinder to worlds 2021. Unfortunately, the 3 News Teams and 1 HPT that we were playing at the time didn’t quite do the job and the Reg Steve matchup seemed bad. On the side, Bridgeman tested Attractive Azmari (which is the list I played at worlds and in the OTG team tournament) and the Azmari was chosen over the grinder for worlds due to a fear of Reg Steve.

After worlds, I took my eye off competitive play until the release of the Midnight Sun Booster while The King continued to jam away and iterate this deck. Anansi came and went and we ended up deciding that a low cost ice suite with no econ cards was the most consistent way to set up a solid defence. Despite Mausolus being steep on influence, it is the perfect combination of early viability and late game tax that the deck needs. Eventually, we picked up Warroid Tracker to round out the influence which protects upgrades, protects ICE against Hippos, stops Stargate, and can occasionally win you the game when the runner accesses a Snare and tries to trash it without having read Warroid Tracker.

With the growing popularity of Deep Dive, I saw a net damage deck to be an ideal response while the cheap ICE suite is also extremely good against Anarch and their conspiracy breakers. I knew that as long as I practiced the deck enough to finish games within 40 minutes then this could do very well. On the day I did go to time twice; the first was due to a very long runner game against 6 agenda Restoring Humanity and the second was against Rongydoge in round 1 of the cut where we started a bit late and I could have had the win locked down 2 turns before time was called if I had remembered House of Knives tokens.

Gameplan

The gameplan is to fast-advance agendas with Shipment from Tennin until the runner is at a low enough card count to start safely scoring Obokata. To do this, a few things need to happen: 1 Centrals need to get defended ASAP. ICE first, upgrades second. Credits will need to be clicked for in order to pay for stuff like ICE, upgrades, and Snares. Only click to draw if you’re looking for something, otherwise, click for credits. 2 Protect the Obo by installing the first Anemone on HQ and the second on Archives. In most cases, don’t rez unless protecting an Obo. They will come to HQ and keeping them away from the runner is very important. If they run HQ and you have a Preemptive/Genotyping in hand then trash Obo by rezzing Anemone. Keep in mind that after rezzing it, you can overwrite the Anemone to shuffle it back as well.

Protect the Kakugo and Mausolus from Hippo. If the runner is on Clot then once you’ve clicked to enough credits you can make a remote with 2 or more ICE (ideally 1 is a Kakugo) and then start install single-advancing stuff to force a Clot or just never-advance if you don’t have the Shipment. Avoid icing a remote unless absolutely necessary.

Use recursion as things go to Archives. There is usually no more than 2 faceup cards in Archives during the majority of the game. Depending on how the runner goes about the match, you may need to make plays such as icing a remote, installing naked Snares, or even naked Stings. If Obos flood the hand you can always pick a turn where the runner has low cards in hand and discard both and Preemptive next turn.

How To Win As Runner

The easiest way to win as Runner is to steal an early Obo. Take any free early accesses and challenge the ICE installs because it only gets harder the longer you wait. This is why it’s essential as the Corp to ICE centrals early to discourage early runs. The most interesting part about running against Grinder is managing what cards to use and not use. Do I need this card? Or is it better as a hit point? It’s a delicate balance because using too little cards usually gives the Corp the ability to score and set up, and the slow tempo can be hard to recover from. Cards becoming hit points adds an interesting dynamic of additional resource management to the game. Use too many cards and we all know what happens ;)

Shoutouts

Rustryder for starting the grind way back in October, The King for continuing to test the deck, Bridgeman and Koschei for letting me grind them out, 0thmxma for the fantastic gif content, Orbital for running an amazing tournament, and everyone who came to US Nats making every day a blast.

See y’all at worlds :)