It's a Sports Meta (3rd at Delaware CO)

This is the Sports deck I took to the Delaware CO. I chose this deck because I anticipated the meta would be primarily Aumakua decks (of the blue and green variety), deep dive decks (of the blue and green variety), and Fake Maxx Hoshiko. Having a 2/1 really changes the way this deck plays, as it isn’t quite as dependent on fast advance tools (allowing one to drop to 2 audacity rather than 3 audacity without too much pain)

The key in this deck is just to play as fast as you can, try to always threaten a scoring window lined up next turn. Install Rashidas and Bassi to force a few breakers out, and prevent the runner from constantly poking at centrals — you don’t have vacheron, you can’t be foolhardy. My ICE strategy is generally to pick my weakest server (generally HQ for Adam/Crim, R&D for Anarch/Shaper) and focus on that, using any remaining ICE to protect Rashidas.

The deck is pretty generic, only a few differences relative to the other sports decks worth discussing:

(1) No Campaigns My rationale for dropping them is they give the runner a lot of control over how much money you make. Essentially, for a campaign to be good, you need to put the runner in a fork where the campaigns give you money you need, while the cost to trash sets the runner sufficiently backward. Fortunately, in most decks this is a good tradeoff — I’d guess about 30-40% of Marilyn Campaigns are trashed before they finish ticking. However, I felt both the pros and the cons are less pronounced in this Sports deck, as (a) Sports doesn’t really need more than 7 credits at any time, and (b) Sports’ ICE is relatively porous, and doesn’t punish low credit count. This, coupled with the fact that the runner can trash campaigns in HQ, makes the cards feel weaker than I’d like.

(2) Predictive Planogram This is what I substituted the campaigns with. I like the card — it’s flexible, can break you out of R&D lock, can’t be trashed, and is technically tag punishment.

(3) 7 ICE Lowest ICE density of any deck in the top cut. I got lucky in that no one really punished it with Conduit or Stargate. Rustryder’s freedom definitely made me wish I put an extra ICE or two. I think depending on where the meta goes, your mileage may vary.

If I were to do it over, I would substitute 2 Tranquility Home grids and a sprint for 2 Marilyn Campaigns, to better control agenda density, and a drafter. Try it out! The 2/1 is SUCH a game changer.

Thanks to Sanjay for organizing a lovely tournament, Ysengrin for streaming, Jonas for absolutely crushing it all day, and my lovely Netrunner Pals for testing decks with me; I learn so much just from the idle conversations we have on the Jnet chat bar.

CheeRs!