Startup Tao - Undefeated at UKGE Startup tournament

Leviticustard 4

So let's address the clickbaity title. The startup event at UKGE was extremely casual as it was mostly never players. No time limits or brackets so I got 3 games in and I only dropped one corp match but I was happy with how this deck performed in my limited testing.

I'd pretty much quit netrunner as there's no local scene around me so I'd end up traveling places there was one and getting stomped on. After Gateway came out I started watching the Metropole Grid and it rekindled my love for the game. I figured I'd stick to startup as there's less baggage and generally less punishing to mistakes. Having said that I think it's the best I've ever played and I wouldn't have got there if it weren't for all the great advice Andre and Pat give on the show. Anyway, enough about me, on to the deck.

The basic gameplan is to get Rezekis down early so you have infinite econ and then draw your whole deck while still being able to pressure the remote and centrals. SMC and overclock are great for early pressure and simulchips will be able to make sure you're always a threat. Annicam is also essential to get down early, getting 4 cards off of Diesel always feels great. It's a nice versatile deck being able to close the game off of R&D with Conduit & Deep Dive, HQ with Docklands Pass & Jailbreak and Light the Fire for the remote.

I was hoping to close my first game out with a deep dive but I hit a snare on the HQ run causing me to lose the Deep Dive, knocking me down to 2 cards in the grip and nothing in my stack. I did the smart thing and counted influence spent and there was easily enough for another 2 snares so I just camped the remote whenever anything got advanced in there but I mostly sent my turns clicking for 4 creds and gaining 3 off of Rezekis. Eventually I saw all 3 snares in archives so HQ must have been stacked but I noticed there was only 1 card left in R&D. Just because I could, I went for it, Simulchiped for my Imp and went for the mill win. Didn't feel great doing it to a newer player but we had a good chat after.

All in all it was my favourite part of the expo, so thankful to NISEI for putting it on and I can't wait to play some more games in meatspace soon.

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