[1st, Startup @ UK Nats] THIS DECK LOOKS FUN TO PLAY

This is the deck I took to the UK Nationals Startup side event. After going 4-10 in the main event, I wasn't feeling super confident about my chances, but remembered that I was playing very different decks on day two so there was a chance that I'd do better.

Bewilderingly, this deck went 3-1 and my corp went 4-0, so I won. This is my first tournament win outside of winning a small league in my local Warwick meta, so I was beyond surprised! Frankly I'm still surprised as I type this out, but maybe at some point the surprise will wear off.

Okay let's actually talk about the deck now

This deck is a lot less exciting than my Corp, so I have much less to say! Thank goodness, that writeup got really long...

I'd been playing this deck in a local Startup league and having so much fun with it, so brought it to Nationals. It's called THIS DECK LOOKS FUN TO PLAY because I stuffed a bunch of run events into a Ken deck, looked at it and went "wow this deck looks fun to play". It is also fun to play.

This is a very normal Ken deck which uses Deep Dive as its win condition. Swift means you can have a five-click turn, so can get the double access with Deep Dive if needed. The sheer number of run events means that you're getting an extra click pretty much every turn, which it turns out is a very helpful way to win games.

I pretty much have one tip about playing this deck - your starting hand should have some kind of longer-term economy option in Swift, Prepaid VoicePAD, The Class Act or Earthrise Hotel. It's really tempting to keep a hand full of fun run events, but it means you will burn out very quickly and won't be able to keep putting pressure on the Corp. I learned this the hard way during the Startup league, and it helped me immensely in the tournament!

I expect this was accidentally a very good choice for the tournament, because the Precision Design matchup is a good one for Ken. If I'd faced any GameNet, my tournament record would have likely been worse.

How'd the games go?

It went 3-1, and would have gone 4-0 if time had been called a tiny bit later! But given how lucky I got in some of the games I really can't complain.

Round 1 vs Clusterfox on Hyoubu (Timed Loss) I put on extreme pressure in the early game with Boomerang and Jailbreak, forcing a bunch of rezzes. Managed to force a Nisei counter on a run on the remote because he didn't have the cards for Anoetic. Unfortunately the first game being so long (nobody's fault!) meant that time was called on the turn before I was going to Deep Dive.

Round 2 vs J0N4LD on Precision Design (Win) J0N4LD was rushing heavily - I managed to get a couple of breakers early to contest them and early Criminal pressure did its thing. He then kept drawing agendas so I was able to find the rest of the points I needed quickly.

Round 3 vs Swiftie on Precision Design (Win) Swiftie got horribly flooded and I didn't really earn the win. It's how it goes sometimes.

Round 4 vs Dominic Hedges on Precision Design (Win) It was the same game of challenging the early remote. Managed to get off a very early Deep Dive which lead to a Cyberdex, a Vacheron and a gracious concession.

This deck has had a bit more refinement than my Corp did, so no obviously bad deckbuilding decisions stand out to me. The Revolver may be unnecessary, but I ran it because I like the full art card from the Midnight Sun Booster.

Special thanks

(This section is the same in both of my Startup lists, so if you've already read one you can stop here.)

Look this is my first tournament win, I'm allowed to be a little sappy. Big thanks to:

• The Warwick crew. I give special shout outs to three people from that, just because I have extra things to say. First, a shoutout to sophie (Crowphie), whose ability to do well in competitive Netrunner bewilders me to this day after teaching her the game something like a year ago. Then Hannah (AceEmpress), my partner and co-designer of my Mirrormorph deck, and the one that helped me out when I was feeling absolutely dead after my disappointing Standard performance. And finally Tim (Hello), who came 33rd at Nats with Apex and Jemison (??!) and is the one I've been close with for the longest time (read: we are both old). But of course I can't miss out the rest of the crew, who made it such a great trip up: Lewis, Scarlett and Franziska.
• The organisers of UK Nationals. This was my first Nationals, and while it was unsurprisingly exhausting, it was such a special event and I'm so glad I went. A particular shoutout goes out to Steff, who organised the Startup side event.
• My opponents, who were all fun to play against and showed off how lovely the Netrunner community is. A particular shoutout goes to Dominic Hedges - turns out we're originally from similar bits of London so were fast friends before the round had even started!
• A bunch of the other people I met, both new and old. It was so great seeing Andi Thomas and Tamijo again, and getting to meet new people like Harper, Zack and James Ayres was brilliant too.