No Fox Given

This weekend, randomnetcat and I visited Nottingham - one of my favourite English cities! - and as we arrived in the early morning on the now-classic night bus from Dundee, we were on the hunt for a nice place to get breakfast. We canvassed for opinion in several friend groups, and Cobalt from the Midlands Netrunner scene recommended the Fox Café to us.

It's a cute little brunch place in the city centre with fox decorations everywhere. There are foxes drawn on the chalkboards, fox paintings in the windows, even little wooden foxes hanging from the tree in the corner, wreathed in fairy lights. It just feels kind of cosy and homely.

I am a bit of a breakfast obsessive, so my opinions are strong and my expectations high, but I needn't have worried. I had a big pot of sweet, chewy granola and yoghurt with fruit and honey, and she got toasted bagels with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. I tasted a bit of the latter and it was absolutely incredible - so much flavour.

I can't sing the praises of this lovely little café enough. Foxes really do make everything better.

Oh right, and there was Netrunner as well.

Everyone's playing Kingmaking Nebula at the moment, or sometimes pivoting away from its natural FA tendency, but I loved Stoke the Embers kickflips in Epiphany pre-rotation and wanted to make that work instead. Foxes make this better, too.

The basic line goes like this:

• Start a turn with Gemilang out, Kakurenbo and Stoke in hand, and at least 2 credits.
• Spend 3 clicks and 2 credits to play Kakurenbo, trashing Stoke and immediately installing it. Stoke advances itself once, gaining the 2 credits back, and Kakurenbo advances it twice.
• Use the fourth click to advance and score Stoke, gaining 3 credits.

You can modify this; Kakurenbo can also score any of the 3/x agendas (albeit no longer credit-positive), as can KPI or Petty Cash from archives. Sudden Commandment even lets the bullshit happen on the Nebula side.

I slapped this together in half an hour a couple of days before the tournament and was actually pleasantly surprised it functioned as well as it did - despite not scoring very well in the tournament itself, I won every friendly I played with it, and managed to score the combo lines reliably.

Mostly, the ice and agenda suites let me down. In particular...

• I'm down on Funhouse. We need to actually keep the runner out, and it doesn't.
• There should be three Mestnichestvos. I only took them out because randomnetcat was playing them in PT Untaian rush (also very cool) and I couldn't be bothered to proxy more. I figured it wouldn't make a huge difference and was Very Wrong.
• Without Kingmaking to filter them out, we need fewer 1-point agendas to avoid flooding. My current plan is to swap the False Leads, cute as they are, for a Next Big Thing.

Really, the main lesson here is to actually play a game or two with your decks before bringing them to a tournament, but that's boring. If I wanted to play a deck I was familiar with, I'd be on Hoshiko.

Thanks to Cobalt, harmonbee and all the Midlands crew for a lovely Saturday <3 You all rock!