Emergent Adam - 3rd at Wizard's Chest SC in Denver

Three weeks ago I returned to Netrunner after a two year hiatus. I had slowly stopped playing over the course of Mumbad, when Faust and IG were incredibly prevalent and the game had simply stopped being fun for me. However, Core 2.0, rotation, and, most importantly, the new banned/restricted MWL format brought me back. I'm very happy to be playing my favorite game again.

I had played Adam very unsuccessfully before my hiatus but I loved the aggressive potential of the Bioroid so when a friend of mine suggested I bring him to counter the fast meta we were expecting, I jumped on the idea. I looked at both Turtle Vans and slower Career Fair Adam decks, and liked elements of both of them. Ultimately I decided to bring in three Femmes both because it was apparently good in Turtle Vans and because I've played a lot of decks focused on cheating out Femmes so I immediately saw the Femme related bullshit potential of Emergent Creativity.

On the other hand, I felt Turtle Vans was desperately lacking in economy for longer games and decided to go for a Career Fair package. This left me very tight on influence with three cards (Career Fair, Stimhack, and The Turning Wheel) that I very much want another copy of. My hybrid may simply be worse than the decks that inspired it.

Tournament Report:

Game 1 of Swiss: Win vs Dan on Titan Trainsnational

Unfortunately I was paired with Dan for my first game, who had driven me and two other Laramie Netrunners down to Denver for the tournament. I knew his deck, and had specifically picked up Adam for his relatively favorable Titan matchup. The game was close, with Dan getting close to winning before I won off R&D. Adam is good against Titan because of the incredible efficiency he gets from both Find the Truth and Neutralize Threats, which allows him to access two cards from HQ while simultaneously checking R&D for an agenda in a single click. 2 credit Femmes laugh at any attempts to rush out behind a single piece of ice, no matter how much that ice is Little Engine, so Adam is particularly strong against the non-FA rush version of Titan.

Game 2 of Swiss: Loss vs Jason on Titan Trainsnational

Having swept Dan, I was now on the top table with eventual fourth place finished Jason. Both of our games were great, incredibly close, and were streamed on Twitch at meanladystreams. Jason scored an Atlas behind some etr ice early, so I was immediately on the clock. I got to five points before Jason scored the third Atlas. Knowing this was going to be my last turn, and suspecting there was at least one agenda in HQ because Jason had rezzed a Little Engine in front of it, I played Emergent Creativity to Femme the Little Engine and then ran his four card HQ twice, missing what he later revealed to be one Oaktown Renovation.

While I did lose this game, I was still very happy with Adam. I had good odds to win in that last turn (and those odds were good precisely because I was playing Adam), and they happened to go against me. Sometimes Netrunner is like that, and that's a big part of what makes it so exciting. In fact, all three games I played against Jason on the day came down to both players being on game point and the runner having one last chance to win through accesses, and I came out ahead the other two times. Jason was a pleasure to play against, in no small part because of his incredible and unique Leela deck that I had to face twice.

Game 3 of Swiss: Win vs Elliot on Argus

As I said in my Titan writeup, my games against Elliot were unfortunately one sided. His Nero deck had a terrible matchup against Titan, and he got horribly agenda flooded and ice starved as Argus. Find the Truth was very valuable, showing me that a GFI was on top of R&D on a Dirty Laundry run. I was nervous about running into his ice with a low strength Turtle, so I played Employee Strike and then Femmed his HQ ice next turn. I stole four points of agendas, but didn't see the GFI.

When Elliot installed a card in an unprotected remote with an upgrade, I suspected it was the GFI. after running HQ a few more times, I ran the remote and discovered that I was correct at the expense of eating a PriSec. Elliot then overdrew hoping to find some ice, but unfortunately just drew into yet another agenda which I stole when I ran HQ next turn.

Elliot seemed very nice and was clearly a good player. I hope to play against him the future without such a loapsided matchup or bad luck. Additionally, this game was on stream and reveals quite clearly how little practice I had with Adam before the tournament. I kept forgetting triggers on all of my Directives, and used RNG key maybe once during my many HQ runs.

Game 4 of Swiss: ID vs Matt

At this point, Matt and I were number one and two seed and guaranteed a place in the cut if IDed, so that's what we did.

Game 3 of the cut: Loss vs Matt on Boom! CI

I only lived through two turns, so I can report them in detail. Matt installed a piece of ice over R&D, and then took credits, possibly via Hedge Fund. Click one I installed RNG Key, click two I ran HQ seeing MCAAP off R&D and making a wild guess for the Key. I saw IPO and UVC, and missed my RNG guess. I installed Daily Casts and then, checking the stream afterwords, I apparently forgot to spend my last click so I ended my first turn on 2 credits.

Matt takes two credits and then plays HHN. I end up with four tags. I spend my two remaining credits and the Daily Casts drip and my first to clicks to clear two tags. I've seen three of the four cards in Matt's hand: MCAAP, IPO, and UVC. My only hope for avoiding Boom!, if he has it, is to run HQ and get a correct guess on my RNG Key to remove one of my two tags. I run, see Boom! off the top of R&D, now I can't guess 1 (because I would immediately have to spend the RNG key credits to trash MCAAP) and trashing the Boom! from hand won't save me, so I guess 8. Instead I access an Ichi and MCAAP. I clicked for a credit and congratulated my opponent on his win.

Conclusion:

Adam performed well on the day. My first loss was not a result of the deck failing to perform, and my second was the result of pilot error. Find the Truth was consistently useful (when I remembered to trigger it) even when it wasn't combining with RNG Key to be a permanent Temujin (in five runs, Temujin nets 16 credits, RNG Key nets 15). Having a turn 1 HQI was extremely powerful, especially against faster corps. Unlike my corp, which I practiced extensively and spent a lot of time refining, I had only played my Adam deck less than half a dozen times before the tournament (on Jinteki.net) and made very minor tweaks. More practice time would have helped me avoid missing important triggers, and better meta knowledge would have made me run more carefully against CI.

I had a great time during the tournament, and all of my opponents were a pleasure to play against!