Kill Your Idols (5-2; 19th at Worlds 2024)

or

"How I played 737 games to top 32 at Worlds"

or

"The hero's journey in 8 parts"

This is the story of my introduction to Netrunner, my 18 month quest to take my Netrunner play to the next level, and a round-by-round recap of Worlds 2024. It's long, but I hope it inspires new players for what they might accomplish. The deck writeup is at the end. My runner deck was Swift Lat and will be published separately by a TAI Breaker.

Act I: Departure

Call to adventure and refusal of the call

Six 6 years ago in October, Fantasy Flight stopped selling Netrunner. When they pre-announced that in the summer of 2018, a close, game-playing, college buddy emailed me and told me to buy all the packs I could find. Knowing nothing about the game, but trusting his judgment, I did so and tried to figure out what I just bought.

I loved the asymmetry of the game.

I liked the LCG format. And, as a Sci-Fi and cyberpunk lover, I was captivated by how well the theme fit the asymmetry and mechanics of the game. Unfortunately, my friend didn't live anywhere nearby so I looked for somewhere to play. I couldn't find anything in NYC except GNK/COs or whatever they were called at the time.

I built some decks and went. And bounced.

These early Netrunner experiences were very frustrating. The game was so cool, but I just got wrecked again and again by wonderfully friendly people who would point out obvious blunders, like running last click against PE or with less than 3 cards in hand against Jinteki. They would ask if I knew who my last opponent was, and tell me it was someone who won US nationals last year or some nonsense like that.

It was demoralizing. I couldn't see how I could ever play enough to get up the learning curve fast enough to have a hope of winning a game, so I gave it up and stuck my cards in a trunk.

Meeting the mentor(s)

One good thing that came of it was meeting sappidus, who had largely stopped playing Netrunner, but got me into the LOTR LCG. In July 2022, I went to sappidus' apartment for a game of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. There I met shiiuga and re-met internet, who I remembered as one of the people who very kindly ground me into dust playing Netrunner years before.

They said they were going to something called a "Startup CO" the next day. I also learned of a regular bi-weekly meetup and a group buy for a new set, Midnight Sun, organized by Redino987, in which I could pick up the core sets.

Regular chances to play? Simpler format? I was back.

I played off and one to some success and much failure for months, but I could tell I was getting a bit better. The Startup format, however, was collapsing into a simple dynamic: Endurance and corps trying to cope with it.

I took the leap into Standard shortly after the spring 2023 Endurance ban as the NY meta shifted away from Startup. More and more people were bringing Standard decks to meetups and after blind piloting someone's Outfit, I decided I'd make the jump, too. This was hard -- there was a big pool of cards I didn't know and a lot of play patterns I wasn't familiar with.

One of the biggest newbie challenges was dealing with Hard Hitting News. Fortunately, Kysra published a guide to playing around HHN to the NYC discord server. I realized that if I really wanted to get better, I needed to find someone could download that kind of wisdom to my brain at an accelerated rate.

I asked Kysra if they knew anyone who did coaching and they put me in touch with Whiteblade and Andrej.

Crossing the threshold

Whiteblade got back to me first. We started working together in May 2023 for a couple months.

I was expecting scrimmages, but it was almost entirely lecture and later replay review. Whiteblade had put together a detailed syllabus and we went through it systematically: what information to get from which websites, how to pick a deck, win conditions, mulligans, long and short term lines, risk management, facechecking, how to practice, learning from losing, and more and more besides.

It was amazing!

Two big things changed about my practice. First, I learned to play on jinteki.net. Second, I started logging my games, online and in-person. I might have gone overboard -- instead of just logging interesting games, I logged everything. After each meetup, I jotted down notes about my games on the subway ride home.

I have a record of almost every match I've played since I starting coaching with Eric in May 2023.

For most of them, I have a few sentences of notes about things that went particularly well or poorly, or lines I missed, or lessons learned. For some of them -- probably not enough -- I have notes from replay reviews I did.

Act II: Initiation

Tests and allies

I asked Whiteblade where people were talking about Netrunner strategy these days and he pointed me to the Itinerant Pro Testers Discord server, where I joined and introduced myself. That was September of 2023. Unfortunately, it seemed very quiet.

But shortly thereafter, some chap named "J0N4LD" got in touch with me about joining a newly formed, yet-to-be named testing group. This became the TAI Breakers and was a complete game-changer for me.

It was very clear that I was the least experienced person of the team and I was lucky that they asked me early on when the qualifications for joining were about the level of (a) "can fog a mirror" and (b) "wants to get better at Netrunner". I now had regular testing partners -- some really talented opponents that taught me a lot -- and constant conversation about deckbuilding, strategy, the meta, etc.

As the clearly junior member of the team, I wanted to give back in other ways than tournament victories, so I became the team statistician. Every week, I pull tournament results for every 8+ person standard event on ABR and run statistics on them for the team. This gives us a pretty close read on developments in the meta.

My first in-person tournament was a GNK at the end of September, 2023. I came in last. 10 out of 10. I felt completely deflated and sat in a cafe fighting back tears, journaling about what happened. Here are some excerpts:

"I suck." Okay, I don't but coming in last really stings.... Even though I know have to learn a lot to be competitive, and this is just the start, I wanted to do better.

Everyone there has played competitively more and longer than I have. There's nothing stopping me from playing a lot more and getting better.

I haven't played certain archetypes and I don't know what to do against them... "Win on centrals" isn't a plan that survives contact with the enemy.

I'm not used to the pressure of a 35 minute game. I have to develop instincts and habits so I'm not pondering a line except when it really counts.

I think I attacked too early and got poor a lot.

One really good thing did come from the GNK. After crushing me with PD, Kysra gave me this excellent advice that I try to think about at the start of every game I play:

"Play the matchup, not the cards in your hand."

Reflecting on what I didn't know led me to get back in touch with Andrej from Metropole Grid about his Degree Mill coaching sessions. I've continued to work with him regularly ever since, including an intense, twice-weekly schedule in last weeks before Worlds.

Most of our sessions explore different archetypes and matchups. In the early days we played most of them half-open-handed where he could see my hand. Because of all his tournament commentating work, Andrej is amazing at being able to simulate what a typical player would do in a situation, even playing open handed. Being able to slow down a game and talk through lines in specific, critical situations was unbelievably valuable in training me to make correct calls at normal speed during regular games.

By November 2023, I felt I was getting my bearings, and I went to the NYC Sovereign of Subways tournament, teamed with Corsair and Lanzaa, where our "Three Credits and Sure Gamble" team came in 10th out of 15 in a field absolutely jam-packed with Netrunner luminaries.

For the first time, I met Whiteblade in person and got to fan-boy the World Champ Sokka and meet other people whose names I recognized from the community and tournaments. My daughter, Ms. 13, had become a cheerleader for me and the TAI Breakers. She talked me into asking Sokka for his signature on my playmat and a selfy, which I got. The highlight of my day was getting a split with analyzechris. It felt like a turning point where I could see the practice starting to pay off.

I went on to some 2nd place finishes in local COs, and peaked at NANPC Toronto, coming in 3rd in Swiss and 7th in the cut. I already knew I was planning on going to Worlds and wanted to have some in person experience at a larger event. NANPC Toronto was perfect for that. Unfortunately, The King was away and I would not meet him in person until much later.

Unfortunately, after the highs of NANPC Toronto, I had a long spell of miserable results, where I started to doubt myself and wonder if my results were a fluke. Certain decks just had my number. And decks that had worked for me before were falling flat and I didn't know why.

Approaching the innermost cave

Two big things happened that created an opportunity to really elevate my play. The first is that I started to oracle for The King. (The King is visually impaired and plays on jinteki.net on voice chat with an "oracle" who clicks the buttons and narrates changes in the game state.)

Every time I oracled, I got a chance to guess the right line and see if the King did what I predicted. When I was wrong, I could either figure out why or later ask for an explanation. Maybe the biggest thing I learned was patience -- sometimes sitting back and making the opponent show you they have a threat or an answer is better than reacting early as if they do.

As I got to know The King better -- and as he joined the TAI Breakers -- he became another mentor and coach. He got me to focus on fundamentals and to practice with simple, linear decks. He gave me homework!

The second thing that happened was a sabbatical from work. I've been at the same company for ten years and a perk they offer is a two month sabbatical. I wanted to do something with purpose, just for me, and having (mostly) nothing to do with software.

I decided to take off September and October to grind for Worlds.

September was dedicated to breadth. I played 128 games and tested over half a dozen different corp and runner archetypes that seemed plausible for Worlds. I lost of most of those games. It was frustrating and I had more moments of doubt, but The King assured me these losses were part of the process.

October was dedicated to depth. I picked two decks and planned to just play those -- but I had a crisis of faith in the corp deck and quickly swapped to NEH. Including Crown of Servers, where I also played my main event IDs, I played 120 games in October before the main event.

The weekend before Worlds, I took 1st place in a small, local CO and I felt my game was coming together. But the stakes were high. I'd invested two months in this project and a lot of people knew about it. I wanted to be realistic in my goals for my first Worlds.

My low-bar goal was top-half -- winning more than half my 11 Day 1 games. My stretch goal was making it to day 2, needing 7 wins from 11 games.

Ordeal and Reward

This writeup is already long, so I won't cover the Crown of Servers event except to say that Swift Lat went 4-1 and a precursor of this NEH went 2-2. I led my team and felt tired, but solid, ready for the main event. I hung out with the TAI Breakers that night, made a tiny last minute deck tweak, but didn't do any testing myself so I could stay fresh.

Day 1

Round 1: Swift Lat vs Xenetine on Earth Station

Xenetine seemed really pleased with his keep, said something about being greedy, slapped a card into a remote, put an ice on HQ, and flipped the ID. He seemed too sincerely excited for it to be a bluff, so I Laundried R&D, plowed the credits into running the naked, expensive remote, and stole his greedy Eminent Domain. After that, some Trick Shots got me to 5 points, including a double Eminent rip ("no Archers for you!"), and I won on time 5-2.

Round 2: NEH Kill vs l0velace on Esa

This was a rough match for l0velace, who couldn't find Marrow and dropped to a hand size of 3 on low credits. Public Trail into EOTL gave a quick win. It was very gracious and gave me some lovely alt arts. Thank you!

Round 3: Swift Lat vs Kyra on PD

I facechecked ice aggressively turn 1 and these rezzes cost Kyra economy, despite the subsequent Rashida firing. Soon after, Swift gave me the click I needed to get through Manegarm to steal a Midnight Archology, setting Kyra's YDL-based economy back further. Trick Shot gave me another two points, and a final run event on the remote left me with a click to steal Ikawah for the win.

* * *

I was sitting with The King when Round 4 paired. I felt good about my start, but also felt the pressure of being undefeated -- halfway to my goal -- and I needed a pep talk. When the pairings were refreshed, I told him I was on table 2 with Timmy Wong. I didn't know the name.

"Timmy Wong! The legend!", The King exclaimed!

I felt overwhelmed facing off with Timmy at table 2 and wondered what the hell I was doing there. To my left was RotomAppliance. To my right, DeeR and Sokka were facing off. Impostor syndrome had me firmly in its grip.

* * *

Round 4: NEH Kill vs Timmy Wong on Ayla Rahim

I struggled from the start as Timmy dropped a T1 Paricia and proceeded to tear my board apart. I couldn't get any econ going. He Burnered HQ when I had 3 cards in hand, leaving behind a lone Degree Mill, which he proceeded to Mad Dash to 4 points. I spent the first ice I drew icing a Regolith, which got me some money to get back in the game, but it was too little too late and he found the final points for the win.

* * *

Losing to Timmy was actually a huge relief. I felt free of the burden of an X-0 record and was able to relax. No other loss at Worlds felt as sweet.

* * *

Round 5: NEH Kill vs SweetTornaydo on 419

419 is a tough matchup for a deck that can run poor and wants to keep thing secret. I went to zero credits to score a False Lead and then struggled to bounce back. After my credit-poor experience with Timmy, I actually popped the False Lead even with SweetTornaydo untagged to be sure to fire a Gaslight and triple-click a Regolith. At that point I had EOTL and Public Trail in hand and SweetTornaydo was tending to stay poor and drop below 5 cards. I top-decked a Mindscaping when he was on 4 cards and finished him off with the classic Public Trail, Mindscaping, EOTL combo.

* * *

After 5 rounds, I was 4-1, needing just 2 more wins to meet my top-half goal. Getting a win after my loss to Timmy had me feeling pretty good. Then round 6 was paired.

It was Rongydoge.

I knew he was on some NEH kill variant. My deck is very similar to his Have you seen this man deck from Cascadia 2023. This is someone who knows a kill deck through and through. I knew just how easily his deck could punish me for any single mistake.

* * *

Round 6: Swift Lat vs Rongydoge on NEH

I'm more proud of this match than any other at Worlds. I played the game of my life, with no small amount of luck along the way. My T1 Trick Shot killed a Reaper Function. Bahia Bands killed a Wage Workers, and then I started falling behind on tempo and the assets just didn't stop coming. I ripped a Degree Mill from an HQ or R&D poke -- I don't recall which -- which put us to threat 3 and gave me a big Oppo, which I cleared. That might have been the window where he scored a False Lead -- I don't remember. He had so much money and so many assets, I knew the kill wasn't far off. I think I managed to have a Stoneship down by then, buying time.

Every single turn, I told myself "Don't die! Don't die!" and found the lines to challenge the board without putting myself in the kill box. If I hit a Behold, I'd need 4 clicks to survive -- two to clear the tags before a False Lead pop. That meant I could only ever run unknown cards click 1 with a run event, for Swift to put me back to 4 clicks. Trick Shot was great, to check R&D and a remote. But I also Pinholed the open board, or Overclocked into unknown cards, just to keep myself at 4 clicks.

Somewhere, I found a Fly on the Wall as well as trashed a Reaper. I think I got a 2nd Stoneship down or he didn't have the Oppo or kill and we played on. He must have had 8 face down cards on the table or more. I could safely check one card per turn and he could put down three. I could feel time running out, so I decided to start a Deep Dive turn to either win the game or force the False Lead to pop... and I hit the single Degree Mill in HQ for the win.

Rongydoge was very gracious and it felt amazing getting that win, putting me one win away from my top-half goal and two away from Day 2.

Round 7: Swift Lat vs Styx on PE

Maybe it was some combination of brain fog after the Rongydoge game or maybe I just tilt into PE, but I completely face-planted this match, overwhelmed by threats on the board. One one particular turn, I told myself I had to deal with the Cohort Guidance Program or flip archives face up, and then got distracted with other problems and did neither, letting a Regenesis score easily. I was low on cards and money, and couldn't find a fractor or SMC. Styx took the win pretty easily.

* * *

If Round 6 was a highlight, Round 7 was a blooper reel. There were only four games left, and I still needed at least one win to feel good about the day and two to make Day 2. I really felt the pressure to win Round 8.

* * *

Round 8: NEH Kill vs Nykride on Sable

I thought I had this match in the bag when Nykride took a last-click tag running a Chekist. He had four cards in hand, and I had Mindscaping, EOTL, and exactly 5 credits. I played Mindscaping... and hit a 1 in 4 Steelskin in HQ, preventing the kill. I was poor, struggled to get credits, had agendas stolen, and finally lost at time as I rushed to cobble together a Public Trail kill that failed -- not the least because I forgot that he didn't run the previous turn.

* * *

My team consoled me on the bad luck and surprise Steelskin in Crim. There were only three games left and I needed to win two to go to Day 2. The possibility was staring me in the face that I might have spent two months grinding for worlds, only to go home 5-6.

Then I got more bad news with the pairing: a team kill. I paired with Gathzen, who was on an identical record.

* * *

Round 9: Swift Lat vs Gathzen on Pravdivost

Gathzen is a Prav expert and I've face planted into his decks before, though I hadn't tested against this specific one. I resolved to be smart about batching my runs to give as few Prav triggers as possible. He scored an early ARES after rezzing an Amani and I paid up to keep my board state. I ran to trash the Amani, taking a tag, and then my hero card, Bahia Bands -- which had been added just the night before for exactly this sort of yellow crisis -- came through clearing a tag on an HQ run, installing a Telework to recover economically, getting a click back from Swift, and stealing Freedom of Information. Later, a Deep Dive turn with an extra Swift click found two Degree Mills for game.

* * *

This finally got me over 6 wins. While I celebrated my goal of getting at least 6 wins, I felt bad that it came at Gathzen's expense. But I just needed to win at least one of my last two matches to make Day 2.

* * *

Round 10: NEH Kill vs mystermerry on Lat

As I showed Rongydoge in Round 6, Lat can be hard to kill and I wasn't feeling great about my odds against mystermerry. Again, my Shaper opponent dropped a T1 Paricia and started sweeping my board aggressively. This time, I managed to get a single Rashida to fire, giving me money and cards to continue to jam things onto the board. Given how aggressively they were running, I put out a Chekist and a Tomorrow's Headline and they wound up going tag-me following a little Oppo. I drew and drew until I could win with a 3-tag Mindscaping into EOTL.

* * *

And with that, I was in for Day 2! This was good, because Round 11 was another team kill situation.

* * *

Round 11: Swift Lat vs SebK on Asa

When I sat down across from Seb, we were both beat after a grueling day. We both qualified for Day 2 with 7 wins. The only thing that mattered about this match was moving one step closer to top cut. I was overjoyed just to make Day 2, and I didn't want to make top cut harder for him. So, I was relieved that he felt the same way and offered a draw. We left for dinner with Jai and DeeR, who also ID'd the last round.

Day 2

I had trouble sleeping. Around 4:30 in the morning I found myself lying awake in bed, rehearsing kill lines in my head. For a long time, I'd said that if I made Day 2, it didn't matter what happened after that -- that I'd be satisfied just making it. But as I lay there, refreshed enough after the long Day 1, I realized it wasn't true anymore. I did not want to go quietly.

I wanted to fuckin' murder people!

I expected two of my three games to be NEH -- which I considered weaker than the Lat, so I figured I had my work cut out for me.

* * *

Round 12: NEH Kill vs Tradon on Sable

I wasn't happy to see Sable. With only two ice in this deck, the constant centrals pressure is hard to stop and it's easy to bleed agendas while the extra click helps them check the board.

The game started normally and then quickly went sideways a few turns in. Tradon went nearly broke trashing something -- maybe a Wage Workers -- and then tried to bounce back with Falsified Credentials. Unfortunately, he named "asset" but found the Tomorrow's Headline I threw on the board to get it out of HQ. He stole it for a tag and wound up going tag me with the Oppo that followed. Then it came down to a foot race. Could he find economy or agendas before I could draw the rest of my kill pieces? I found them first and won.

* * *

I felt like a kickstarter. My first goal was top half. Then it was Day 2. Now I was one win away from top 32.

I was sitting with The King again when Round 13 paired and I looked at it with a combination of shock and amusement.

It was Whiteblade.

I'd come all this way only to have my first coach standing between me and a playmat. I waved at him standing a few meters away and said "It's us!".

* * *

Round 13: NEH Kill vs Whiteblade on Sable

Once we sat down, I looked Whiteblade in the eye and said, cheekily, "well, however this turns out, you can be happy".

I kept a hand with EOTL, Planogram, Chekist, Spin, and some other card I don't remember. I wasn't sure how aggressive he'd be checking the board, so I pushed the Chekist, Spin, and something else.

On his turn, he rolled archives for the mark, Laundried archives, ran the Chekist, took the tag, ran the Spin -- I rezzed and he didn't trash -- then he cleared the tag and installed some 1 credit card -- maybe a Maemi, but I didn't really notice because I was too busy staring at the gift the Spin Doctor had brought me.

A fucking Public Trail!

I looked at his credits: five. I asked "cards in hand?" to confirm what I saw: three. I double and triple checked the math that I didn't need to check. Of all the kill lines I lay awake at 4:30 AM imagining, this was the simplest.

Planogram to 8 credits. Public Trail. EOTL.

And just like that, I killed my idol with a cheesy turn 2 win to earn a spot in the top 32 and a sweet, sweet Coalescence playmat.

He was gracious and we hugged it out. I thanked him for getting me this far and he said he was proud of me.

* * *

When I started my quest for Worlds, I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me that I'd be one game away from the cut. And it was time for my runner game, with a Swift Lat that felt very strong.

The pairings come up, and I looked for the name of my final boss battle.

It was Sokka.

* * *

Round 14: Swift Lat vs Sokka on BTL

I've gotten to know Sokka a little bit through oracling for The King and I was cheering Sokka on for a three-peat. Now I had to sit across from him knowing that this was a must-win game to make the cut for both of us. Honestly, I was overwhelmed with just being there, and sitting across from a World Champion at the end of my Worlds adventure, and I broke out in tears. I realized I'd feel terrible if I somehow, against all odds, managed to win.

Then the word "re-pair" started drifting around and I was saved, of a sort. My final boss battle would not be Sokka.

It was Tuno.

The arch-nemesis of the TAI Breakers.

Round 14 -- take 2: Swift Lat vs Tuno on PE

This reprieve was like learning that rather than facing King Kong, I would have to battle Godzilla. Tuno was playing the QTM PE, which had already wrecked me once. It's not worth describing the match. I lost miserably, roasted in its atomic Jinteki breath.

The one saving grace is that Tuno is just so damn nice, even when it beats you!

* * *

This was the End of the Line for me. From my first coaching session with Whiteblade to the end of Worlds, I played 737 games over 18 months, going farther than I ever thought possible to finish in 19th place in the 2024 World Championship.

Act III: Return

The road back and resurrection

I gave myself a week after Worlds to recover and process the emotional roller coaster I've been on. Next week, I return to work in a new role and expect that I'll have no time to touch Netrunner for several weeks as I dig out from two months away. I'm going to miss it.

Eventually, I'll get back to training and competitive play. I need to find time for deliberate practice without the luxury of taking months off work. And I need to find a solution to my nemesis, PE, which is what stood between me and the cut.

So, QTM PE, the next time we meet, I will not fail. I will say "Hello, my name is xdg. You killed my runner. Prepare to die."

The magic elixir

If you've read this far, thank you for indulging my need to process this experience!

If you're someone wanting to get better at Netrunner, I hope my story can be an inspiration to you. You might not have the luxury of a sabbatical, but you can get better with intentional practice at whatever pace you can manage. Here is some advice I offer to anyone looking to follow in my footsteps:

• Play a lot of games. Set aside a little bit of time each day or set aside a weekend day each week. Consistency will make it habit. Knowing your deck's lines and common play patterns means you'll have more time in play to think about your opponent's actions instead of your own.

• Record your games. Review interesting ones. Jamming 10 games you forget does less than a smaller number of games where you write down something you learned. If you play on jnet, go over replays -- often, seeing what the other player was doing compared to what you thought they were doing is really fascinating.

• Find other people. One of the best ways to improve is playing games against people better than you are. Find those people and play them as much as you can! Whether it's a local meetup or testing group or a discord server, find people who also want to improve. Play them, and then talk about what happened and what lines you could have done differently. If you can find a coach or mentor, that's good, too!

• Play the other side. Mix it up. If there's some deck that's beating you consistently, learn to play it and watch how people beat you. If you find yourself falling into a certain style of play, do the opposite for a while. E.g. if you're hesitant, play aggressively and make the opponent have an answer. It might not work but you'll learn something about yourself and the game.

• Netdeck, netdeck, netdeck. Until you really know what you're doing, take good decks proven in tournaments and play them. Let what you learn be about your skill as a player in a given matchup, not your deckbuilding skills.

• "How do I win? How do I lose?". Ask yourself these questions each turn of the game. Don't get stuck into the answers from a previous turn. If the cards in your hand don't help you answer those questions, dig for other cards that do.

About the deck

Private designation: Augustus Kill

NEH was a pre-emptive panic pick in early October after a "Six Seamless" BTL concept didn't pan out. I'd been eyeing NEH's win rate and win consistency for a while and it seemed like a good fallback pick. I'd previously had success playing tableCarnage, and Enkoder's run with an iceless NEH kill deck at Worlds Showdown inspired me to try his deck.

I started getting wins again even as I was relearning the lines. It felt good and I committed to jam NEH for the rest of October until Worlds. While NEH might be weaker in the cut against experienced opponents and open deck lists than other decks my teammates were playing, my initial goal was only making top-half and I wanted a potential Swiss killer.

After some team discussions, I pivoted to a deck based on AugustusCaesars' The new face of NBN which relies on False Lead rather trying to proactively tag with Holo Man and Fly/Orbital. My Worlds main event deck is the seventh version I tested over about 50 games, including CoS.

• Augustus Kill v0: Starting with The new face, I took some ideas from Enkoder's deck: -2 Hedge, +2 YDL, -1 Ping, -1 Public Trail, -1 Reeducation, +1 Fly on the Wall, +1 Orbital Superiority, +1 Holo Man.

• Augustus Kill v1: A brief experiment at operation-less economy: -2 YDL, +2 NGO. This created interesting forks on the board, but there was too much of a tempo hit advancing over putting down another asset.

• Augustus Kill v2: Return to YDL with different ice: -2 NGO, -1 Lady Liberty, +3 YDL, -1 VSA, -1 Tsarevna, +2 Authenticator. Against Lat on Unity in particular, Authenticator is cheap and taxing on R&D runs. While porous, bypassing for a tag forces an economic hit and tempo loss clearing. There were also games I felt poor, so tried adding the third YDL.

• Augustus Kill v3: Return to Public Trail with an aim to surprise careless runners in Swiss: -1 Ping, +1 Public Trail. Without the refund on Ping that R+ gets, it felt expensive for a 1-time facecheck effect and a useless speed bump afterwards. Public Trail does the important thing -- a surprise tag -- but does it on my turn and on my terms when I have a follow-up in hand. Three of my five Swiss wins were Public Trail combos.

• Augustus Kill v4: Trying Lady Liberty again: -1 YDL, +1 Lady Liberty. Several team members tried to convince me how useful the Lady is to duck Diversion and to score False Leads against an aggressive runner. I found it too situational and rarely a card I was happy to see. On the positive side, I wasn't feeling the loss of the YDL this time around.

• Augustus Kill v5 (Crown of Servers): Maximizing bounce-back chances: -2 YDL, -1 Lady Liberty, +2 Predictive Planogram, +1 Federal Fundraising. Several testing losses came from getting Doofed or Boned and struggling to bounce back. Plano does double work -- bouncing back from 0 credits or flooding my hand with assets to install if I'm clogged with kill operations. FF is a must-trash against experienced players so I wanted more redundancy to fuel more draw to keep flooding the board.

• Augustus Kill v6 (Worlds Main Event): More Chekist: -1 Behold, +1 Chekist. In testing and CoS, Behold was frustrating. If the runner hit it early, I didn't want to trade credits when there was no kill lined up. If I had kill pieces in hand, Behold clogged my hand. But Chekists helped hide my good stuff on the board, were great for punishing early aggression, and cost me nothing. They were pivotal in several of my wins. 10/10, no notes.

Where to go next with this deck? I rarely fired Fly or Orbital. Against good players my asset economy was always under pressure, so both sticking and firing Holo was very hard. I might explore taking those tagging lines out and seeing what else to do with the slots that could land tags with more consistency.

Wage Workers was great if it stuck, particularly if I could use it to empty a Regolith, but it was aggressively trashed by the time I was playing in the mid-tables. Paying 2c to rez to get maybe 1 or 2 extra clicks might not be worth it and it felt like a dead card when left unrezzed. It plays better in a deck with 3x Fly. Sometimes the best benefit was that it cost runners time and tempo to trash it. I might see what else could be done with those 4 influence points that would help the deck with economy, tempo, or consistency.

Many thanks

• The TAI Breakers, individually and collectively: I don't have enough words in what is already a terribly long writeup to explain what I've gotten out of being part of such an incredible group. I tear up just thinking about it. You all know what you've done to help me get here. I couldn't have done this without you. You're my Netrunner family. I enjoyed finally meeting so many of you in person at Worlds. ❤️

• My mentors and coaches: Kysra, Eric, Andrej, and The King. I've learned so much from you! You put me on this road, carried me along the path when I struggled, and showed me what I was capable of. Special thanks, also, to maninthemoon for watching and critiquing last minute Thursday night practice matches. It made a big difference over the weekend.

• NY/NJ Meta: Sappidus was the catalyst that got me back into the meta. Redino987 got me my first cards and gave a ton of early encouragement and advice as a friendly face at my first meetups and many since. My Sovereign of Subways teammates and Queens Meetup regulars corsair and lanzaa took a chance teaming with me when I barely knew what I was doing and have been great practice partners. DeeR has been a great opponent and generously shares incredible insights whenever we meet; their enthusiasm and excitement about my run gave me so much energy and confidence throughout the weekend. I am so happy for their 2nd place finish! And to all the other local friends and opponents I've played at meetups, GNKs, and COs, thank you and I'll see you soon! Good luck! Have fun!

• NSG: Thanks for keeping this great game alive and organizing all these great events!

• My wife and kids: Thank you for your love and incredible patience as I disappeared for hours or days into this card game hobby. I love you!

Ms. 13 sleeving a deck for me