If there's one thing I've always hated in netrunner, it's losing to Apoc. I just find it boring. Annoying even. That sort of combo decks don't appear to be very interesting, nor necessarily hard to play, which makes games extremely uninteresting when they become good, as they represent perfectly some of the issues with card games: randomness and draw order. I'd argue the problem has gotten worse over time. It now feels like drawing a mediocre (not even awful) set of cards early pretty much means you lose, which completely negates one of the core elements that attracts new players (bad hand? just draw!). It's probably time for another video, you can expect that in a bit. To get back on topic, I similarly dislike losing to Deep Dive combo decks with a passion. The strategy required to pilot them is very linear and appears to require a very specific type of deckbuilding to be dealt with effectively, barring great draw on the corp side and bad draw on the runner side in other situations. These are, in part, things that have made netrunner pretty unenjoyable to me in the last few months to the point where I genuinely considered not playing in our local National this year despite it being hosted in my hometown.
Bored and slightly annoyed I pulled out my corp shitposting smurf, T14M4T, and just started sending it with obnoxious and impractical ideas. I vaguely remembered some Earth Station doing well recently by slotting Transport Monopoly, so I decided to rebuild a deck of that sort from scratch, iterating a bit and eventually came somewhat close to the original (just less durdly). Keeping 2 ice on HQ and jamming in an open remote just spoke to me on a profound and emotional level. It was fun. I was playing in an unusual way and having some built-in cover for these new meta runners. I also decided to use the name, a non-TAIB mat and non-tournament clothing at the event to remind myself I can exercise some free will from time to time.
Ironically, my 2 losses of the event were against wowarlok's Deep Dive Sable list, where he played very well and completely abused my bad starts with pinpoint accuracy. It turns out being naturally built to contest that strategy isn't enough to win if you draw enough bricks. I have often found myself tutoring Regolith with Eminent Domain over ice in games where draw wasn't ideal, which is an indication that something more can be done about econ in the deck. I used to have 1 or 2 copies of Charlotte Caçador in an earlier version and it might be correct to keep it.
Inconsistency is an issue that had made me restrict the number of playable IDs to a very low number, but I still decided to play this because it was enjoyable to me at the time. The corps I consider viable in that sense are:
These may not be ideal choices in every meta, but they have a built-in way of making things work. To these ones I'm gonna add others that, built accordingly, make consistency less of an issue AND are reasonably stable and solid overall (now, but depend on the meta):
Playing anything else feels like trolling a little bit, which doesn't mean they're unplayable at all (as Council showed), but that they need the player to adopt a somewhat unconventional style or ways of finding core cards easily. If I had to play in a big tournament (say, Worlds) I wouldn't personally touch anything else.
I can't wait for Dawn to drop and shake things up, hoping linear decks don't just keep reigning supreme.
Huge thanks to wowarlok for organising Nats, Atien for the stream setup (check out games here), Porkobolo for bringing Altered decks, ALFlex for rezzing Liiga-signed Tyrs, Council for ensuring I keep my 2-timer spot, TAIBs for filling the top cut almost entirely and everyone there for just existing and making it a great weekend. I've been really tired due to real life obligations lately, but you've helped me relax a bit and get out of my head for a while, which is not something I take for granted in my life.