First Things First

Netunner is this amazing game, play whatever make you happy!

AND Toronto is a great city with even greater netrunners, come play Canadian Nationals and get some cooler swag.

Journey to netrunner

I moved to Toronto by end of 2023.

Alone, and bored out of my mind during the Christmas / New Year holidays.

Found a local board game group, after 3 rounds of brutal loss of Nemesis, one of the players from the table, who goes by the mysterious handle "yznetrunnerforever#1" pulled out a old dusty box and said

There's this old card game, which was dead then revived, I really liked it, do you guys wanna try?

2 rounds of PD vs. Ari / Loup vs. PE later ... I WAS HOOKED.

I googled, found GLC, amazing.

Played Start-up for 2 weeks on Jnet, aaaamazing.

Googled more, found famous content creator who suggested standard is more fun and in-person play is more fun, amaaaaaazing.

Searched GLC and saw NYC had an event that I can hit on my way to a work event, pinged @Kysra about attending despite never played in person, had a very busy yet fun day losing every game, amaaaaaaazing.

Learnt 2 things after I got back:

1. There's this person, with cool hair, who's so good at this game and can win the whole thing without even attending round 1 (...because of traffic??)
2. Kysra was the creator of the amazing art, I wish I can get an autograph on a playmat ... oh crap, I need a playmat first.

Having held worlds, Toronto had some amazing TO's and even stronger players.

The good thing is there's a lot to learn from, the bad thing is how do i ever make cut in GNK's and get a mat?

Magically Internet directed me to a specific and relevant quote from that very good player from the NYC event!

"after several tournaments where new players won after getting a ton of grinding in, I decided to focus on quantity over quality this season."

Seems Easy ...

On the deck

The inspiration of this shell come from this amazing creation.

Historically, there have been two reasons to play all 5/3s. Those are a) Punitive, or b) a grindy glacier deck that is trying to score twice and get a 7th point from somewhere nonstandard.

Of course, why not both?

When you say an ID fires only once for the entire game, it seemed bad.

When you say an ID saves you 2-3 card slots from Gene splicer and the 4 clicks / 5 credits to score it, it seemed ... cool?

The deck has 4 wincon cards, and depending on the draw and match-up, presented some wildly fun lines to pilot with ... depending on when you're drawing into these key wincon cards and the speed runner is setting up with.

Game plan wise ...

1. Mul for early econ operations and/or sustained Charlotte to threaten rezzing the quite chunky ICE suite to open the window
2. The first (ONLY) Issuaq counter is to be secured with La Costa / Seamless ... once obtained, creates overwhelming fork for the runner and make every installble a must run
3. pivot for the runners or toys that can make your wincon disappear consistently, aim for the archive 6 points punitive window, with your clicklessdraw technology or ... confidence

On card choices, the major iteration from the list I took to NANPC are to swap 2x Bran for 2x Data Loop and slotted Daniela, after the painful realization that good stuff Hosh can (and usually will) be rich enough to afford more multiple runs on a Bran/Anansi remote than we're comfortable with ... so let's set-up the new combo to tax a different kind of resource (i.e. cards in hand) ... which incidentally makes Fuji so much harder to steal, and Punitive that much more effective.

Some notable swap considerations:

3x Spin ... we almost never needed more draw, so the influence can probably be saved for some in faction recursion and slot for the 3rd seamless ... shout out to Erika already testing this out

1x NGO since every install in the remote can probably be bluffed with, the slot can probably just be the 2nd copy of Anoetic

1x Enigma was the default option after the very cool card got banned, although it was never crutial to our plan, I feel it shouldn't be some even more expensive code gates but I'm all ears

1x Boto ... yes it's very hard to get to threat 4, but it's 3 annoying subs, and it's the one card that actively helps you if somehow runner had 6 points and you don't have the kill, singleton felt, ok?

Replays

On the day, I was certainly playing a lot more loosely, than this deck could be piloted, ... and I certainly am grateful that luckily most of the gambit paid off.

Swiss Round 1 - against Esa ... T1 kill gambit didn't work out, has to narrowly bluff to a win

Swiss Round 3 - against Hoshiko ... enough early econ and punitive in hand to punish an unsuspecting hoshiko busy setting up

Swiss Round 6 - against Hoshiko ... Data Loop Daniela doing their thing, although forgot letting Fuji being stolen kills too

Swiss Round 8 - against Ari ... full slow cooked Fuji, although not realizing rezzing mavirus beats the cup, and makes fuji steal deadly too(?)

Swiss Round 9 - against Ari ... final chance to leverage closed decklist to set up punitive for an unsuspecting aggro Ari

Cut Round 1 - against Ari ... nail biter, I need to study this for 2 more days (side note, I really do try to bring my A game here, to revenge the summershow down match where Knob trashed half of my rnd T-T)

Cut Round 3 - against Esa ... knowing i don't have late game, early punitive luckily paid off

Cut Round 5 - against Ari ... (slight update, the candidate rule change has nothing to do with bacterial), Hansei the single baterial to the bin with no punitive indeed felt like wild gamble, here with the benefit of hindsight, I tried to do some math

Specifically, the flatline outs for that board state (i.e. a single bacterial in the bin with 40 cards remaining in RND and no punitive in hand) are:

A) draw 7, find 1 of 3 Fuji to pitch to the bin, AND find 1 of 2 Punitive (~13%), or

B) find 1 of 2 remaining bacterial to pitch to the bin, draw 13 cards total, AND find 1 of 2 Punitive (~29%, due to the increased draw)

So this "gamble" would fail at least ~62% of the time (i.e. (1-13%)*(1-29%)), as it did fail in Swiss Round 1, and the odds of failure are to be further increased by the chance of drawing into more agenda and got sniped out of HQ, or runner getting burst econ or corp turn card draw, to put out of single punitive range, (or getting called that remote was not charlotte)

But again, what do you do when you saw 6 points in the top 9 cards, a non-ETR ICE on HQ you can't really rez, and THE TREE is on the table turn 2

Yet thankfully the gamble paid off

Issuaq's grace was saved in the tournament

Who's ... "Hector"

I really only goes by "Wenjong", for netrunner and in meatspace.

One random night, I'm so hot on netrunner and Jnet, I decide to make a small donation to see some cool alt art on Jnet.

After hitting "send", I realized I forgot to leave my Jnet handle on the transfer.

My introvertness was killing me, pinging/writing to the hardworking dev's would be so cringe.

The solution, naturally, is to make another account, make another small donation, don't forget to comment my handle, and not let dev suspect it's related to the last donation made 10 mins ago.

Now I needed a Smurf name.

I saw devastating news that the NSG EU shop is closing because one person was injured, "Hector".

WHAAAT? A WHOLE CONTINENT OF RUNNERS CAN'T GET THEIR BELOVED CARDS?!

Hector needs to rest well ... HECTOREST.

Coincidentally, on the day of the ACC, NSG announced this banger.

I did well in ACC, registered under the handle of ... Hectorest.

All cosmic arrangements.

I'll answer to both names now.

Roll Credits

Kror / Jeff / Aksu / others TO's & NSG staff ... for running amazing events that're both exlirating to attend and welcoming to all.

Famous content creator ... for doing angel's work to the community in attracting, welcoming, retaining, and vibing with newer players.

@Choux, the last Adam runner for taking me in, and offerred invluable advice on replay analysis & deck inspirations, and introduced me to @Rene / @Cocoro / @ Gorphax / @N00dleSoup ... having you together is making attending events such more of a blast!

The Amazing Toronto Netrunners @formerteen @Zeebag @mo0man @sruman @sadstug @chouxflower @panko @MGK & others too many to spell out ... it’s amazing to find such dedicated and fun people who’s been keeping the scene so alive, fresh, and welcoming.

One more time, Toronto is a great city with even greater netrunners, come play Canadian Nationals and get some cooler swag.