From sharkbait to shark - A retrospective

This is just a regular hoshiko maw deck with tech that I found useful for the current meta, notably Light the Fire! and Hush. DJ Fenris feels like a tempo hit for me so I do not care enough about it, just win if you can afford to run HQ that many times. Ice Carver is also sort of a meta call (Azmari glaciers and Brans) and helps when you don't see a turbine early.

That's all I have to say about the deck if that's what you're here for. For the retrospective, keep reading.

From Sharkbait

To Shark

(me when I smell beans)

A Retrospective

I might have got into netrunner at the perfect time, right after covid when my local meta was trying to get back together in person after COVID, some time late 2022. Back then, I never expected to become competitive about a game, let alone partake in as many tournaments as I did. The NH CO I took this deck to was the same place where my first ever CO was, which happened to be just one week short of a year of me trying to be competitive about it ever since the first one.

I honestly wouldn't have tried to get serious about it if:

a) had Dave, the person who won the that CO did not decide to pass his CBI invite down to the person who came in 2nd (yours truly). But he did! This ended up providing me a goal to work towards: Learn the damn game for CBI. About a handful of tournaments consistent weekly meetups among janksters for inspiring deckbuilding thievery and sharks alike, an okay-ish placement at nationals and about 7000 jnet games, I was ready to go.

While CBI didn't go as well for me as I'd have liked, mainly due to still struggling against PD and some obvious misplays on my part, 2024 seemed to get better since. A large part of this is due to constantly disturbing good players for tips and advice as well as grinding games with them.

and b) The community. I don't think I've ever seen a community as welcoming as netrunner's. Having had the privilege of attending a bunch of draft events, mansionrunner, volunteering at PAXU, Sovereign of Subways, nationals, GLC shitposting and of course my local meta, it's truly amazing just how great the community is. I'd definitely have dropped the game sometime middle of last year if not for all the amazing people.

While I'm still about average at the game, I'm happy with the improvement I've made ever since. Thank you all for the memories and here's to another year of tossing cards and dealing net damage.

A massive thanks to (in no particular order): The Boston meta: especially Charlotte (for kickstarting the Boston meta again), Jamie, YsengrinSC, funkeyman, kevinth, rongydoge, solemnstorm, vergescu Wentagon. The NH meta, especially the Neon Static crew for organizing events. Additional thanks to DanB, SndWurks, coldlava, Aureates, Redino, Dave, Griffin, Ed, Ensu, the GLC modmin team and to everyone else I bugged about advice.