There's still no FA, 10/22 @ District Champs 2025

Before I get completely into this overlong write up, I wanna say thank you to maninthemoon for running an amazing, flawless buttery smooth fast-firing tournament. I don't get out to local events very often outside of bigger regional tournaments, and I'm always struck by how well ya'll run things!

Secondly, that Netrunner is my favorite card game of all time. I loved it back in the 90s playing it as a wee child, I loved it (mostly) during the FFG years, and I love it even more now. No other card game has the freedom of expression Netrunner has with its PnP and proxies OK! nature, nor has a card game community felt so welcoming. Everyone is there for the love of the game, purely, and it rocks. Okay onto the write up.

Hello. When the District Championships were first announced on ABR, I spotted the extremely sick SDS Drone Deployment alts, and decided I had to have them. But; I hadn't played Netrunner in weeks; my own jank builds were feeling especially middling, and there wasn't anything I was really tuned into playing.

But I really wanted those SDSes.

So I skimmed NetrunnerDB looking for something surprising, or powerful, or off meta, and I immediately spotted a title: "There is No Fast Advance at Worlds , and I reasoned well, there's no FA right now, at least not dedicated. Holo Man and Audacity show up but generally Clot is too slow for most runners and does too little; runners are greedy.

I took it for a spin on Completely Legitimate Testing Ground jNet, and won 5 games in a row. More importantly, it was really really funny, and most people found it funny to lose to. This list is identical to IonFox's, except I subbed out a Pharos for a single Colossus to force a gear check. If you'd like a more detailed write up of card choices and the basic scoring pattern, I suggest you read IonFox's amazing write up. There's so many different scoring patterns too, sometimes you're forced to score out Slash & Burns just to keep ahead, or burn an RPC on a Basalt. In particular, I'm a fan of playing Pretend Cerebral Imaging by stuffing my hand full of garbage on the last turn with excess Atlas counters.

I've written a couple deck reports before, but nothing even remotely high placing. Is 10th out of 22 a high placing??? I feel good about it at least and I felt really good about both my decks going into this District Championship, mostly because I didn't design the bones of either of them. I ran a modified version of Kikai's Bankhar Steve that you can read about here.. With that, let's get to the match reports!!!

2nd Round Win vs Aubrey - Arisanna
Unfortunately matched up early against a friend always feel the best... 1st turn a Priority Construction'd Horton in front of a Wall to Wall lets it cook for 6 turns. Propeller is the only fracter that makes an appearance during that time, and it's not enough to get through an advanced Tree Line and Ankhet. I eventually get to score out an Atlas for 13 counters with the Biotic and RPC, then the usual pattern of fetching an Atlas + Slash & Burn, then Basalt + Slash/Audacity for the win the following turn. In particular, the last turn I got to play pretend Cerebral Imaging by flooding my hand with junk to protect the combo.

4th Round Loss vs maninthemoon - Freedom
I keep a completely cromulent hand and ice centrals, pop a Rashida and cook a Wall to Wall for 3 turns, but struggle to find an Atlas to FA. His Crews show up and start eating my advanced ice; I eventually score a 3 counter Atlas but have had to ditch my FA tools to overdraw leading up. He also clocks the deck correctly as IonFox's FA RPC deck, which makes him being the only one to get it before it's too late. He snags 3 agendas out of HQ off single accesses while I manage to FA out a second Atlas, but time is called and I'm completely out of tools on my last turn.

6th Round Win vs Asakyun - Lat
Really, really cool Lat list that reminded me a lot of Rosetta Los that cycles Muses/Coalescences and whatever else through Paule's Cafe. Slow moving round where we're both mostly looking at each other and assembling our boards, but I get to pop a couple Rashidas. I open with a double Hedge, and sit on like 17 credits and loaded up ice for 3 turns before I NA an Atlas. The following turn I score a second Atlas out of hand with a Slash & Burn. A Spin Doctor draws me the last Biotic I need, and he has one turn to find both Basalts in my hand, or a Deep Dive and finds neither. I Biotic into RPC a Basalt and win a turn earlier than expected.

7th Round Loss vs jon - Hoshiko
I ice up the remote and attempt to stick a Wall to Wall, but he has a first turn Pinhole. I start getting agenda flooded, but the single iced remote lets me pop two Rashidas. Unfortunately I draw all my agendas except for one, and despite FAing an Atlas from hand he rips two Basalts with a fully charged Twinning. I stabilize for a few turns, but miscount on my credits for protecting R&D and can't rez my second ice. He sees three again with Twinning and gets last agenda out of R&D for the win.

In the end I bubble out of top 8, unfortunately with the worst SoS. All in all though, I'm satisfied with my results, and I feel like my mistakes were obvious in hindsight. It's always a treat to come out to Netrunner events and all this did was encourage me to come out more. See ya'll on the other side!

P.S.: I really got those SDSes.