World's Best PE* 3-3-1 (228 Overall)

So, this deck. How to explain it? Well, I started off playing Netrunner in January of this year. Needless to say, when FFG announced the end, I was shocked and determined to get the most out of the few events left. I work most Saturdays, so I had to really have a great reason to take a day off and play cards. Store tournaments were out. Regionals? Maybe, but no. Worlds? Now, we're talking.

I prepared for worlds on an even jankier deck playing Obos, a fistful of one-pointers, News Teams, and Shi.Kyu. As you might have figured out, I'm still pretty immature in my deck building. But I knew I wanted to play PE. Well, the deck didn't do so well at KoS (though I did get a News Team tag into EoI for an Obo to win in one game. . . but it was just as unlikely and janky as you'd think).

Panic set in. I had brought a Biotech netdeck for fun. and started meshing the cards together. This is what I came out with. Not how you should do worlds, but it was my first tournament, so . . . whatever.

Overall, the deck went 4-3. I know this isn't a great result, but since this was my first and last official tournament, I'm going to write it up proper.

Round One vs. Freedom (Peter Dixon from Iowa) 0-1 I keep trying to set him up for the kill, he keeps scoring Obos and drawing back up. I've Had Worse is a thing, folks. I was close to milling him out at the end, but not that close. Horse-shoes and hand-grenades and all that.

Round Two vs. Maxx (John from the UK) 0-2 I play chronos. Maxx relies on recursion. I think I'm in this. I am not. Quote of the day. John asks what I brought. I tell him PE and Adam. He winces and almost apologetically says, "Oh, you brought fun decks. I didn't. Maxx and CTM." He didn't mean for it to be so biting, I don't think, but I have a hard time parsing the actual meaning from British humor sometimes.

Break: Double-sweep beer time, as my Adam had fallen to Gagarin and CTM. One Surly Furious and I am feeling a lot better about life, even if I am not sure about my fortunes.

Round Three vs. Sunny (Josh from Nashville recently transplanted to Chicago) Things turn around. Sunny is slow in getting rigged up and I press the advantage, installing agendas in my forest of Mushined traps. My opponent kept seeing my traps and refused to run naked advanced cards. I was able to score the final Obokata without him checking the remote. Fear is the mind-killer. Score a really great DJ Fenris alt from the Chicago meta. I love this community.

Round Four vs. Smoke (I think) (Derrick from Chicago) 2-2 My only scalp of the day. I Mushin out a Ronin turn one that goes unchecked for the entire game. Many turns later, Smoke runs a double-advanced Overwriter. Two brain damage on board. A turn or two after that, Derrick runs HQ on click three. He had drawn up to five cards and was running to install a pol op to trash what he correctly expected was probably a Ronin. He passes a Lockdown on the way in. Sadly for Smoke, Derrick pulls a Snare! from HQ. I have four credits and spend them all to drop him to two cards in hand. Now with a tag, two cards, and no ability to draw more, Derrick drops the tag, figuring I would trash the pol operative if he installed it. That would have been true, but it would have taken my whole turn (cred, cred, trash) before rezing the Ronin. By dropping the tag, he stays at two cards, and I was able to cred -> advance -> Ronin for the kill. No agendas scored or stolen in this game. J-I-N-T-E-K-I, baby!

Round Five vs Chaos Theory (Brian from Perth) 3-2 Brian is on Top Hat / Insight, which is perfect for filtering the Jank in this deck and extracting the agendas. I, however, luck out into Chronos Project with a third of his deck and two Levys in the heap. Turns out, luckily for me, he only plays the two. But it was still razor close. He had some bad accesses and couldn't find the 7th agenda point. After paying Kakugo taxes over and over, he runs down to four cards. I Neural, then the next turn IAA an Obo, hoping like hell that he wasn't playing me and holding a Levy in order to make me do something stupid. Then I score out for the win. Recursion is great, but Chronos says time's up.

Round Six vs. Jesminder (Clay from LA) 4-2 This whole match was crazy with two epic close games. I rush out a couple of Mushin-ed agendas, but then all the momentum sweeps to Clay's side of the table. I can't seem to find an agenda to score. This was the second game, we were running up against the clock, but the way it closed was epic. Clay was on Film Critic, which, you know, made me not excited. We were both on game point and time was closing in. He had three cards in hand and made a Stimhack run down my scoring remote. I rezzed Kitstune, which he couldn't break due to an earlier purge. I force him to access a Snare! in my hand, which takes all his cards. He runs the remote, hosts the game winning Obo, but dies to the stimhack brain damage at the end of the run. I lose it, and he takes it really well. Kitsune - trap ice - won me a competitive game at worlds. I LOVE THIS GAME.

Round Seven vs. 419 (TIM BUN) 4-3 The first words out of Tim's mouth are, "Hey, do you want to ID?" I am thinking, are you kidding me! Of course, you're TIM BUN, you're going to eat my lunch. But I manage to play it cool and go, "Yeah, sure, makes sense." Why am I not running psychic fields? Oh, I should also mention that I slammed a beer after the epic round six sweep, and it caught up with me big time during this game. Tim makes me pay the 419 "Troll Tax" and expertly runs my jank in a game that wasn't competitive. I embarrass Tim a bit by thanking him for his contribution to the game and taking a picture of our score-slip before submitting it. He won both games, and took the Eli's as bounty, so he wasn't that upset, and the old intentional draw meant that I got some extra swag as payment for my whoopin.

So, the Swiss did what it was supposed to do, as I found my competitive level by round 6 and got bopped back down in round 7. Can't say enough about this game and the community. I am looking forward to keeping it going with NISEI in the Kansas City region.

Oh, and mad props to the guys on Biotech at top tables. Mushin for life. (Pushes glasses up.)

Fuck CTM.

*Edit - After looking a ZomB's World's ID analysis

(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CNzVfAa-txs0rrH5ptZZXh80fBOfsqg_/view),

I was shocked to discover that I was the highest ranked PE player! Of course, I ID'ed the last round and lost both games, so it's entirely possible that the honor belongs to Devin Stincomb, who was not only on PE but also on Adam, and finished on 7 total wins. If he also IDed, then I take the crown on SOS. If he got to 7 the hard way, then I am tied for second on PE with Jonathan Yeo.

(Also, I get that many savvier, more competitive Jinteki players were on Mti, but I don't care. Black Tree for Life.)