Ace Comics & Games SC 21/7, 1st in swiss, 2nd in cut (4-2)

Swiss: Wins against:

Regular Shaper Hayley - Stuck a Scarcity early, and Hayley didn't draw econ. I score out pretty straightforwardly.

TBB's Reina (eventual winner) - Also stuck a Scarcity early (I got to clear estrike! I think playing estrike t1 was a mistake); I rush out agendas fairly quickly before the congress econ suite gets overwhelming (it was starting to be daunting by the point the game ended).

B&E Geist - B&E breakers suck against normal Jinteki glacier ice. Couldn't find a Scarcity but it didn't matter in the end; scored out handily.

419 - Reasonably good econ start, was able to force out nisei pretty early. I actually forget what most of this game was like except that I felt pretty in control most of the time.

Top cut: Losses against:

First game: Smoke - I score out moderately rapidly, getting 2 niseis at something like ten turns; runner sticks a turn 1 indexing through IP Block, then runs the second turn with film critic to nab an Obokata. Runner then gets a lucky agenda access on the penultimate turn on HQ (SSL put on critic), then goes broke for a 3/24 chance at an agenda in R&D on the ultimate turn (right before I'd score out). I think I miscalculated and should've niseied the second R&D run (I niseied a first R&D run with a single TTW access), because opponent wouldn't have been able to get into my remote (EULA rezzed) after the 2nd run anyway, and if I niseied on the 2nd run the runner can't win that turn with only 1 agenda steal, since he wouldn't have been able to get the SSL off the film critic. All in all minor misplays and some bad luck.

Grand finals: Reina - I made a questionable decision to not mulligan an IPO, Celebrity Gift, SSL, Anansi, Scarcity hand, start with gifting all that + Code Replicator (mandatory draw), then putting Anansi on HQ. Runner runs into R&D immediately stealing Nisei, which puts me in a bad spot. I rez and fire Anansi going to sub-5 credits on turn 2, and mis-arrange and mis-draw, killing an NGO that I should've kept in R&D. I also think I missed (if I'm not conflating different games) a bunch of possible thimblerig rearranges that might've salvaged my remote and overall game situation. Also runner got lucky on some injects and draw order, but the more I think about it the more I think I heavily misplayed on every single step of the game.

So I'm generally better at corp and worse at runner (at least in the last few months when I've come back to netrunner), but in this case my runner outperformed my corp pretty handily. I misjudged the meta of the store champs, expecting people coming to test their regionals decks, and so I was expecting a lot of CV out of MaxX or Val; so I chose Palana, in which you can basically jam all your cards, compared to Mti, which I find to be a bit annoying to play against CV and estrike both, even though I'm much more practiced on Mti.

I even chose Obokata as my restricted to punish people trying to do Guinea Pig nonsense!

Instead I played against a field of 10 with only 3 Anarchs, and I didn't even face the only other guy who brought CV, nor did I see anyone else play Guinea Pig!

Also I couldn't sleep the night before. Remember to sleep, guys.

Thimblerig is amazing, but other people have covered this. If you have a couple turns to set it up, you can move Surveyors right back to the outside so you can Mumbad City Grid it all the way back again, move taxing ice here and there, ...the possibilities are limitless!

News Hounds went down to 1 just because I felt like people wouldn't estrike me as aggressively as Palana, and News Hound just feels really awful to have on board without a current up - which sometimes is most of the game. I'd totally play more if I had 4-5 currents.

EULA was a random include.It helped against Smoke but I lost that game anyway </3

I wish I drew Gatekeeper even once in the games I lost :( It seems very strong though. I found myself wishing I had it at various points during the day.

IP blocks were alternately absolutely amazing and absolutely useless.

Excalibur is nice. You can do really spiffy things with it.

I didn't get to try out any fancy shmancy Code Rep into Thimblerig or MCG all day, which I guess was for the best anyway?

I didn't like Obokata the entire day...but that's to be expected since I chose it on an incorrect meta call.