Serendipity (4th @ Metro Manila District Champs)

In October, I dropped by Whimsy Game Cafe for a weekday Pokemon tournament (with points to qualify for Pokemon worlds) and saw a Netrunner poster at the cafe. I haven't heard of Netrunner in seven years. The last time I played the game was in 2017, then I just completely disappeared off the face of the earth to deal with my mental health and everything going on in my life. Life's been better and things are looking up.

So, I asked Blysfool who ran tournaments at Whimsy and asked who was organizing the local Netrunner scene. It turns out it was profwacko, who has never stopped playing the game, through thick and thin. I recalled I was still friends with him on Steam, so I shot him a message there and his first response was "I'm sorry, who's this again?". He eventually invited me to the local Netrunner Discord and since then, I've probably played Netrunner almost every single week.

CyberspacePanda and I seemed to always just be playing each other whenever we were looking for Netrunner games on jnet, so eventually we just kind of decided to form a duo to test our decks for the slew of tournaments to come. All pure happenstance again.

This deck also just came about after a late-night Netrunner session where we just kept on getting frustrated about dying to kill decks, so we kept on joking that "If we just want to not die, let's just play Aniccam Lat". It was just a silly joke which we refined to something we were comfortable with. This eventually escalated to us just porting Lat's Turbine rig and Aniccam/Stoneship influence, and the Turbine eventually turning to Takobi ala Delicate Weapon.

marrow hosh what was i even saying LMAO

I'm also working on an article about Netrunner for CardGamer.com, where I write about various card games. It's slated for publication soon, and I wanted to provide more insights about Run Together and just the community in general, so I talked to Izzy and Slapdash, who both so happen to be part of Queering the Message.

(edit: the article has been published!!!) you can read it here!

In December, I also cold-DMed several individuals about testing for CBI tournaments and one of the was Aruzan. He referred me to Jai and Kyra who are from SG, so I sent them both messages. I did appreciate their responses, although of course it was such a long shot to be accepted, being new and all with nothing to bring to the table. So I just lost all hope about finding an international testing team.

But this week while testing for Districts, I received an invite from Kyra, who welcomed me to QtM as a member, along with several other top-tier players who I all look up to. I still can't believe this is real and I'm still over the moon about it. Thank you, QtM, for welcoming me to the team. Happy and honored to be a Qt.

Also out of pure happenstance, my Pokemon team member Mich was also interested in Netrunner (all of them actually!! so I'm getting them into the game). I shared with them the Netrunner is a game we play with our bodies zine by pantierre, another member of QtM. They also showed this zine to their therapist and I really have taken this to heart. This week, I tried to be more active, get in more protein and greens, and grabbed salad during Districts lunch. I discovered the zine from Aruzan's decklist of the week (which was when I got back into the game)

The week of March 9 is also a very important to me. In fact, I have 0309 and 0310 tattooed on my left and right arms. So it's also amazing I made Top Cut in my favorite game during this week.

So I guess so summarize it, what I just want to say is that everything that led me back to Netrunner was pure happenstance -- from the poster, to the late-night jnet sessions, to interviewing members of QtM and reading a zine from a QtM member as well, making Top Cut during International Women's Day and during the lead up to my two favorite days of the entire year. It's all just Serendipity.

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Went 4-2 during the tournament, (2-1 on Runner and 2-1 on Corp), squeaking into Top Cut.

Corp deck here.

This Runner deck is just Magical Girls Never Die, but with -1 Fencer Fueno and +1 Trickster Taka, as we wanted a way to generate more The Twinning counters when the deck has ran out of ways to generate them, which was an issue in testing. Didn't add anything else and just ran with this brew for District Champs, as I was too preoccupied with a very hectic Pokemon TCG season, with regionals happening just the week before this Districts.

I feel like the deck does really well in kill metas that don't try to rush and kill you and wait for you to make a mistake (if they can't fork you due to all the built-in survivability of Aniccam Stoneship Chart Room and Steelskin Scarring).

However, versus decks that rush you out of points such as Ob Rush and Boring PD, it's definitely a riskier pick and cost me one game in Swiss.

I'm not sure what I would change in the deck, and it might not matter locally as this is the final tournament for the RWR expansion. However, maybe just adding The Price to speed up the dig could be a consideration, if anyone wants to pick up this deck. However no recusion is horrible if we bin too many key cards at once.

This deck is a lot more forgiving to the pilot than Mulch which is extremely intricate, Crew, which struggles with econ, and Regular Hosh (well, this is also reg hosh but you get the idea), which kind of struggles with Maw or Keiko to protect itself from the Reeducation Neurospike line (unless you're Jai, then you win with Azmari anyway). And so being still green, I just ran with the deck I was most comfortable with, even if it's not the best pick. Just played what I knew.

R2 Hoshi vs Core PD (FreeRice) - W

FreeRice's only loss during the entire tournament. I picked off an early Salvo Testing while he was building up credits for the Big Deal play. After he zeroed out, I just hammered centrals for the win.

R4 Hoshi vs Reg Boring PD (Mira) - L

The usual boring PD game, but Mira knew the deck's weakness and never let up scoring out beginning on turn 2.

R5 Hoshi vs Shoot the Moon PD (ardie) - W

I initially thought Ardie was on Core PD as well due to a turn 1 Red Level Clearance, so I was very conservative about binning my first copy of breakers to Moshing. But after I stole a Midnight-3 Arcology, I knew it was Shoot the Moon and knew I had to win before they could pull off the huge YDL play. So I just played fast and loose, and picked off the Anoetic Void in the remote via Pinhole Threading and ran in with enough credits to pay for Manegarm Skunkworks and Ikawah Project.

After the debut of this Magical Girls Never Die variant, Mira and I were having a chat in XT on what beats this deck. I told her "It's just PD". Please, can I stop playing against PD!! Hahahaha

Thank you to NSG, all the playtesters, volunteers, staff, Whimsy Game Cafe, profwacko & the entire Philippine Netrunner Community who continue to make this game the best ever. Huge props also to Jai and thearete who flew in to compete -- and both making the cut as well! I look up to both of you and I hope we get to play in person eventually. Over dinner I also just basically interviewed Jai about Netrunner for over and hour, it felt like a podcast episode and I'm just so blown away by the amount of information he has. Thank you for the guidance.

Jai teaching us Compile, a two-player cyberpunk card game. where have i heard that one before?

thearete teaching us Shobu

As another bonus, we also gave away the Hoshiko Shiro alt art (and YDL) I made as participation prizes. These will be available on Run Together, to support the people who wish to go to worlds but can't. I wanted to give back to the community who have shown me nothing but kindness, so this is one way.

When I got home, I just sat down on my chair and cried. Not because I lost in the cut, but because I'm back playing Netrunner, my most favorite game ever, and now, with so many more people from all over the world.