Go Sports (Undefeated 1st place at Reading Regional)

Go Go Go! This Sportsmetal deck with 8 influence of Amani Senai and 19 assest is so fast, the main game is tracking how your runner is going to try to keep up. I love Sportsmetal, and I hope more people give this a try before it rotated out for good.

Preamble: Netrunner is a game about creating threats and challenging your opponenet to respond. More of that = more NetRunner = more good. My favorite decks give a huge number of options to me and my opponent, and with more options comes more chances to trick and outplay. Even in terrible matchups (my finals was against a Freedom deck running Hermes) there is always a chance to fine avenues toward victory if you focus up and get creaative.

Gameplan: This deck combines powerful cheap ice (requiring your runner to install their expensive breakers) with assets that pose huge tempo threats if left unnattended. Cards like Wage Workers allow you to push out many asset's agendas either naked or behind your good HB ice. The dream turn is Install X 4, or Install X3 > Fully Operational if you need $. Your overall strategy will need to adapt to what you draw early, and what your strategy you think your runner wants to go for. This deck can win via any combination of:

-Asset spamming until a low-econ deck can't afford to keep up (to some extent this should be most games)

-Locking out the runner with many ice on centrals + 1 big remote

-Locking the runners deck by looping Working Prototypes, which prevents the runner from drawing their playable cards

-Looping Amani Seni stiggers every turn to ravage the runners clicks/ credits.

-Go Go Going so fast that the runner cannot assemblee an engine before you get to 7

There is no possible route for this deck to fast advance, deal damage, or destroy a runner card. That means we're using an alternate corp win con called 'Scoring 7 Agenda Points'. If you Go fast enough, scoring agendas should be giving you tempo, no costing it.

Gameplay:

Mulligan for assets and cheap Ice. Fully Op is an amazing card, but you don't super need it early because you can't install it as a threat. All 1 pointers are fine to keep, but the 2 and 3 pointers you generally don't want to see until later. Ideal turn 1 is Wage Workers + 3 other installs that include a rasheeda and an ice.

Don't install Ice on centrals early unless you have a very good reason to. You can play around DOOF by installing assets and staying broke, and RnD always holds. If the runner is wasting their clicks early on singles from centrals, you're getting more time/sports triggers to Go.

Be brave and Go. Play your agendas, you need to score them to win. I won a game in the Swiss by just tabling an Ikawah and scoring it naked on turn 3. If you watch my Top Cut games, I like to use Wage Workers to triple advance an agenga, The Powers that Be to fetch a taxint threat like Amani, then Wage Workers to install a new agenda in the remote.

Quick Tips:

-Go Go Go

-Let the runner trash your assets, even if their credits are high it costs them clicks

-Never click for credits unless absolutely required, the deck can fly by just fine with very litte $

-Amani Senai is a very very very evil card. Don't mullligan for it, but it's the #1 card to fetch with ablatives and Powers That Be.

-Wage Workers is broken in this deck. Always have one installed if possible (and a back up can be nice).

-If possible, play your Fully Op with your wage workers click. It's more efficient.

-You will usually need to score an Ikawah to win, but with a Manegarm Skunkworks and MIC you really don't need a big remote server to do it, given how broke and click starved the runner will be. A combination of Cohort / Wage workers / Seamless / Virtruvius counters will do the job no advancing it.

Card Choices:

I'm pretty confident there aren't any card changes on the horizon for this one, at least before rotation. It's very well balanced and the ratios of ice-assets feel right to me. The 2X seamless can't be installed as a threat, but they can actually score ikawahs for closing the game out. The Assets are all busted except Warm Receprtion which is a touch more situational. The Ice suite is only suited for going fast, against a doom rig you'll need to click starve with MIC text.

Now Go Go Go and play SportsMetal before the rotation!!