DLR Andy: the R stands for reg-ass (Top 8, Durham Regionals)

Pictured: actual footage of me playing this deck

Since about the start of regionals season, I've been playing DLR Andy. Part of this was that I thought the deck was genuinely good; part of this was that I was tired of building exclusively shaper bullshit and wanted a change. I enjoyed DLR Andy with Security Nexus because of its credible Account Siphon threat and incredibly strong late-game, but often found myself frustrated with the lack of things to do in the midgame.

Then the Free Mars spoilers dropped. In particular, God of War. GoW gives a clickless tag at the start of turn (and also has some other rules text?), which, as long as you have a money lead and Citadel Sanctuary and/or a counter on Aaron Marrón, will never stick around. Turning on DLR without exposing yourself to your board being trashed takes a whopping 2 cards and 3 influence. My initial thought was to slim down the Nexus DLR Andy list but keep the general lock flavor. I think it was @miek whom I first saw post the idea: what if you just ran it out of a normal Andy list instead?

Turns out that's pretty good. Compared to a regular Andy list (my base was @Shmeguy's Aendy updated to include Bloo Moose and Inversificator--don't believe the list, I was not on Gordian), you lose a bit of dedicated econ (particularly the Dirty Laundry and 1 Temüjin Contract), an Employee Strike, and a Medium. In return, you get a late-game knockout punch that can't be interfered with by Crisium, Macrophage or other nasty ICE on R&D, or the fact that you're out of non-Moose econ. In a regionals field that I expected to be heavy on AgInfusion, that option seemed extremely valuable to me.

Not much to say about playing this deck except that both of your plans are viable, and knowing when to switch between them is important. There are games when all you have to do is Siphon 6 times and you win; there are games where you have to Special Order up GoW early and mill for the fences in between a few well-placed Siphons and remote runs.

Here's how the Durham regionals went for me:

Round 1 vs. Ben Mason (@Basoon) - And we immediately start off the tournament with a multiple former Worlds top-4 finisher. He was playing an AgInfusion list with multiple Crisium and 15 econ operations, and I'm glad that I caught him early in the day, because I don't think he lost with this deck the rest of the weekend. Inversificator did huge work in this game. I had Siphon lock maintained throughout basically the whole mid-late game, but only found 5 points to his 2 before he conceded to avoid the timed win hurting his breakers. On corp side, Moons did its job vs. Desperado Whizz. I was very lucky that he didn't see a Desperado until very late, and that he misjudged when I could win (Bioroid Work Crew + Biotic + pre-rezzed Jeeves only takes 11 credits to FA a GFI). 2-0

Round 2 vs. Jonas Wilson (@thebigunit3000) - Good lord, my pairings this tournament. I do a somewhat reasonable job of trashing his non-iced assets thanks to Desperado and a few Gambles, and I snag an ABT off the board, but he stuffs an early Siphon with Vanilla. At that point I get tunnel vision on an open R&D and the game gets out of hand pretty quickly. This game was streamed (I'll edit this to include the link when the vods are uploaded), so you can watch me get dismantled if you want. On corp side, Moons does its job once more, this time coughing up 3 Turtlebacks within the first 5 turns of the game or something silly like that. These make it trivial to recover from an early Siphon, I survive the follow-up Deep Data Mining, and go on to build those nasty board states Moon helps create so well. Turing pulls its weight in this game, keeping him away from a crucial GFI. 3-1

Round 3 vs. Scott Zeigler - I'm matched up against AgInfusion again. This game I have less success in clearing off early Temujins, and he has the Crisiums to prevent Siphon lock and the News Hounds to spend almost 0 money defending a server that costs me 11 to get through (10 if I win the Citadel trace). I also make the mistake of floating a tag after Siphoning him down to 0. His turn is to take 2 and trash Moose. This shuts off my econ capabilities for basically the whole rest of the game. Games like this are exactly why I wanted DLR to fall back on: I have counters on Aaron, so he never pays into the Citadel trace, and I DLR him out exactly before he can score the Obokata to win. Corp side, Moons faces up against Temu Whizz. He drops an early Archives Interface and proceeds to burn down my board and salt the ashes while I can't find an early agenda to score. The game turns when he faceplants a Fairchild 3.0, which gives me enough breathing room to score 4 points and money up for the winning GFI. Both games were incredibly close--a card deeper on a Medium dig and a card more in R&D and I lose both games. 5-1

Round 4 vs. Dane Meyer - This is my first opportunity to ID into a regionals top 8, and I gladly take it.

Top 8 round 1 vs. Jacob Cowfer (@jdc_wolfpack) - Jacob and I are two of the local Atomic Empire crew. We've been practicing together for these regionals for a couple months now. He is the one person I absolutely don't want to face round 1 of the top cut, because one of us has to lose. Naturally, I get paired up with him in the first round of the cut. I feel much better about my matchup as Corp against him, but I gamble and pick runner, hoping to be able to corp in the second round. This backfires, as he has a turn 1 Sweeps Week and perma-Crisium on HQ. He scores an early Philotic, then I lose a Caprice psi game for an Obokata. I switch over to DLR since I don't have the money to challenge servers and don't have an open server to Temujin. I run archives, he pops Jackson to bring R&D to 11 cards, and he fast track-installs a Nisei in the scoring server with enough money to rez Chiyashi and play two psi games. I have to lose a click to either estrike or get AgInrused, so I can't hope to mill enough agendas to win. I only have enough money to estrike and run the server once, and I lose the psi game. Congratulations, I played myself. Note to self: git gud at psi games.

I lose the rematch to Jonas in round 2--he interferes with my board and maintains enough clot threat to keep me from winning before he DDM's me for 7 with 16 cards left in R&D--which bounces me out of top 8. Given that this was my first regionals where I'd played the game for more than a month beforehand, I'm very happy with my finish.

I'd like to give huge props to Shane at Atomic Empire for running the event smoothly and professionally, and to @tichy for sacrificing his chance to play so that we had a judge. Thanks to Jacob and Tichy for helping me grind out practice games over the last few months--no chance I place as well without their help.

I'd like to finish by saying that the Netrunner community is awesome. This was my first real big tournament, and it was extremely fun meeting and playing Netrunner with Jonas, Ben, @dashakhan, @sirris, @charlie_xavier, and many others whose Slack/NRDB names I can't remember. If you're on the fence about going to a big tournament and you are inexplicably still reading this far, I can't recommend it highly enough--the people you meet are reason enough.