Loud Crackdown - 👑1st at NorCal Districts👑

I've been practicing Loud ever since Jan Tuno beat me with it in the cut at Worlds. The deck seemed good and I had no idea how to beat it, and that's led us here.

QtM has been repping Loud and its iterations for a long time now, so if you want tips on how it works or how to play it I would advise you read their write ups (like this one).

So, instead of talking about how Loud works, I'll tell you about one of my netrunner philosophies: Keep your opponent guessing.

Keep your opponent guessing

The first few turns of every game I play are a mini game: Figure out what my opponent is trying to do, so I can get in their way as effectively as possible. A few examples: when you play against Azmari, knowing it's a 40 card deck tells you from turn one they're going to try to Reeducate you to death. Or, seeing Sable install Security Testing tells you they're on knife, but seeing Sable play Blueberry!™ Diesel probably means they spent 15 influence on Deep Dives.

Once I get an initial read on my opponent, every card played will either help me confirm my hypothesis, or make me reassess that there's something I don't know. Ultimately Netrunner is a game about information, and the more information you have the stronger your chances of winning.

Every archetype has some kind of tell, and if you're playing a deck straight from nrdb a strong player will figure it out quickly. As the game goes on, they'll probably feel more and more confident they've figured you out. There are a few ways out of this, but I want to focus on deck building.

Deck building, and innovative deck building, is hard. I want to first make it clear that there's nothing wrong with netdecking; it's a great place to start and you can absolutely still be competitive borrowing a deck from nrdb.

However, if you want to tip the scales in your favor, do something to make the deck your own. Even changing a single card slot will make your opponent question everything they think they know about your plan. If I'm playing against PD and my opponent rezzes a Hammer, not only is it surprising but I have to wonder what else they changed. Up until this point the game was predictable, but now I have to wonder if that upgrade in the remote is actually Manegarm, or a cheeky Mr. Hendrik, or something else entirely. I don't know, now they could be doing anything over there.

The best example of this in my opinion would be EAzmari, which terrorized events left and right for the better part of 2024. After it popped off last year, players started to prep and tech against it. But then at the next big event EAzmari switched up the tech, catching people off guard. Then again. And again. It's a deck that was always adapting to a meta that was adapting to it. It's a good deck made better by the fact that no one was ready for it, including those who thought they were.

My changes

The original deck is very strong, but I didn't feel like I always needed the money from Tranq or the protection from Crisium. I tried out Fully Op as well, but I once again didn't feel like I usually needed it. I thought Argus Crackdown would be a fun card to try in the slot instead, to help me out in the late game to shut off runner aggression when I'm threatening to win. I think I only ended up playing it once, which I believe actually won me the game against a very aggressive Alice, since it bought me a turn off from the pressure and in the end helped me grind out the runner (an unexpected wincon, but we got there somehow). It's not proven itself yet but I like it anyway. Also keep in mind that you can't use it to set up a Regenesis play since it will trash itself at the start of your next turn.

Lastly I found that Wage Workers wasn't quite good enough for me in the slot. I mean, it's amazing, it's Wage Workers. But it doesn't really help score agendas and it usually gets trashed pretty quickly. I thought it'd be interesting to swap it for Ablative Barrier instead, to get an extra Prāna or Rashida or whatever. I don't think I rezzed it once but I still think I like it in the slot. Ultimately, this feels like a "keep the runner guessing" slot.

The Event

Northern California Districts was a blast. I had some really tense games that came down to the wire. Thanks to all my opponents for the great games, and shout out to @tzeentchling for organizing!

And lastly, shout out to my teammates on Logic Bomb for all the testing over the last month leading up to the event!

Check out my runner here.