PE: An Apologia - 1st Place Czech Nationals

This is card for card the same list my friend Bridgeman built and took to worlds. I wanted to share my own thoughts on the ingenuity of his work.

In the prelude to worlds, we became increasingly desperate for a good corp, or even one that had some semblance of competitiveness. While Sokka234 and Axwill settled on SNACS, Bridgeman went on a fishing trip, coming back with this wacky list that kept losing game after game to ArminFirecracker. Yet in playing it, we finally had fun again, taking some of the pressure off an increasingly grindy testing season. And in some fashion, that is what PE has offered, and continues to do: an alternative way to play the game we love, subverting some of its logic in favor of another.

I will admit I love Jinteki as a faction, and thus held on when we were forced to play more grindy decks, but this PE to me represents the potential of the identity in full bloom: an interesting tempo-based whittling of the runner’s resources coupled with deception and multi-pronged attack. Beyond the aesthetic/mechanical beauty of PE as in ID, this deck realises a very fine balance between the poker and chess sides of Netrunner.

Also, it found a home for Wake Up Call, a lovely card and cool piece of tech against Boat. And if that were not enough, it rewards me for dumping Obos in archives, a greedy habit of which Rustryder does not approve.

On the day the deck went undefeated - it was intereSting! Having 3 PE’s in the top 4 as well. Big thank you’s to Odol for ID’ing and a lovely discussion on linguistics and translation, longi for hosting when I missed my midnight train back, Krasty for organising, and everyone else at the tournament for being part of this excellent community.

I had wanted to make a few slight changes to the deck, but didn’t find the required cards in time. Alas, even as is it is a very solid shell, and also a fine piece of deckbuilding to showcase what PE can be.