Netrunner is a game we play with our bodies [Worlds2024 1st]

I've been playing netrunner for about 7 years now. I originally accidentally stumbled into a learn to play event at a board game store when I was there to pick up something else. I stood around watching for too long, and got pulled in to play a game, since Keith (thike) who was running it, noticed I had been following along close enough, and this other guy needed a fresh opponent. After that I got hooked and I kept playing relatively casually, losing almost every game I ever played at the pub for the next couple of years.

Eventually when Covid hit, the Vancouver netunner group became a lot more of a tight nit friend group. We started inventing and doing some wild custom formats to mix things up, like doing a little mini tournament of high lander, or the draft league that Alec (Sindarin) ran. With online play, playing in more competitive tournaments became a lot more accessible for me and I got a bit more into that. In particular, Sanjay put on this wild online tournament in a new format he invented called Okorina, where instead of the usual ideas, he had built this huge spreadsheet of how to play as a variety of different connections or agendas as the ID instead with influence and deck size hand tuned for each one to create a wide open unsolved format. Ian and I obsessed over the format, and I prepared more for that tournament than any other netrunner event in my life up to that point. We found an absolutely broken interaction and built a very very silly combo deck around it. Neither of us won this first Okarina event, but this guy from Edmonton we had never met before named Will, who goes by Sokka online did. Like Ian and myself, he had gone wild trying to solve this format, and we had such a good time, just hanging out with him for over an hour after the event, trading notes on wild deck ideas we had tried in the format. We ended up inviting him over to the Vancouver discord server, since everything was online for covid anyways, just to keep chatting with him about netrunner. He soon brought in Brandon (TheKing) over to our server, and became what I believe was the the premier Okarina testing group in the whole world. Will goes on to win, Okarina 2, but I take second. Finally for Okarina 3, I take first and it's my first ever tournament win, and what feels like the start of my competitive netrunner career. We go on to test a lot online together for worlds, along with a lot of other strong players from Vancouver, and elsewhere in Canada, and coin the name House Hippos for our testing group.

Over the next couple of years as things reopen post covid, Vancouver netrunner gets a lot more competitive. A lot of people we tested with did great during the online years, wining continentals, or making the top cuts at worlds. Both Eric and later Will move to Vancouver for law school. After that I have a couple of good showings. I manage to once make top cut at Canadian nationals, and get 3rd overall, though by this point Vancouver is full of sharks, and I feel I'm lucky just to make cut at most events without much hope to win anything. I keep playing netrunner on and off. Life often gets busy and I'll drop off for months at a time, and then pop back out of the woodwork when new cards land, or we are prepping for a big event.

Around this time last year, my life felt it was it was starting to spiral out of control and that I was heading towards rock bottom. I've struggled with mental heal issues on and off all of my life, but have always been fairly mindful of where my strengths and weakness are in those areas and have overt the decades built up a lot of coping skills. A year ago though a confluence of issues hit me all at once in my personal life. A close relationship that had always been a source of safety and security, all of a sudden was one of the biggest sources of conflict in my life, and I had the double whammy both handling that, but also the loss of that person as someone to support through a tough time as part of my own support network. A lot of mental health difficulties I've had all my life, came to bit of a boiling point. I was feeling overwhelmed and isolated. I needed a safe space to pour my energy and help ground myself in something other than rumination and anxiety.

At this point I hadn't really played any netrunner, online or in person since around when the Automata Initiative had first come out. I often get quite busy with work in the fall, and I had fallen off from netrunner almost entirely, not going to any of the weekly meetups or tournaments. With the launch of RwR though, I saw how much effort Eric was putting into Nanpc vancouver, and figured I had to come out and support him and everyone else behind Nanpc, and came out of the wood work to theory craft ideas in the new meta.

Nanpc Vancouver was great. I didn't do particularly well, but just prepping together with my friends again in the netrunner community, and getting to meet and get to know a lot better people like CTZ, or Cat Shen, or Charlie that had all travelled over to Vancouver for the event, was a fresh of breath air, and really what I needed to start getting back onto my feet. The rest of the year, feels like a rambo montage looking back. I started to take my health, and mental health a lot more seriously, and slowly chipped away at a backlog of self improvement things I've known I should address for the better part of a decade, and netrunner was my main outlet for self care.

On a bit of a whim, and because I want some escapism from the chaos in my life, I let Eric talk me into flying down to Boston with him and going to another out of town nanpc event. The tournament in boston was amazing. I brought some super wild brews to the tournament, with 2 hand crafted decks, a all in anti turbine hoshiko moon pool, king making fast advance azmari deck, and an all in triple deep dive arisanna. Both decks dig great, and I made the cut, and ended in 4th overall. Enough to get be briefly get me into the top 8 on the nanpc leaderboards. Right around that same time, I had started to use a mood tracking app, to understand my own mental health better. That weekend in boston showed up as a clear signal in the data, and it was the best my mental health had been in weeks if not months.

I started to get some momentum going. I finally followed up on figuring out if I have a sleep disorder, that I've had evidence for over a decade, but never had addresses and diagnosed for sleep apnea, which is extremely easy to treat and one of the biggest health interventions that you can do if you have it. Something like 5 to 10% of people in North America have it, and a large fraction of those people go diagnoses and treated for a very long time. TL;DR, it basically means that you don't breathe well while you sleep, often with the main symptom being that you snore, and it leads to massive issues with cognitive function, heart health that get worse and worse the longer it goes untreated. So my little PSA, especially if you're someone that often feels drowsy and has trouble getting out of bed in the morning, is to consider if you might have sleep apnea, and get assessed if you do. The process was pretty painless, and I should have done that a decade ago.

I also engaged with other professional help. I did an in-depth mental health assessment, and really explored what options I actually have to improve my mental health, rather than just cope with the difficulties. I learned that I likely have had untreated ADHD my entire life, and so many of the struggles I have had, even as far back as I can remember as a kid all just suddenly made sense to me.I started working with an ADHD coach and also doing therapy. I also recognized that engaging with netrunner and the community meant a lot more to me than just as an escape, but were a major positive force for good in my life.

I decided to rearrange some things in my life, so that I could make sure I made it down for my 3rd Nanpc event and do cascadia 2024, planning it out as a big road trip with friends from Vancouver. While I didn't do great in day 1 or make the cut, small unsolved formats are my favourite thing in netrunner. I had more fun playing the throwback tournament side event on day 2 than any other paper play netrunner up to that point in my life. I made it to the cut, and had a nail biter of a final game, where this deck did exactly what is was meant to do, for a surprise Biotic MAD Chairman Hiro kill combo in the last possible moment before the runner ran away with the game. This was the first in person netrunner tournament I had ever won, and the only second overall after my online Okarina win. At this point I had still never won an standard event.

My therapist is great, and she also suggested that aside from just the ADHD, maybe I have some autistic traits that contribute to my strengths and weakness. She suggested I check out some of the assessments you can self administer on https://embrace-autism.com/, for some of my own self discovery. I did a bunch of these in the backseat of the car ride down and back from Cascadia. Turns out I score extremely high in a bunch of autistic traits, but also super high in masking and coping skills that mean I fall into this cluster of people very unlikely to have been diagnoses as autistic as a child. This was another huge light bulb moment for me to understand myself a lot better, and get great leads, for what sort of things will actually help me work on myself. I've always been super skeptical of the sort of consumerism around self help and life coaching, but it turns out there's a good reason why general advice for most people, isn't going to be good advice for someone who is Autistic or ADHD.

Alas after not doing great at Cascadia I had fallen off that brief encounter with the top 8 of the nanpc leaderboard. I know it's a bit of a an inherently meaningless metric, but weirdly that made it even more meaningful to me. I really enjoy being hyper competitive when the stakes are low. I have always had a strong competitive impulse, but I've always felt so awkward in engaging in that productively in life. The Netrunner community creates this amazing sandbox, where you always feel safe and accepted, and can just focus on engaging with it super deeply, and not worry about being self conscious for caring too much, or trying to hard, or obsessing for hours over what you can do with a single rotated card, and staying up with friends until 3am practising the kill combo.

I am incredibly lucky and privileged to have an amazing job that lets me also fuel a lot of that same competitiveness, and obsession over optimizing for things that actually have huge economic impacts and that are highly valued. One of the things that did make the nanpc leaderboards somewhat arbitrary very much is the fact, that the people with the most flexibility and disposal income can go to more events. In the end though, I decided that, going to more nanpc events, was probably one of the best ways I could spend a lot of my vacation time and to think of the spending as self care, and not just reckless impulsive spending.

I flew out to Montreal for my 4th Nanpc event of the year. I love Montreal, and it's honestly one of my favourite places to go for vacation, even before accounting for it's awesome netrunner scene. Andre is an international treasure and the netrunner community is so lucky to have him put so much energy into the community. He was an amazing organizer for Nanpc Montreal. He is so thoughtful in really thinking through the player experience, and hyper optimizing every thing about the experience to be as welcoming as possible. He always puts together amazing video guides for attendees of the event. I knew exactly what place I needed to get to have a good chance of clearing top 8 on the leaderboard by the end of the season. Sadly it wasn't in the cards for me. I got a few more circuit points, but nowhere near enough to clear top 8, let alone hold it after the last couple of events in the season.

I redo all the math and realize if I go down to the last event, nanpc LA, even though it's a smaller event, if I do decently well, that might be just enough to make the top 8 again. In the process I also realize that Hams from vancouver is also in striking distance of taking the top 1 spot overall from Sokka if he does well at 1 more event. In a last minute rush, we book a last minute super cheap flight deal we found, and a couple days of testing later we down in burbank playing some more netrunner. Stephen E was a great host, and was excited we were coming down for the event. Last minute he loans me a Pichação that I had accidentally forgotten to bring. At this point I'm on my 4th iteration of of this deep dive Arissana deck, Id been refining and played through every other Nanpc event since boston. Turns out thats an important card in this deck. In the final game of swiss I play a wild game game vs an R+ asset spam deck, and at the time, the deck has no major tech for assets. I need to win this game to make the cut, and make the leaderboard regardless of how well I do in the cut, a loss here isn't good enough. For me this game matters more, than any game I might play that day if I make the cut. In that iteration of this deck, we're still on a sane 46-47 cards, but with no asset spam tech. There's no parcia, no dj steve / dj loup, and a lot less money than the final version of the deck. The game goes to a gruelling 6-6 timed tie. I land a big deep dive in overtime to get from 3 to 6 points but when massively tagged, going up from 4-3 to 4-6, and they score out a freedom of information to tie it all up. Not enough for either of me or my opponent to make the top 4 cut, but securing us 5th and 6th spot a point ahead of the rest of swiss that didn't get enough wins. It turns out, this was also just enough to nail the landing for a top 7 finish on nanpc. Hams also did great, making the cut, and going on to take second at nanpc LA, and also make it over the line for a top 1 nanpc overall finish, having done amazing well but falling just short in all 3 of nanpc vancouver, cascadia, and LA.

Reference Hams on the left. This is what a nanpc champion looks like.

At this point, between that throwback win, and making my leaderboard goal I had set for myself, I was feeling great going into worlds. I had already achieved every goal I had set for myself. The pressure was off, and I was just going to go to have fun, as a great end to what was already the best year of my netrunner career, and I chance to see so many of the friends I had made all across the community going to so many events all over the consent this year.

I was also at a way better place with my health. I finally had gotten my sleep apnea treatment to a place where it was working well for me, and it felt like I was honestly getting twice as much sleep, and I didn't have have to get past a bunch of sleep disorder induced brain fog ever day until it cleared a few hours into the afternoon. I also was started on medication for my mental health for the first time. I wasn't on ADHD meds yet, but a few weeks before worlds I had finally started on SSRIs for the first time in my life.

Day 0 with the team tournament went by like a flash. It was great seeing so many familiar faces, and how welcoming of a space the event was. Near the end of the day, I came across these amazing little hand printed zines in neat little stacks near the back of the room. Panetierre has put together these 2 wonderful little booklets for advice in engaging with big competitive netrunner event. The first was one about how it's great to be competitive and care about the game, but that what makes netrunner so special is that we also care about each other. It was full of helpful mindfulness reminders of how to be an excellent person, even in high stakes stressful situations. This one really resonated with me given my own anxieties I've often had about balancing my desire to be competitive without sacrificing the other values I care about. The second one was titled, "Netrunner is a game we play with our bodies". It was a collection of research they had put together initially for the QTM community, all about how to take care of your health, and what things in particular have been shown to impact your performance. It was full of gems, like the benefits of taking a walk making sure to move your body, how massively important it is to get good sleep, eating well especially getting a good breakfast, tips on resting and resetting between rounds, and how to a lot of people surprise, caffeine doesn't help out all that much at actually improving your decision making at all and it's at best a great way to deceive yourself that you aren't playing from behind when you're not well rested. Having resonated so well with the first one, so well, I knew that Panetierre is obviously a genius and I would be fool not to head their advice. I made this little zine my guide for all of swiss and the cut. I made sure to walk over to the venue every morning instead of taking transit. I didn't skip breakfast or lunch, even while feeling nausea from adjusting to the latest adjustment with my new meds, and I made sure I at least grabbed a protein shake to keep myself fueled even without any appetite. I avoided caffeine and alcohol all weekend. I made sure to take breaks and go reset between rounds in the low sensory room, to stay calm and grounded and not let stress or exhaustion build up throughout the days. After being more serious about taking care of myself and my own health though, this all just felt natural and felt like that final key that locked into place to set me up to play probably the best 2 days of netrunner of my life.

I just kept setting myself one next achievable goal to focus on all weekend. At first, I was hoping to do at least better than I had done in Toronto worlds, and make it to the top half. After that, I set my sights on making day 2. Going into day 2 at 9-2 I just wanted 1 more win in the last 3 days to make the cut. I paired with Sokka for that first game of day 2, in what felt like an unfavored match-up, so I just had to send it, and play hyper aggressively and go for the early deep dives before he glaciered up and taxed me out. The heart of the cards were in my favor and everything just barely aligned to pull out this first win on day 2, not only getting me into the cut, but securing a spot in the top half.

From there, I just wanted to try and win each round 1 by 1, setting a goal to try and survive at least 1 more elimination phase. Try and make top 8, then try and make top 4. All of a sudden I realized I was undefeated still in the winner bracket final, and I looked at the remaining people left in the cut, and thought for a second, that if everything went just right, I could imagine a world where I had enough winnable matchup paths in remaining pairings that making it to the finals and having a shot winning my first ever standard tournament. This is usually the point where the stress would get to me and I'd start playing very poorly, but this time felt different. Maybe it was the meds I was now on, maybe it was the fact that I was getting good sleep for the first time in my life, that I wasn't on my 4th cup of coffee for the day. One thing that did stand out though, is that everyone left in the cut at that point, were all amazing people who I have so much respect for. I could honestly look at the rest of the bracket, and already know that I was excited and happy no matter which of us won. Sure I could win or lose some more netrunner games, but it was a win-win situation. I had already far surpassed every goal I had set for myself and the most exciting thing for here on in, is just the fact that I get to play some more netrunner games today

I go on to win a game vs Dee, putting me into finals on the winner's bracket side, and setting me up for a 2 to 3 hour dinner break until finals on stream. I go grab dinner with everyone else that had come out from Vancouver (other than Will who was still busy trying to climb back up through the chase bracket to make it to finals for the three-peat). Dinner was great, everyone was in such a good mood from the event overall and I felt so much support from so many people being so happy that I was doing so well.

The finals vs Dee felt like they were over in 20 minutes. I felt like I played the entire game in a trance, just playing at a low consistent pace, not just flustered, and just methodologically thinking through every line, not playing perfectly, but not making any major mistakes, and trying to take just the right amount of risks when the upside was worth it.

Part way through, Dee reflects and comments, this game, and this pair of decks, regardless of who wins, will go on to be one of the formats where people replay past netrunner finals matchups. As wild and unique this particular game has been for the two of us, there will be echoes of people in the netrunner future thinking through these sane insane lines. That was such a fun lens to think about through the rest of that game, and I'm so glad Dee thought to mention that for fun as we were both agonizing over every little decision.

The final turn, I knew I had to run HQ and rip an agenda, or I almost certainly had lost to fast advance. I had a single click left. In the end it's a 3 in 7 odds to hit an agenda, and Dee did indeed have the final piece they needed to score out the following turn. I get the 3 in 7 stealing the hybrid release, and in that moment, both knew my call that I had to run HQ was right, and also realize I had just won that game. Dee erupts into just pure joy on seeing the final steal and shook my hand with a big smile congratulating me on the win and such a great game. It was so wholesome seeing that same feeling I had had when I thought about who was left in the bracket and how I was already so happy for whoever won, and seeing that mirrored back by Dee even in the moment they had just lost.

If you are wondering when I'll get through the pre-amble and actually write about the deck sorry about that but you'll be disappointed. What I will say, is check out the post game interview I did on stream with Andre where I did discuss the deck itself a bit more, as well as a slumscast podcast episode that should be out sometime soon were we did a deep dive together about the all the decisions that went into the deck and the general game plan and play-style.

What I will end on is a bunch of shoutouts to a bunch of the excellent people among the community that made netrunner feel like such a wonderful place.

Firstly everyone from the House Hippos Vancouver netrunner community. Everyone from Keith (thike) and Alec (Sindarin), who have put so much energy into the local community as TOs and generally community leaders. Ian (🧱), who was that other guy that I first played netrunner with at the learn to play event I had stumbled into 7 years ago Keith was running, and who is to this day one of the best friends I have met through this community, and who went off the deep end with me originally trying to solve Okarina, and helped me get that first ever win and my first taste of competitive netrunner. Jason (syd7) who helped craft an refine this Ari list with me all year as the other sicko who loved apoc shaper back in the day, and just had the intuition for how play this fine line between half control half combo full shaper bs deck archetype. Ryan (Hams) who helped with a lot of last minute testing for Nanpc LA, and in particular for getting really good at the R+ and developing a deep understanding for how to adopt the kill vs score out forks for different matchups. Joe (solomir) who came all the way out to san fran to volunteer as a judge, and who was such a great hype man for us all weekend, and who was probably the only person to put me in their betrunner pool. Also honourary or ex-hippos of Eric (gunslinger), Will (sokka), and Brandon (TheKing), who at various times play with us, and are all such strong players, that will have helped level up the play of everyone here in vancouver into some of the best place to play and get practice getting very good at netrunner. Also all of the regulars at our weekly pubrunner meetup, like Clayton, who bring so much energy to the local scene and keep the hype going year round.

Sanjay, in particular for putting together Okarina, and how that did really plant the seed in both my own relationship with competitive netrunner, and how it really helped build a more competitive netrunner community in Vancouver.

I also really appreciated everyone who helped make nanpc such an awesome thing this year, especially all of the TOs that put on events I was at including again Eric, Andre, Dhairya, Jeff and Stephen as well as the army of people who volunteered to help out in any number of ways.

Everyone involved in running Jinteki.net. I jammed over 250 games on each deck over the course of the year online, and that was a huge factor in building up the mental memory to pilot the decks so well on the day of.

I am really thankful for all the people that ran the event itself. Every who volunteered either as a judge or an organizer, Jeff as the head organizer, the whole stream team, and all the behind the scenes job securing the venue, all the marketing, the website, all the tools developers working on things like cobra, and the amazing feat it was live migrating so seamlessly back to aesop's table. The live migration was oddly another one of my favourite moments of the weekend, as it remind me so much of the sort of fires I get to fight in my day job, and camaraderie for the cleaver mitigation plan and execution.

uno and Lif3Lin3 for posting various versions of the R+ kill deck I took as the base for my version I played on the corp side. Both were amazing writeups.

Dee for such a fun and intense final game. I am so happy that was the way things ended for the weekend with such a great game with such a great person.

Finally Panetierre for the amazing advice for the weekend in the form of the zines. They graciously gave me the okay to name this deck after their zine full of a lot of the advice I credit with helping me get through the weekend so successfully. Both zines are available online as well what-i-like-to-do-between-rounds-at-a-netrunner-event and netrunner-is-a-game-we-play-with-our-bodies. I highly encourage people to check those out and even print out copies to keep for yourself as a reminder the next time you are doing something big stressful and audacious but want to stay grounded. I'd encourage anyone with a bit of disposable income as well, to throw in a tip for them on itch. I didn't get a chance to actually meet them at worlds, and I'm hopeful we can help fund their next worlds trip so I can fix that egregious mistake.