S3Amless, Business as 2sual, Audac1ty (2-2 at NANPC Van)

Very briefly, the deck:

Earth station has been my project for several months at this point, and as such has been at my side as I improved at the game in general. I played it on stream at an AMT and got completely smoked. Afterwards I watched the commentary (hi, Jai) and actually learned a lot once I got over the cringe of watching myself play. Namely, I learned my (now) favorite earth station opening: ice hq, put a card in the remote, flip the ID.

The agenda suite went through a slow set of changes, from all 5/3s + Above the Law to all 4/2s and 3/2s to the suite I have today, which is 2 SDS, 3 Transport Monopolies, 3 Offworlds, and an Above the Law. This I found to be the most consistent scoring pattern-wise, while still being low density enough that I don't instantly lose on centrals. As has been said, transport monopoly is busted! You can kill Pinhole runs, Laundry runs, Bahia Bands value, DooF, Chastushka, and now with RWR, Privileged Access.

I had a choice whether or not I wanted to bring Santa's bad pub removal earth station, which I was having a lot of fun with, or my own advanceable ice earth station. In the end I chose advanceable ice, because I wanted to play with the new cards: specifically, Descent, Logjam, and Business As Usual.

These three cards are bonkers. Descent is fun as an early gear check if you don't find your HQ specific ice, or in late game as an in-faction Attitude Adjustment in emergency situations. Logjam is an in faction Bran with an incredible face check. Even if you don't get a huge amount of counters down, 4 str for an ice, an asset, and an upgrade ain't half bad. Business as Usual snipes turtles, fermenters, leeches, Audreys, imps, really anything you could want in a pinch. And its ability lets you both advance your ice and advance the card in the remote, for free. You can come back from zero credits by installing an NGO Front in the remote and playing this card, while killing a turtle and making your Tree Line gain strength. Busted.

OK so now the important bit.

I don't even know where to begin. NANPC was the most amazing experience. It's only the second in person tournament I've been to, and certainly the largest by a wide margin (33 people! All here to play netrunner!). I met so many amazing people and had some really fun moments during the event, including but not limited to:

• Pairing against Maninthemoon round 1, who went on to win the whole damn thing
• Getting flatlined turn 3 because I didn't believe hams had punitive (much less two punitives!) in his hand
• Watching podo play shipment from vlad on two separate cards, scoring 5 points in 1 turn to win the game
• Xist telling me he's never seen earth station before, and then proceeding to own me with zahya when I thought the crim matchup was good
• Playing Sindarin's Seb during my bye round and as a result, getting a set of drafters that I've been coveting since I saw Scott Uminga post the art to instagram (I can hardly believe it still, thank you Alec)
• Phil calling judge! about whether you can pay the earth station tax with trick shot (you can't, that's +1 reason to play earth station!)
• Getting my whole gnat combo off against against ctz's outfit, after which he installed a crisium on archives, saying its not for the reason I think, and then plunking a reduced service on R&D. I grinded out my whole deck with bankhar and eventually got locked out with 4 ice each on hq and R&D (what a bonkers game)
• Playing Malina, my delightful friend, in the final round, which was just the perfect bow on the swiss, and then winning the game by fast advancing the only 3/2 in the deck with audacity

These were just the in-tournament moments; I got to talk about earth station for longer than I thought possible with Charlie, fellow earth station enjoyer; witness sokka get 3 nisei counters all at once; talk art with Cat Shen (!!!); won a psi game against Cephalopod Wizard; meet Dave L, who might help rekindle the scene in my area; fistbump Whiteblade; catch up with redemptor and talk about the new cards; and Abraham gave me a playmat, which I'm just realizing might be the playmat

Feel free to sound off in the comments about your favourite moments because despite wanting to I could not be everywhere all at once

Shout out to Diogene, who I have to thank for my runner deck.

Shout out to Malina, QTM strong!! It was amazing to meet you!!!! Let's go deep sea diving again, I will take your oxygen :3

Shout out to piss gang, especially squeeeeege and imyxh, for testing non-stop against my bullshit decks instead of something competitively viable. Y'all are great.

Special thanks to Scott, for making this whole trip possible for me. Thank you so much.