Who needs a boat anyways? - 1. at startup worlds 2023

I still can't quite believe it while sitting here and writing this - I'm startup champion, I won.... wow... sounds crazy somehow :D
And I just can't keep myself from smiling :D

Sry, for that introduction - but that's exactely how it feels now.

This is part 1 of my write-up for startup-championship at worlds 2023. Part 2 can be found in my Corp-Deck.

1. About the deck - and startup in general:

I don't normally play startup - that might sound crazy, considering I won, but I only play it a few times a year at tournaments and side-events etc. Mostly because I don't have as much time for Netrunenr as I want to have, so the time I do get is normally used for standard, especially before tournaments like worlds. So normally I do have one corp- and one runner-deck for the format that I play until it's not working anymore or rotating. I think in the case of this runner-deck that's a very good thing though, because by playing this deck for over two years now I got it refined card by card and trained how to play it game by game.

It started with TheBigBoy's Startup Zahya for a smaller tournament in Ulm back then - I tried the deck, liked it and took it. It was fun to play, easy to learn and strong enough with it's multi-access. And I especially liked the "symmetry" of the three breakers in three colours, even more so after switching to cleaver later, so they all did cost three then :D
Later I changed it to include The Twinning after Midnight Sun, and these changes gave the deck a bit more late-game-power, when all the run-events are gone.
That was also basically the same version I took to worlds 2022 startup-championship. I became 27. back then and afterwards I always told people jokingly, that I was "officially world's best startup-Zahya-player."
After Parhelion and it's rotation I had to change some things and then with TAI i di not change anything at all - as i said, no time for that with stadrad-preparations. Until Zaphod (whom i already infected with "how powerful" this deck was) suggestet to use Shibboleth instead of Cat's Cradle, because it's cheaper and stronger in the beginning, before it gets replaced with unity later in the game, so I changed that card on Saturday evening. :D

The deck does have a lot of strong run-economy and tends to get stronger and stronger over the game, the more pieces you build up and add by installing more breakers, more eco, more multi-access etc. It does threaten HQ and RND at the same time and also uses Archives for Red Team and Sec-Testing and to get twinning-counter.
It's small decksize and the two mutual favor both help for faster setup and consistency.

2. Some cardchoices:
About Red Team: I like this card - especially in startup crim, where the choice of economy-cards is somewhat limited. I had quite some discussions about it in the past, but I mostly do see it as a criminal Liberated Accounts. As long as you use the click for a run you would make anyways it's basically the same value as liberated, and it does get added value from synergising with other things in the deck, like Zahya, pennyshaver, sectesting etc.
Pennyshaver: I did not test out Hermes at all - as stated above, I just didn't test a lot of startup anyways, so as long as the deck keeps working I tend to not change a lot. And I do feel like the 1 cred per run is still very strong, especially in this very-run-economy-oriented deck.

3. Startup Championship 2023:
First, let me tell you something about tournaments. I do already believe this (and tell people about it) for a dekade of Netrunner-tournaments now:
To win a tournament you need to be prepared (good decks, know the meta, etc.), play good (make no mistakes, etc.) - AND have some luck! You always need all three in the end.
Why do I emphasize this so much? Because I did have a lot of luck on that day!

I started by missing round 1 because I had to play one more round of standard to get enough points for all the prices, before I was willing to drop. I did however drop, because I was way more confident in my "old-trusty" startup-decks, than in winning 4 more standard-games in a row to just maybe make it into the bubble.
Round 2 the luck startet - I played with Zahya against Phil Earles with PD and just topdecked 5 points from an open RND with makers eye in the first turn, and then 2 more points with jailbreak in turn 2 - nice start and a welcome break after a very fast game :D After winning round 3 with corp and a long lunch-break I arrived at the top tables and faced testrunning with Thule Subsea in round 4. I'm missing a few notes here, but as far as I remember I got one early agenda from his server and the rest from HQ and in the end RND. I had to go up to 10 points though because of these pesky Nightmares and I got two minor headaches from the noise of him testing salvos, but in the end my rig was setup and I locked rnd enough to win.
Round 5+6 were corp-games again and in round 7 I faced Necrid with Weyland: Built to Last. The game went back and forth some time and a few minutes before time he was ahead with 4 to 2 agenda-points. I had however setup The Twinning, Docklands Pass and WAKE-implant - so I tried to gather as many counters as I could on HQ to do a final glorious Maker's Eye-Run for up to 8 cards on rnd when time was called.... at least that was the plan. The final two rounds took us just 10 seconds too long, so when time was called I was just on my 4 click wanting to take money of Pennyshaver and pass the turn again. I froze over and counted a dozen times, but I was short one credit to play Maker's Eye and still get into RND through Mestnichestvo (and Icewall), so I had to do the run without playing the event and hoping 5 cards would be enough - luck was with me again, as I found 3 points and got a timed win... whew.
Round 8 against The Robin with Jinteki: Restoring Humanity was the only game I lost on this day. Mostly because I got greedy and thought I could faceplant into some sentrys and will only eat some net-dmg - but Instead found a Stavka without Carmen to save me. I still managed to get into that server once with Insidejob for a Send a Message, but then lost against double-punitive (I had already seen one on RND before, and hoped he wouldn't have two - which he did....). Round 10 against Wikignometry playing NBN. Reality Plus was one of the most nervewrecking Netrunner-games I ever had - mostly because I knew we were playing for the champion-title, but also because the threat of some tags becoming my End of the Line for this year was looming over me.
I managed to steal something from an AMAZEing server without getting tagged due to my 3x skipping lunch but then she found out all about meand still tagged me. As I was somewhat tagged anyways I startet to do as much multi-access on RND as I could and again - got lucky enough to find enough points before she found enough green cards to kill me.

That's it for this write-up. If you made it this far - thanks for reading.
And as I already postet everywhere on sunday Night after the event:
Thank you everyone!
All opponents, all NSG, all players, all of my little team, all everyone!!!!

Corp-Write-Up here