That One SYNC Deck -- 35th at Worlds

It’s a week before Worlds, and I’ve been undecided whether or not to play, because I’m literally moving to Edinburgh, Scotland from Berlin, and we’re dead in the middle of that move. I haven’t had much of a chance to play Netrunner lately, and I’m just not that big on playing online. I really enjoy the personal interactions when playing, and it’s harder to get that online. Also, my flight back to Berlin to clean out the old apartment is on the Sunday of Worlds, so that’s not great either.



I decide to half commit. I figure with the no practice and no idea what decks to play thing, there’s no way I’m making Sunday anyhow. I decide I’ll just play a couple decks that I really enjoy, and seem fairly strong right now. It turns out I was the only one playing SYNC, and honestly it was crushing pretty hard (my runner deck was my standard Hangry Hangry Hoshiko that's been doing so well ever since German Nationals last year).



First things first. This deck was originally designed by a player called Limes (you might know him, he's the fucking world champion), and can be found in its original form here. Secondly, this is not at all an optimized list. I already made some changes from the original list (such as taking out a Forced Connection for an Archived Memories for if/when BOOM! gets trashed, and swapping Enigmas for Slot Machines. Then there was the new ban list changes which wiped out SSL and Gold Farmer. Gold Farmer wasn’t too bad a loss, but losing SSL means that suddenly this deck with very little money had almost no money at all. The problem with putting in like 12 cards to help kill an opponent is that suddenly you have 12 less card slots for things like money.



For testing, I decided that Degree Mill was the best substitute for SSL because it’s annoying to steal, and that’s important. At this point, I couldn’t really justify the Forced Connections any longer, since if you never have money it’s just a card that makes the runner pay 3c, then trashes for free. I still liked the upgrade idea, so I decided to try out Product Placement. This also gains money, and makes the runner spend cash as well, so often it’s either a 4c swing, or they have to leave it and it makes me more money later. Finally, I swapped some ICE around to use the influence, as well as make sure I was still fulfilling the Weyland Alliance, and added in an Attitude Adjustment, to help with agenda overflow.

...

And then I never got a chance to test the changes at all. I still decided I liked the way the deck worked in the past, and thought the changes were reasonable enough to bring it to Worlds. In the end, I definitely should have made Thoth a different ICE, since there’s no way I ever want to commit 7c to that thing, and I probably should have tried harder to keep a 3rd Casting Call. It felt like with 3, I’d draw too many of them, which was annoying, but with 2 I felt like I just never had one when I had a scoring window if I did have a Casting.

Anyhow, the deck did great, killing a Hoshiko, a Freedom, 2 Leelas, and eventually lost to 1 Leela and 2 Geists. HOWEVER. I completely threw the Geist game vs Heinzel, because I tossed BOOM! in the trash, since I figured I could get it back when I found Archived Memories. 2 turns later he was tagged to hell and back, and I spent the rest of the game trying to find Archived Memories, which he eventually tossed in the trash via Stargate. Keep your kill pieces, kids! If I kept that BOOM!, I simply ID into the top 16 on round 7.

I have a couple games on stream, if you want to see the deck in action. One was in round 4 vs kogo, and featured some very tense games. The other was round 6 vs Heinzel, where you can watch me slowly lose to the BOOM! mistake! Heinzel played a great game there, though, and 100% deserved the win at the end.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/766089355?t=5h29m42s

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/766089355?t=9h10m34s

I wouldn't recommend the deck if there's a lot of Shapers around, as Misdirection just flat out kills your gameplan. You can still win games here and there, but mostly the Shaper has to fuck up.