Crystal Pepsi® v2.0 (1-3 Chicagoland Regional).

Crystal Pepsi is back!

So listen, I went back to the drawing board and I thought long and hard about how to make CtM Kill work.

Unfortunately, as a "toolbox" sort of fellow, I decided that I wanted to have options around.

I felt like this deck's greatest weakness was often Shaper, because if you could focus hard on asset trashings then I was not able to easily put the squeeze on the runner.

So with that being said, I decided I wanted to really lean into tempo (via Amani Senai) and forcing the CtM trace to really mean something (Aryabhata Tech).

As always, your goal is to jam out AR-Enhanced Security as fast as possible, but if they start making you bleed points, then you can use Amani Senai to set back the money advantage.

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Now let's talk about the performance on the day of: Round 1: Win vs Hayley Round 2: Loss vs 419 (mulliganed hand, no ice or upgrade protection for HQ!, Turn 1 DoF killed me) Round 3: Loss vs Leela (Curse you, Lee Maw!) Round 4: Loss vs MaxX.

In 4 rounds of playing CtM, I was able to find CBG in two games and only kept it alive in the last round. I've been crushing games out via my metamates and on JNet and felt extremely confident in the games, even against shaper. My favorite game of the day was definitely vs BraveLilToaster, that 419 deck gave me a run for my money but it felt challenging in a really great way. Trying to crawl my way back up after being brought to zero felt like every inch was earned.

But that's Netrunner! Sometimes you have god draw, sometimes you got hot shit and you gotta play your outs. I tried to play my best but so did everyone else! I had a blast, regardless.

I have some amazing ideas for Crystal Pepsi 3.0 though...

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Chicagoland, your group revived my love of Netrunner and truly it was the friends we made along the way. For that I will always be grateful.