Blue Collar Apoc - Top 12 U.S. Nats, 1st. Rochester Regional

Codename: Rebuild 3: You Can (NOT) Redo

AKA The RC Cola of Ayla Apoc

Accolades

Top 27 - Northern California Regionals

Top 1 - Rochester Regionals

Top 12 - U.S. Nationals

This deck does three things badly. It plays a clot to stop FA shenanigans but probably lets you score once to get some fan sites online. It also went down to two SMCs cause slots are real hard. No worries cause you also remote camp cause Brahman can break some cards for really cheap, other cards for ok, and the rest of your breakers do a pretty good job of filling in the gaps. And then there's the prestige play and, honestly, the best play this deck has in the current meta. Apocalypse. Sometimes Shadow Net Apocalypse. That one ruses a lot of jinteki players who think they're so cool with their Kakugos and whatever else they've got. Hostile still wrecks you though, be careful.

At its core this deck originated from a deck @tmoiynmwg took to a second place finish in one of our local store champs after demolishing my CTM list despite being on a dumb shaper ID (did you guys know Jesminder doesn't avoid CTM's tag? Sad!). I really liked using it as a puzzle deck to play when I wasn't keen on any deck and wanted to play something crazy. Brahman to put your rig out of apoc's reach? Aesops to abuse the flipped cards for some dope off-click econ? Fake mopus? Too good to be true. This deck was called "Ok lets burn this country down" but a new runner was around the corner and she's less of a burner and more of a grower hence the "Rebuild" code name that became an Evangelion reference.

Enter Ayla "BIOS" Rahim aka "Ayla".

I'm going to spare you guys some long story about how this deck eventually turned out the way it did and instead wax poetic on a couple of card choices.

Ayla - Ayla lets you put four cards from your deck in a special area and that ability is super cool. This means you can: 1.- Take some of your dumb toolbox cards (e.g. Misdirection, Employee Strike, Film Critic) and take them out of your deck in the match ups where they're not relevant. 2.- Take some important cards that you want at specific times (e.g. Apoc, Aesops, Mad Dash, Shadow Net) and put it in a safe place where you can draw it at the exact right time. 3.- Filter cards you need at the start of your game as a sort of first mull. This is incredibly versatile and I found I was usually able to leverage this to pretty good effect. It doesn't always hit and it feels awkward (but is potentially correct) playing Diesel, Gamble, or Casts out of there but it cleans up your deck some of those times and I don't know if I'd feel comfortable taking this idea out of Ayla at this point.

Apocalypse - It feels wrong needing to explain this card, especially since our tournament meta was dominated by this, but it turns out that if your opponent is installing a bunch of cards and it takes you a click to access each one it's just way more economical to turn three successful runs (easy game) into a reset board and go check it out in Archives.

Employee Strike - Honestly I wish I could be on more copies of this card. Skorp sucks. AgInfusion kinda sucks. I hate that for a good chunk of decks out there the best or only answer to their core strategy (see: their ID) is to just shut it down whole cloth. Whatever. Along with Interdiction this also was meant to be able to turn of scarcity cause I straight lose to that card.

Out of the Ashes - Timmy Wong and Stephen Ebrey convinced me that this card was worth including even if I wasn't on the full suite. These couple cards were able to get me a couple more runs so I could check archives before their turn or whatever. Cool card. Also I really enjoy playing Ashes Rise of the Phoenixborn so it's a win-win cause it's like I'm playing both games.

The Shadow Net - This card is so sick. I think people kid of nod and smile when I talk about this and it may just be that I'm crazy, but the kinds of nonsense I pulled with this card are so good. Getting a full 9 credits from your gamble or popping some value indexings feels pretty good. This can also be your third apoc in a pinch but I doubt that ever happens (except in my game against Eric Phetteplace in NorCal Regionals. This card is also amazing at getting rid of cards like Kusanagi, News Team and Shi Kyu.

MKUltra - This is probably the shakiest influence in the deck but it's pretty good. The most common sentries I see these days (that I have to break) are Architect and Sapper. Brahman is probably better vs these but this card helped patch up any stray swordsman, break another type of ice repeatedly, and doesn't take a click to install. It's also not a priority to bump with Brahman since you can trash with Aesops and it's still useable and this trait is critical vs Architect cause there's no way I'm derezzing that bad boy. This card is AMAZING in NVRAM.

So here's the deal. I had no idea I would do any good at this year's US Nationals (hosted by the wonderful people of ETX including @jakodrako who is an amazing human being) so I did a very bad job of keeping track of my match ups. This write up is not about how the deck performed because, honestly, I don't think it should expect to perform all that well.

That being said this deck is SICK and was a crazy meta call that occasionally did some real good work. I'll spare you the dope (read: lucky) stories for one amazing play that should not have worked. You can skip this if you hate reading Netrunner stories, Eric.

@grogboxer is rushing me out with his Moon deck and is sitting pretty on four points with a real threat to score more sometime soon. He took back a Jeeves rez that was probably a sign he was getting ready to do some more magic but I honestly didn't have a very good read on his exact intentions, just knew that I had to apoc before he got his stupid Crisium from wherever it was hiding. It's go time and I've lined up my econ and breakers. I drop an interdiction to overwrite his ELP and run his CSM to stop him recurring it. He knows I'm on apoc and I know my window is slim. So next turn I... am looking at a second ELP he played from hand. This can't feel more urgent. He sets up some more and I'm mortified. There's some nonsense going on next to us and it's extremely distracting so I changed my mind three times on whether I wanted to try and cheat an access from R&D or index to bury some stuff. Time to run.

Click 1 Indexing. He rezzes a Fairchild I break with a CyCy and an Architect I break with MKUltra. No big deal. I get into R&D and... access. Raj asks me if I can do that and I point out it says may. I see an ABT on top of R&D and clear that ELP the good old fashioned way.

Click 2 and 3 I did some boring shit and Click 4 was Apoc baby! This deck may not be some fancy Akshara Sareen but when it's time to do or die it puts its head down and cranks out those Apocs.

Things this deck loses very easily to: HB with SanSan. HB with Next, Mistimed Apocs (usually against HB), Almost every crisium ever rezzed, probably News Hound, Scarcity of Resources.

Things this deck does very well against: Thousand cuts (pls no Hostile), FA with little glacier potential, Moons if you find Astrolabe (MULL FOR ASTROLABE), Hunter Seeker, Salem's Hospitality Faust.

As bad as I am at Netrunner I am worse at write ups. I hope you guys enjoyed this frantic love note to my last month's obsession.

One more thing. I want to thank everyone in my local meta for chatting about this deck for way longer than should have been necessary. Timmy Wong for helping me with some cards, cool tricks and stuff. Robotmascot for stealing my deck, winning a regional with them, and convincing me this was maybe good enough to play. He convinced me to drop the third Diesel for a third Astrolabe which is a pretty pretty pretty good call. Josh for the last minute probably accidentally motivational comment informing me (cause I didn't know) that 3rd at Gencon was apoc shaper. When it was late on Friday and I was super cold on combo shaper (having been rocked by too many meta choices at the ice breaker using Goodnight Moon) I remembered these comments and decided this deck had to be my choice. I would have been DEVASTATED if everyone around me was on apoc shaper and I'm some doofus on another Whizz deck. I'll go ahead and award myself two boss baby points.