Built to Blast in Bristol (Top of Swiss @ SW Regionals)

After playing super reg PD and EAzmari exclusively in the month and a half leading up to EMEA, I wanted to play something just because I thought it was fun. I had played a pretty ropy Argus list in the Throwback Team Tournement that weekend and enjoyed it, so that led me to the Metropole Grid's "Built to Blast!" list.

The Play Pattern:

Long story short, putting something in an expensive remote every single turn from turn one and getting your ID trigger every time feels insanely good, and being able to back that up with an (albeit soft) kill threat in the form of Public Trail -> End of the Line helps to smooth out the rough feeling of trying to score out in this meta.

At pubrunner, I was able to flatline unsuspecting Lats, Hoshikos and Sebs before they ever saw it coming, but in a tournament setting where people already knew what was up from the second they saw the ID, killing anyone was almost completely out of the question. What the kill plan does do however is force the runner to always end the turn on 8 credits and 4 cards in hand, minimum, which sometimes is enough on its own to protect your remote, and almost always enough to protect a double advanced City Works Project.

The absolute ideal scoring pattern that emerged in my practice games was to farm Charlotte counters for a turn or two, then push an agenda before the runner is ready to contest. After that, push City Works Project and make the runner try to steal it. The runner will almost always decide not to contest, and so you end up with five points. Then you simply have to open a scoring window by tricking the runner into breaking 10 Strength Pharos to see a Spin Dr or you Audacity out a 3/2 for the win.

Bulletproof right?

The Games:

How did this actually pan out on the day?

I played two games against Shaper (Lat and Padma) and that is undoubtedly the decks worst matchup. Annicam, Stoneship and Lat make kill lines almost impossible, and with Nuka they are even able to contest City Works Project and draw back up to safety. The speed with which Shaper decks can set up a late game rig makes the matchups particularly hard. The best thing to do is to jam early and hope to be able to Audacity out the last agenda, as by that point the remote is hardly doing anything.

My one loss of the day was against Esa. Sabotage is particularly rude against a combo kill deck that also wants to score behind ice, and Begemot makes our advancable ice look completely tragic. The one thing we've got going for us in this matchup is that a lot of Esas aren't playing Killers these days, which makes Hammer the best card in the deck. Every subroutine is good for us so we love to put Hammer on the remote server, HQ and R&D as they have no way to break it. My final game of the day was also against Esa and I won thanks to a particularly rude Hammer rez that trashed Marrow and an 8 credit Fermenter to put them on 3 hand size and open up the kill line.

Thoughts on the Deck:

This BtL is able to eke wins out of seemingly unwinnable situations, not only through the kill package but also with Weylands abundance of 3/2s that you actually want to play. For that reason I think the deck is good.

More importantly, the deck is super fun. It never feels like the game is lost, which means even your bad games are nailbiting and fun! I've been told that I am the EA Sports member who is "most likely to concede a game", but the game really isn't over til it's over with this corp.

If you decide to pick this up, I would suggest cutting Government Subsidy and playing a second Audacity, as well as going back to 3x Atlas and 2x Oaktown (as in the original Metropole Grid list) to help you score to 7 once the remote is made irrelevant

Shoutouts:

To all the wonderful people who organised SW Regionals. Baa Ram Wu, sixtyten and Nicky3.0 put on an amazingly fun day of Netrunner!

To the EA Sports crew for putting up with my aggro takes every week at pubrunner and turning Netrunner from a casual hobby to the only game I think about in the span of 6 months. It's been the most fun in the world getting good with you all.

And to all the lovely players at the event who made it such a great day!