Neoliberalism - 3rd at Wizard's Chest Store Champ in Denver

Three weeks ago I returned to Netrunner after a two year hiatus. I had slowly stopped playing over the course of Mumbad, when Faust and IG were incredibly prevalent and the game had simply stopped being fun for me. However, Core 2.0, rotation, and, most importantly, the new banned/restricted MWL format brought me back. I'm very happy to be playing my favorite game again.

I'm going to give a brief history of the development of this deck, followed by a tournament report and some closing thoughts on card choices.

Development:

I had tried to play Titan Fast Advance before my hiatus, when it was definitely not tier 1, and so the possibility of the deck being competitively viable was very exciting. I examined a number of lists and experimented with three different concepts: 1) Armored Servers and high sub ice, 2) 24/7 Armed Intimidation, and 3) Economic Warfare + HHN + Boom!.

Armored Servers was okay, but but didn't end up doing enough for me. It didn't enable me to score out behind ice because a savvy runner would run first click, get me to spend a counter, and then faceplant into harmless Weyland ETR ice. This necessitated I play must break ice like Tithonium, Archer, or Cobra. Ultimately, this package distracted from the Atlas Train (choo choo) rather than adding to it.

Armed Intimidation proved to be a lot better. It didn't require that I play expensive ice, and I did manage to kill quite a few runners. However, almost all of those kills were via the singleton HHN I slotted, with only one successful 24/7 combo in a dozen testing games. I decided to drop the combo but keep HHN and Economic Warfare (which moved in and out of this version of the deck as slots needs changed).

Finally, I settled on a list with Mother Goddess, 3 Trick of Light, a single Biotic, and much worse agendas, keeping the kill package. That deck was very good. The night before the SC championship I decided that the value of MoGo was insufficient since I usually won through FA anyway and on the few occasions I lost it was because one of my two SSLs got stolen. I consulted with William Brown of the Chicago meta, probably the world's best Weyland player, on whether I should change up the agenda suite and he strongly encouraged me to do so. This suite was borrowed from @glassjoes Titan list.

Tournament Report:

Round 1 of Swiss: Win vs Dan on Geist

I am unfortunately paired up with Dan who had driven four of us down from Laramie Wyoming to compete. I knew both of Dan's lists quite well from testing. Pirate Geist lacks the centrals pressure to keep a Fast Advancing Titan in check, and is almost always far too slow. I score an early Hostile and then an Atlas. Economic Warfare + HHN news leaves Dan very tagged. With Boom! in hand and only 1 credit, I reach for an Atlas counter to search my deck for a Beantstalk Royalties before glancing at my archives and seeing both copies. I was still able to Atlas Train for the win, but that was the closest I got to Booming anyone all day. Thanks for the ride, Dan!

Round 2 of Swiss: Win vs Jason (@jase2224) on Leela

Having swept my first opponent I was now sitting at the top table, on Stream, facing against eventual fourth place finisher Jason. He was playing the most interesting runner deck I saw all day. It ran DDoS, Doppleganger, Mobius, and Equivocation to enable absolutely crazy R&D digs.

I was not prepared for or expecting this, so I double iced HQ to protect my two Hostiles and single Atlas before beginning to score. The moment Rosetta was used to exile a Turtle I knew what was coming and yelled out "Equivocation!" Jason smiled as he pulled it from his deck and proceeded to run four times in three clicks, thanks to Doppleganger. The game ended up being fairly slow, with me having to meticulously re-ice centrals one piece at a time thanks to Unscheduled Maintenance shakes fists.

The turn before I scored out, Jason DDoSed and ran R&D seven times with Equivocation. I had two ice over HQ when this happened, so before the first Equivocation trigger of the turn I used the two Atlas counters I had banked to grab the third Atlas and a Global Food Initiative from the deck. My ploy paid off: Jason had neither Legwork nor the means to break the second ice on HQ and a I scored out next turn, with him at 5 points. All three of my games against Jason were fantastic and I love his Leela deck.

Round 3 of Swiss: Win vs Elliot on Nero

Elliot had unfortunately brought Timmy Wong's Nero to a 16 person SC with five Titans, three of which made the cut. Nexus Nero has a terrible Titan matchup and this game wasn't even close. Elliot scored 2-4 points, I can't remember. Our other game, Argus vs. Adam, was almost as one sided thanks to Elliot getting horribly agenda flooded and ice starved. Elliot ended 7th on off meta decks, so he is clearly a good player and I hope to play him again in the future without one sided luck.

Round 4: ID vs Matt on MaxX

Matt and I were number one and two with the same 5-1 record (I corp split against Jason), so we chose to ID given that we were guaranteed to be in the cut.

Game 1 of the Cut: Loss vs Rick on Valencia

Rick was third after Swiss and would eventually go on to win the tournament. We both got good starts, with me rapidly scoring two Atlases and him setting up an Imp + Friday Chip combo which crucially trashed my only Archived Memories. He stole my third Atlas (this was the only time one was stolen all day) and a Global Food Initiative. Three Mining Accidents left me with four bad pub. The combined pressure of free or nearly free runs and Imp + Friday Chip forced me to slow down considerably.

I had a GFI in hand, along with a Dedication Ceremony and Audacity. Unfortunately, I had installed my Reconstruction Contract behind an Enigma while Rick had 4 bad pub and Black Orchestra out, in the hopes that I could Fast Advance the GFI next turn for the win. Rick ran the Reconstruction Contract, trashed it, and earned himself a Friday Chip token, forcing me to purge. Had I not installed the Reconstruction Contract, and had Rick not trashed on one of the several HQ single accesses he had over the course of our game, I could have potentially Atlased for a Biotic Labor, Bioticed, installed the GFI click 1, installed the Reconstruction Contract click 2, Dedication Ceremonied click 3, and then Audacitied click 4 for the win. Instead, Rick scored out of R&D.

All of my interactions with people at the tournament that day were very good, but Rick still stood out as an incredibly nice person. He gave his prize mat to a friend of mine and very new player who had also driven down with us from Laramie to be there. After our game we talked about some of the rules interactions I was previously unaware of (Audacity counts itself as one of the three cards it requires, and Illegal Arms Factory doesn't give you bad pub if it's trashed while unrezzed).

Game 2 of the Cut: Win vs Jason on Leela

This time I knew what to expect, but I had two Atlases in hand and was forced to double ice HQ again. I was able to score both Atlases and and two Hostiles while Jason made it to six points on R&D, stealing two GFIs and my Oaktown. On Jason's last click he had to decide between running R&D, which, unbeknownst to him, held only a single Hostile Takeover, or running a nine card HQ which had seen an Atlas go into at the start of his Equivocation dig. Also unbeknownst to him, I had the last GFI in hand. He ran HQ for a single access and a 2 in 9 chance of winning. He accessed an Enigma and we shook hands.

Card Choices:

1xBoom! + 2xHHN + 3xEconomic Warfare:

This package only takes up 6 deck slots and four influence and has won me plenty of games in testing. I didn't land a Boom! on the day of the tournament, but both HHN and Economic Warfare pulled their weight. The Atlas Train is essentially about racing your opponent, and these cards either force your opponent to play more slowly to play around them or can directly punish their tempo by robbing them of cards and forcing them to clear tags.

I would probably leave these cards in. In part, this is because it is hard to think of what to replace them with. The two HHN could be replaced by a third Biotic Labor and maybe a third Audacity. Boom! could be swapped for a third Beanstalk. That leaves me with three empty slots. IPO is rarely playable in a deck this fast, so those wouldn't be a good a replacement for Economic Warfare.

On the other hand, you could probably swap Archived Memories and 1 HHN for a second Boom! and the third Biotic Labor. I like having more consistent kill potential, but as you can see from my tournament performance, it didn't end up being decisive.

Ice:

I cut Trick of Light the night before which resulted in my radically cutting down on the amount of advanceable ice. I swapped three Ice Walls for three Spiderwebs, and felt pretty good about it on the day. All of the ice are moderately taxing gear checks which I don't expect to rez much of. You just have to accept that the runner is going to get quite a few accesses each game and make sure you can efficiently race them. Cobra is the only piece of ice which I never rezzed and only once installed. Could probably be cut for something better.

In Conclusion:

This deck and similar Titan lists are very strong right now. Lock Shaper is largely out of the meta, at least for now, and the lack of Account Syphon means that you can play poor safely. Once the new version of Account Syphon comes out, at the end of Kitara, this deck will have to adapt or be pushed down a tier. I also wouldn't recommend playing this if you expect to see a lot of Shaper with Clot. At this tournament there were more Adam players than Shapers, so that wasn't a problem.