No Boat, No Breakers, No Problem (1st @ Philly Startup CO)

First time poster! When I returned to Netrunner a few months ago, Esâ immediately jumped out at me as the first deck I wanted to build. It is fitting then, that Esâ would go on to helm the deck that I would win my first, admittedly small, Startup CO with. This list is heavily inspired by various Greytongue lists and Diogene's standard Esâblade from Canadian Nats, as the deck loses very few cards in the translation to Startup. Piloting this deck feels like running Noise back in the FFG days- its fast, low to the ground, and hammers the corp with a storm of multiaccess. While I'm sure this is far from the perfect distillation of this list, it didn't drop a game during the event and was a blast to pilot - winning the last round in style with a Running Hot Deep Dive!

The deck's game plan is to immediately slam a Bankhar/B-Breaker to contest any scoring remote, then get Ghosttongue/Marrow set up to start sabotaging 2-6 cards a turn (opening up HQ with a B-Breaker for Chastushkas), and finally to close the game with a Deep Dive or by recurring enough to sabotage events to scoop up the remaining points from RD or Archives respectively.

Bankhar on Ice - Bankhar is excellent on its own, but with AirbladeX it is phenomenal. AirbladeX helps us tech for some Jinteki and NBN matchups, and gives us psuedo card advantage when we dodge the net damage we do to ourselves. Far and away the best part of the blades is the click to click stability it gives to your gameplan, allowing you to plan ahead without having to adjust a your line or delay a Bankhar run for fear of losing a key card in your grip to a random discard.

Hot Dive - When you Running Hot into Deep Dive and access 10+ cards in a turn it wins games. When you have milled half the Corp's deck and they use Spin Doctor's to prevent you from winning the game with a run on archives - Deep Dive wins games. This gameplan is splashy and has an incredibly high ceiling, but was always a little brittle and magical christmaslandy before Airblade X and Katorga Breakout gave your grip the stability it needed to keep the "Hot Dive" cards in hand. It has be noted by better players than I that over the course of a game against Esâ, agenda density tends to rise in HQ and RD as the Corp sabotages and spins. A well timed Dive, Finality, or Jailbreak can close the game easily in those circumstances.

Katorga Toolbox - I think Katorga Breakout is underplayed, and this deck is set up to make full use of it if the game goes long. It synergizes well with the cost reduction of Ghosttongue and turns your big heap of cards lost to Bankhar and core damage into a second grip of sorts. Breakout provides stability for key cards you would otherwise fear trashing from your grip, it makes all the 1 of's in the deck feel like playsets when deckbuilding, and it can create a recursion loop of Chastushkas, B-Breakers, and Multiaccess that is a total nightmare for the corp. Trust me, when you Chastushka your opponent for the 5th-6th time and they tug on their collar and sheepishly ice archives, you will feel the value of Breakout.

No Boat, No Breakers, No Problem - I was really committed to not using Endurance in this event, and initially used no breakers at all, just trojans and inside job. That was fantastic for allowing the deck to function on few credits, surprising HQ for Chastushka, and for contesting scoring remotes - but fell apart when it encountered Magnet and Virtual Service Agent. So a Buzzsaw made the list and since glacial servers could also lock this suite out - a single Mayfly also made the cut.

Matchups -

Round 1: W vs Reality + : R+ was the deck I was most scared of going into this event. I didn't find the No Free Lunch but held Hush for any Starlit Knights. Keeping credits up to ditch tags and max handsize above 6, I was able to loop Chastushkas with Breakout to win on archives.

Round 2: W vs HB: Precision Design: The presence of Magnet and Skunkvoid made me very happy to have included and drawn Light the Fire, Hush, and Buzzsaw in this deck. A lucky Finality grabbed me 4 points in this game, an few more sabotage triggers saw the last needed agenda go into archives

Round 3: W vs A Teia: This match was very cagey, with no big swings early game. My arch nemesis Magnet appeared again and, alongside some increasingly glacial remote servers, forced me to refocus on central pressure. Timely magnets and net damage sent me reeling for a few turns, but I scrapped to middling points and eventually drew into the "HotDive" combo and went for it, fully hopping to win on R&D, but was pleasantly surprised to find all the agenda points I needed waiting in archives :)

Thanks to Pouchsurfer for organizing a great event and in general for being the fulcrum of our wonderful Philly scene. Thanks to Deer for being the best mentor someone could ask for as they get back into the organized play. Thanks also to Siejai, Books&Board, and Voltaic for being awesome opponents, I had such a good time joking and running the net with all of you! I appreciate so much this community and how welcoming it has been, and all the Philly people like Functor, Pouchsurfer, and Sanjay who played earlier iterations of my decks and helped me hone something I was really happy with. Keep Running.