Hate Trumps Love - 5/6th place US Nationals @ ETX

Congratulations to @Joseki and the whole SF meta for taking Nats down with two monster decks and their overall great read of the meta. I have never seen so many bewildered Netrunner players after round one of swiss. BRAVO!

A big shout out to Clint S on getting 2nd and repping the Seattle meta harder than anyone else could have this weekend. Also congratulations to my fellow Seattle try-hards @podoboyz99 and @grogboxer for making it 4 Seattle players in the top 16, along with Clint and myself.

Big thanks to @Netjogging for providing unlimited advice, fist-bumps and hugs throughout the weekend and @bilitherubin for giving me that ‘good luck’ alt-art PolOp.

So the decks…..

Neither of these decks are particularly original, so I will focus on a few key card choices and how they performed in each round.

My corp deck can be found here: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/43273/don-t-look-back-into-the-sun-5th-6th-place-us-nats-etx

I had experimented with various Whiz and Andy build over the last few weeks on Jnet and at Seattle and BC Regionals, but not settled on anything I was 100% comfortable with, so I decided to take the coward’s way out and play Dyper. I have played a fair bit of Dyper in my time, and decided it was a reasonable meta call with ice light moons everywhere. I was not prepared for the SF CI combo deck, but that turned out to be a decent match-up as well.

This is a very standard Hayley Dyper build. Only having one DDOS definitely hurts your consistency, particularly against the CI combo decks, where you are not going to get any fan site/artist colony triggers.

I decided to pack 2x NACH because of the amount of Sync Boom in the meta. It didn’t save me in the cut against Clint because of some sub-optimal play by me, but I think it was definitely the right call.

The other ‘spice’ in the deck in dropping one clone chip for a political operative. This was specific tech against the Caprice in Moons and Foodcoats, as good players will pre-rez her to beat the interdiction and you can no longer have the influence for the shouty cat. This was a change I came up with in the taxi to the event on Saturday, so I needed to source a PolOp. Fortunately @bilitherubin was on-hand with a ‘lucky’ alt-art version. Canadians are so nice! PolOp killed one Caprice in Swiss that would have been a problem, and I did not miss the clone chip all weekend. Only one person tried to ‘go deep’ on R & D and was one Ice short of locking me out.

Round 1 vs Russel on BABW

Russel is a very good local player, who I know from a game store close to where I live. I felt pretty bad Dyping him against a deck that was obviously trying to play ‘fair’ Netrunner. He managed to get a lot of money early, score a Vanity Project and then start piling ice on R & D. However, by that time I had the full 3 hyperdrivers and keyhole, so it was time to go. I hit a Government Takeover on my 2nd key-hole run and mad-dashed into archives to put an early end to the misery.

Overall record 1 – 1

Round 2 vs Perry on ETF

Perry was a lovely guy, who I believe travelled down with the BC crew. I must apologize to him that I don’t remember too much about this game other than it was the PolOp’s time to shine, dealing with a Caprice on R & D. I assembled the combo with not too much difficulty and keyholed enough points into the bin to win.

Overall record 3 – 1

Round 3 vs Justin G on ETF Moons

This was the deck I came to beat, but Justin knew what was up pretty early and started rushing out hard. I went off with only two hyperdrivers and found 6 points in R & D, missing the Vitruvius sitting on the table. He scored out next turn. So it goes.

Overall record 4 - 2

Round 4 vs Noah McKee on CI Combo

Noah was on the SF CI combo deck. This deck has a simple plan, which is to deck itself as quickly as possible so they can do CI 7 things without needing power shutdown, so in some way it doesn’t really matter whether they know you’re on Dyper or not. The big challenge is assembling your combo before they get to theirs, because their deck is lightning fast. Being Hayley helps, but having DDOS be the 3rd from bottom card of your deck certainly does not! I had everything else set up and was digging hard, but Noah was too fast for me and comboed out for 7 points. Well played.

Overall record 5 – 3

Round 5 vs Jared on ETF Fast Advance

Jared is another very (very) strong player form the Seattle meta, who I have a terrible record against. Jared tried to score a sneaky ABT off the table turn one, but I smelled a rat and sniped it. He thought I was on the Hayley lock deck until a couple of turns later when I slapped down my first leprechaun, but by then he had wasted time installing campaigns behind ice. He did get a SanSan up and running and scored a couple of agendas, but that gave me enough time to get the combo pieces online and go off. Had I not got the turn 1 ABT, this game could have been very different.

Overall record 7 – 3

Round 6 – ID vs @grogboxer

Some jerk named Raj suggested we ID. He was on 22 prestige an pretty much guaranteed to make day two if he got to 25. I had was sitting in 10th and had the highest SoS of the people on 21 prestige. I personally think IDs are silly, but this could have been my one and only chance to make day 2 of Nationals, and I was playing Dyper, therefore clearly have no morals, so an ID it was.

Overall record 8 – 4

Sunday - First round of top 16 corp loss to Clint

 Man, that guy is good at Netrunner. There is nothing else to say.

Loser’s bracket game 1 vs Philip on CI Combo

Philip was part of the SF hive mind, but also a fellow Brit. There were only two of us ‘red-coats’ in the cut, and one of us was going to have to go. This was another game of combo-chicken, with each player daring the other to take one more turn. He got down to 13 cards in R & D and passed turn, choosing not to try and blind AD to win the game. I had 2 hyperdrivers, DDOS and Keyhole, but was one false echo/clone chip short of being able to breach R & D. I decided to go off with ten click and used click one to diesel to find my missing piece. Luckily I hit it, so had 9 clicks to get to 7 points. I hit the 6th agenda point in R & D click 8 of 9 and had the mad-dash in hand to seal the deal. It was an incredibly close game against a great opponent. Sometimes two highly un-interactive decks can result in great games.

Loser’s bracket game 2 vs Timmy Wong on Blue Sun

Sides in this match up were decided by a dice-roll, and I was convinced my tournament was over when Timmy got to play his Blue Sun. Timmy took a mulligan and then took 3 credits on his opening turn. I did some set up. Turn 2, Timmy iced HQ (I later found out he was flooded) and took some more credits. I did some more set up. Turn 3 Timmy started looking for Ice but did not find any, by this point I had 1 leprechaun on the board with a hyperdriver and an SMC and another SMC out on the board. I decided it was now or never, so fetched another hyperdirver at the end of Timmy’s turn, took the clicks and fetched the Keyhole to go to town on the undefended R & D. I found the agendas pretty quickly and we shook hands. Timmy is obviously a true great of the game and an absolute class act. I had no business beating him, but RNGeesus was on my side in that one.

Loser’s bracket game 3 vs Cory

Win with my Sol Deck – write up to come soon.

Loser’s bracket game 4 vs Clint on Sync Boom

Clint and I meet for the 2nd time in the cut. Clint and I play almost every week at a regular meet-up in Seattle @ Optimism Brewery, so it was bitter-sweet that we would face-off for a place in the top 4 at US Nationals. I thought I had the god draw, with NACH, diesel Sure gamble and fan-site in my opening hand, but I made the mistake of putting the NACH down too early. Clint could tax me by slapping down naked Breaking News on the table and daring me to steal them or pay to avoid tags. He kept drawing agendas and kept putting them on the table naked. In a 4 turn sequence, he scored BN, BN, BN, 15 minutes. The next turn he double-advanced another naked agenda, obviously I had to go at this point because it was the winning GFI. I had ten clicks and DDOS, but was nowhere near set-up. I got Keyhole, but overextended by using the Hayley ability to install equivocation as well. This was a mistake that ended up costing me the game, as I had to click for credits to trash a Jackson, leaving my with too few keyhole runs and not enough money to steal NAPD. The game went on for a few more turns, but Clint played perfectly to snuff out any chance of me winning. He 24/7 exchanged to take a GFI and stick me with tags, followed up by observe and destroying my keyhole. Clint scored out soon after. He is good at Netrunner.

Thanks to everyone I played and chatted with over the weekend. I had a blast!