Drip Drop Andy (Scottish Regional Top 8)

Here is the runner deck I took to 4th Seed then 8th overall at the Scottish Netrunner regionals.

I had been playing this deck (or a variation thereon; it was an Iain deck for a while) since around March and basically had not lost with it (in the week before Regionals, it died to meat damage a couple of times to one of my testing partners. Remember this).

As the Regional began to creep close, I had thought I was going to take a Siphon-MaxX deck, but testing in the two weeks leading up to it I found that, although it spiked high, it was sometimes shut down totally and utterly. I decided to run with the more consistent Drip Econ deck, I knew it wouldn't spike as high, but it would give me enough games over the course of the day to hopefully make it to the cut.

It's inspired by a few other decks, notably the Cardiff store champ Iain deck and Nordrunner's And4omeda. It has a slower start, helped by Andy's increased hand size, then pretty aggressively draws more cards and rig builds. The Supplier and Career Fair are great in the opening hand, I took to mulliganing if I didn't see it, which may have been a mistake. Overmind gives you pressure if you see the corp trying to score early, and Logos lets you turn the corp's early score into either tech (always fetch plascrete against Weyland. ALWAYS, dammit), a Dyson to turn on your UCs, or just more drip econ. Eventually the deck is making 6+ creds a turn, and 2 RDI plus 2 Legwork usually let you find the agendas for the win. With Femme, breakers, Overmind, E3, d4v1d, and a fistful of creds rolling in every turn, there's not a server that can keep you out late game.

My corp deck can be found over here

Game 1, Matt: Cerebral Imaging

Matt had come across from Glasgow, who had collectively decided to all bring CI decks. It had been a while since I played against the ID, and I knew I had secret tech in my deck in the form of Vamp. I fetched that off his first score, then waited a few turns until I had a bunch of money and Vamped him to nothing from 15 or so creds. I felt guilty as Matt burned both Vitruvius counters to recur GLC and keep himself on 5 cards! Anyway, there was an agenda in the bin, and I managed to use 2 RDI to pull out another 3 points from RnD, and only a turn before I would have been scorch/killed in the face.

Game 2, Zak: NEH

I wasn't sure what kind of deck Zak was running, and was a little scared of fast advance (I hoped everyone else had been scared off bringing it with clot; rush and FA are my worst match ups!). This was a bit of a slow game, agendas didn't start getting scored until much later. There was an early Mushin of a card which I left on the table; I Vamped at one point and took a look, worried about ToL, but found Ghost Branch (urgh, one of the only traps to trigger from 0!). Worried he would credit-credit-trash my supplier I cleaned tags, then just continued running. RDI and Legwork eventually got me the agendas with a femme'd tollbooth on RnD.

Game 3, Alasdair: HB:EtF

Alasdair was the first Netrunner player I met in Edinburgh before I moved here (I was placed against him in first round of the Chronos Protocol a month before I moved) and we've been friends ever since. He's a good player and more importantly I had never beaten him in a tournament. It made me nervous (and as I found out later, him too as he loves to hold it over me ;) ). I'll need to chat to him to get the details of this game as I've forgotten, but I'll update when I do. I won! :D

Game 4, Matt: HB:EtF

Matt was stuck to table 1 and hadn't dropped a game all day. He'd just seen off one of the best Scottish players with a double win, so I knew he was on top form! Matt is one of my regular playing partners and another very good friend, knew it would be a good game against him. I didn't get a great start and mulliganed from a hand with 1 supplier in it to one with 0 suppliers in it. I even had to chuck away a couple of cards from my opening hand. Less than ideal! But I slowly got myself set up, grabbing a couple of agendas. Meanwhile, through a variety of fast advance tricks (there was a SanSan on the table at this point) Matt was up to 5 points with 2 domestic sleepers. E3 was really working for me as he had an Eli and a Heimdall 1.0 over RnD, plus about 4 more bits of ice, both helping to keep me and my two RDIs out. He activates one of the domestic sleepers, I have one turn left. I hit RnD, needing three points. First card: El Zilcho. Second Card: Agenda! Gila Hands. Third Card: Accelerated Beta Test. Game came down to figuratively the last turn of a card to see who would win!

Game 5, Seamus: Blue Sun

Urgh, Seamus. Unfortunately a very good friend, also a really solid player. He very, very rarely makes mistakes in his play, so you have to watch for those windows to score so closely. He is a fan of the old triple scorch after scoring Posted Bounty, or just regular scorch at ANY OTHER TIME. He's got a lot of experience with Blue Sun, and runs it incredibly rich. My deck runs rich (it's one of my meat damage protections, having too much money to be able to kill), but not Blue Sun rich. I start to get set up, and Seamus is pulling typical Blue Sun BS. There's a Janus on the board somewhere (against Seamus, there is ALWAYS a Janus on the board somewhere, at LEAST one), and I know death to the face is ever present, so I'd love him to score an agenda letting me fetch Plascrete or E3 with Logos. But, it isn't to be. A Crisium on HQ and Off the Grid on a remote lets him score posted bounty then double scorch me straight past my 4 agenda points. I had a great rig out, so if only that Plascrete or Utopia had showed up on the table! Good hair and sharp suit take the match.

Game 6, Dan: HB: EtF

I'd nearly played Dan earlier before we were hit by an IT gremlin, so I'd already introduced myself. He was a thoroughly nice chap, and doing really well especially considering it was his second major event and he has been playing since around Order and Chaos. A quick check of the score sheet showed we both needed a win from this match to make it to the cut. I had already pulled out a win from my corp deck, so felt the pressure was off me a little; obviously, I still wanted to win, but wouldn't be devastated if I lost! Dan's deck was similar to mine, and to Alasdair's, meaning I thought I had a good chance against it. Dan, however, got a scoring server set up fairly quickly and managed to push through a Mandatory Upgrades (second agenda I think?). At that point it's so hard to win as pretty much anything in hand can be scored. I'm also starting to understand why people hate me so much for playing Ash all the time. I manage to grab a couple of points, but Dan fast advances with his extra clicks for the win.

Game 8, Shemek: Cerebral Imaging

Second CI game of the day! It went reasonably similar to the first, an early Efficiency Committee score lets me fetch a Vamp. I gain some money and manage to Vamp him down to zero, and he even burns his counters to take creds. I manage to get 2 RDIs up and RnD is weak as anything with only a single NEXT Silver there. I see a Scorch there, but tiredness has set in and I fail to draw back to up 4 with even a click remaining. Shemek pulls back a SEA from the bin, and Scorches me for the win. Stupid mistake on my part, but Shemek saw the window for victory and pushed through it to my death, smeared over the pavement.

And that was it! Such a good day, every single one of my games was fun and all of my opponents were great to play against. Would have been good to see Matt take home the top spot, but Laurie was a deserved winner too after his epic feat of Netrunner endurance! Thanks to the QT regulars for deck testing, ideas, beers, and general friendship. Thanks to BL and Stuart for running the whole thing. See y'all at Nationals!