Planet of the Apes MaxX (2nd, Boston Regionals)

There is an unwritten social contract in Netrunner: the corp pays money to set up defenses. Those defenses last for a long time, paying out their investment sevenfold. They also have powerful, situational operations that sit in the corp's HQ until the angels of Jackson Howard descend and declare that the time is right.

But what if instead: we threw all that stuff in the fucking trash?

This is an aggro MaxX deck. You have ways to straight up ruin the corp's day from word go, ways to keep them from trying to tax you out if you reach midgame, and ways to do it all again if the game goes long.

Labor Rights is the key card in this deck, and most of the choices stem from it or from meta calls. Specifics include:

• Labor Rights: Imagine if Levy didn't cost five credits and also gave you back just the good cards instead of the trash. Or, even better, don't imagine, play it.

• Rezeki: Since we aren't on Levy, we need drip econ. I like Rezeki more than Data Folding because I'm not obligated to find and play my console to keep the credits flowing, and also I can play a console that costs 2.

• Embezzle: This card is absolutely nuts right now. Literally every relevant deck hates to see this card. It singlehandedly makes you favored over Gagarin without Hacktivist or bad pub, and it can chaos dunk IG, NEH, and Argus into the shadow realm with good hits. It also makes you feel incredibly bad when you hit agendas, which I consider a feature and not a bug.

• Maker's: I wasn't willing to contort my deck to play Khusyuk, and I have very good HQ pressure, so Maker's it was. I'd cut influence and run Indexing (RIP, angel emoji) in a heartbeat but i don't have that option. Maker's is also relevant faster than Khusyuk, which meshes with our playstyle.

• Datasucker: Mostly tech vs. IG with a Freedom rebirth, but it's relevant as a cheap install vs. SDS and genuinely useful against fair decks.

• D4v1d: I have arachnophobia and no I do not want to talk about it.

Big shoutouts to the Salsette Slumlords Illuminati Of Bad Netrunner Players for all the help theorycrafting and refining this deck, especially IonFox!

Brief Tournament Report:

Round 1 - Ben G. on Gagarin: Ben got extremely flooded. I ran centrals and punished the flood.

Round 2 - Sam N. on AgInfusion: Astute readers have likely already notice I have no ways to break a strength 3 mythic ice. That is intentional; I assumed Pelangi and Engolo would hate them out. I was unable to disrupt a Nisei chain behind Excalibur, and I could only find 3 points in centrals before he had the Excal + Nisei + Obokata to win.

Round 3 - Chris F. on Palana: This was a nasty ice + Shipment from Tennin glacier. I successfully challenged an early Nisei play, he SfT'd a Yagi-Uda, and I started spending a fair amount of money to get into centrals every turn. Midgame, I chose to steal an Obokata, trashing my last Labor Rights and SoT, meaning I was stuck with single Rezeki drip and whatever my deck gave me the rest of the game. Thankfully, the deck coughed up just enough Hippo, D4, and Rebirth to buy me enough accesses for the winning Yagi-Uda.

Round 4 - Toby F. on NEH: Textbook win vs. NEH. Had great early money, kept everything relevant off the board, he didn't have enough creds or clicks to ice centrals, and I picked the points out of HQ/R&D.

Top 4, game 1 - Ian M. on Gagarin: Barely squeaked into the cut on extended SoS and Ian chose to corp. This game was incredibly stressful. I managed to connect on 3 full Embezzles throughout the game, trashing 2 HHN, 2 HPT, and 2 other operations I've forgotten. I spent a decent amount of money trashing the board, and I checked centrals, so his turn 1 Paywall and later Drudge Work kept him rich despite the middling board. I was able to find an SSL and SDS, then got HHN'd when I was on about 20 credits. Given cards in hand, I did not have enough clicks to drop Corroder, trash Judge, and also clear enough tags to not die to HHN, so I opted for the stalling game instead--clear just enough tags and draw just enough cards not to die to the single HPT left in the deck, and hit centrals with every other click. Eventually hit a turn where I didn't have enough money left to do that, so I went broke trashing assets in R&D and found the winning SDS click 4.

Grand Finals, game 2 - Toby F. on NEH: Textbook loss vs. NEH. Had early but not sustainable money, got HHN'd after spending it to clear the board, only drew resource econ from there on. Whiffed an Embezzle for good measure. I managed to keep this closer than it had any right to be by squeezing accesses wherever I could, but eventually they ran dry.

My corp was Greg Tongue's Unban CI You Cowards. My thoughts on the deck are: a) its name is right, b) Fully Operational is actually extremely good, and c) people have 1000% forgotten how to play against Lakshmi so if you remember how to Lakshmi as corp you can get free wins. Highly recommend, the deck carried me despite shaky play on the day.

Overall, why play this deck? Three reasons.

1) It sucks when your rounds go to time. This deck is fast.

2) 0 is a way better number than 5.

3) You know the cards in Netrunner? The corp's ice? The corp's operations? The corp's assets? 2/3 of the cards in your very deck, as well as whatever you hit with brain damage? They belong in the trash. Let's put them there. You get to be the maniac. You get to blow it all up. And in the end, isn't that what any of us want?