Or - School's out for Whizzard.

This is the runner deck I took to euros. It's not very interesting but I had an idea for a stupid deck name that I didn't want to waste.

Massive thanks go to Jonny for helping with building and testing, although we ended up differing on a couple of cards in the end.

Estelle bloody Moon

Estelle is a crazy card, particularly in the various HB asset decks that are shaking the meta at the moment. It was the corp deck I took and other than against heavily teched anarch decks it performed very well. My version was even less interesting than this runner. It had three ELPs.

Jonny and I decided (correctly) that Moons would be the deck to beat and practiced the match up a lot, making a fair number of deck building concessions to improve the match up too. We found the Reg Whizz-Moons match up to basically be a coin flip on who had the better start. Basically, if Moons didn't get access to Moon and an ICE in the first couple of turns there was game to be had. Otherwise it was very tough. In retrospect, we might have been better sacrificing the general strength of the deck for more focus on this match-up as various southern players did but we both made the Top 16 anyway so it wasn't a complete disaster.

MkUltra

Otherwise known as Mark Ultra, this replaced the second Mimic for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we upped the draw package from Chris's Worlds list because it's terrifyingly easy to fall behind Moons in terms of tempo and we no longer had Obelus for console-based draw. This meant that our two recursion cards were somewhat taxed. More importantly, Moons will happily go broke to fire an Architect to gain additional Estelle tokens. However, with Mr Ultra in the bin that becomes a far less attractive proposition. It also means (barring ELP) you can run first click on an ICE'd Estelle and be pretty confident you'll get through, assuming they're on the standard ICE suite which almost all are.

Hacktivist Meeting (3x)

Currents are incredibly important against Moons. The deck is hard enough to beat with four clicks, never mind three. We found early Hacktivist to be really effective in pressuring the corp's options, helping you to leverage a good start. Games on the day basically evidenced that Rumor Mill is the correct current choice for this match up but we lacked the audacity to spend influence on it. This was a mistake but Hacktivist still earned its include. A surprise hit of the day was Scarcity of Resources Sol. While Hacktivist had little effect on that deck's game plan, having three counter currents with so much of our draw and econ tied to resources was really helpful.

Maw

With Sifr hitting the MWL (thank goodness) anarchs have been casting around for the new go-to console. Maw suffers from being a very well designed and well balanced card. Good job design/dev team! The problem, of course, is that the best cards are those that are unfairly costed (hi again, Sifr). Moons runs few ICE but they are all so effective that it can make it very difficult to get the requisite accesses to have a shot to win the game. What they struggle to do is prevent you triggering Maw every turn. The card will rarely win you a game you were badly losing but it is fantastic at preventing the corp from wriggling out from under you when you manage to hit a somewhat commanding position - something Moons is fantastic at doing.

Three Peddler and Three Inject

Moons demands a huge amount of the runner. You have to find a way of breaking Architect immediately. You have to find a way of breaking Fairchild pretty quick. You need the econ to deal with Eli and set up your rig. And you'll probably need to keep finding currents to clear ELP. It's my view that you lose far more games because you couldn't get through your deck quickly enough than you do losing key pieces to the drawbacks of these two cards.

In the end, I went 2-3 against Moons, not only facing fewer than expected but also not performing particularly strongly against them - one of the victories was an absurd flood of agendas with very little my opponent could do. Whilst making more sacrifices for this match up might have shifted the above numbers, I was glad of the greater flexibility this more regular build offered against the 7/10 Swiss opponents who weren't on Moons. And so we come to the spice -

The Name

I dislike playing the same thing as everyone else but Whizz really did seem to be the obvious choice for this event. The initial build had a single D4v1d which we found of middling usefulness so we started casting about for another use for the influence. I settled on Rebirth (with Jonny going for Pol Op), shoring up a swathe of dodgy match ups in a single card, and giving me the excuse to refer to the deck as anarch rather than just Whizzard.

Rebirthing into Kim with Maw gives the deck surprising game against kill Sync. Of course, you have to find the Rebirth but the same is true of plascrete and Rebirth remains useful in a bunch of other games. With no D4v1d, lock-out can occur against glacier. Null can help you out there. Omar is fantastic as a late game surprise and, happily, his ability circumvents ELP. I had a dream of a stupid set of circumstances leading to the ideal play being to rebirth into noise and install a bunch of viruses that happened to end up on peddlers but sadly it never came up.

Over the three days, I rebirthed four times. Twice it won me the game. Once it had little bearing. Once it gave me a shot at a game that I was otherwise locked out of (although I still lost in the end).

Crucially, one opponent had to read Null as I surprise-burned down a DNA Tracker on R&D with Medium and a Temujin Contract waiting in the wings. Always good to get people reading.

Finally, the titular anarch is delinquent because the previous build contained a spicy Dean Lister (and thus called SeaMaws's Educated Anarch) but he sadly got cut in favour of the third Hacktivist.

Finally, finally

I had an amazing weekend. The event was smoothly run and - barring an incident which has been discussed elsewhere - everyone was magnificent.

Thanks to:

My opponents, even those that cruelly beat me.

The Scottish Netrunner Team (and honorary Scot for the weekend Phil), consistently the last to leave the pub and the first in my heart.

Jez, for making sure I left the pub and made it to the expo.

The Swedes and the Spaniards, consistently second last to leave the pub.

The (rest of the) UK Netrunners, even if you didn't share your secret tech with us.

The event judges. Never an easy job. Thanks for not giving me a warning for abusing Hoyland.

Hoyland, for being a gent about his deck handing me a win in the cut.

Theo, for placing grapes on his Maw and eating them to indicate when he triggered it.

Tagore, for trying to pick me up in celebration a second time despite how poorly his first attempt went.

The Run Last Click crew for allowing me on their fabulous panel and plying me with rum.

Ollie, for being a sharp-dressing gent.

Even, for getting me a giant foam Dobble hand when I was too busy playing Netrunner.

And, everyone I've forgotten. Netrunners are so consistently amazing it's almost enough to make me take you all for granted.