six seamless, four rashida (Queen of Swiss, August 24th AMT)

Recently, I published six seamless, which simply ran as many copies of a known good card (or at least cards similar to it) as possible. This proved somewhat successful!

So, after a day of getting my Rashidas repeatedly trashed in test games, I thought to myself: "why not just run more Rashida?". So, we put 1x Wall to Wall in the list.

This list went 3-0 in Swiss, beating a Sable, Hoshiko and Az (in a credit-perfect game after which I was literally shaking). This took me to 1st place in Swiss along with yet another edition of girls, thus throwing me into my first ever top cut after nearly ten years of playing Netrunner. I then played girls in the first game, messed up my economy and quickly crashed out of the cut into 3rd place. Whoops!

Let's talk card changes compared to six seamless:

• -1 Malapert Data Vault +1 Wall to Wall. Okay, saying that Wall to Wall is basically Rashida is definitely bending the truth, but the additional draw really helps. The deck struggles when it can't find any of its Seamlesses, and none of them are tutorable - more draw helps avoid this. It's a nice never advance bluff that you can easily overwrite when it's time to score (even if that's only one or two turns later), or you can leave it to cook in an uniced server with its reasonable trash cost. It's also a prime Extract target for Rashida.
  There is a question as to whether it would be smarter to run a tutorable Seamless like Arella Salvatore [bblum 2024], and I honestly don't know. Is there a version called seven seamless which does -1 Tranquility -1 Magnet +1 Arella +1 Sandstone? (A more sensible cut would be one of the Seamless instead of Tranquility, or cutting both Tranquility and a Seamless to get a third Mavirus as well as Arella.)
• -1 SDS Drone Deployment +1 Project Atlas. We were previously at 21 points, and SDS currently feels like a liability. Overadvance this with Seamless to tutor a fast advance piece.
• -1 Envelopment +1 Enigma. Envelopment dies so much to Hush, and Propeller can walk through it similarly easily to Sandstone. Whether Enigma is the right call in this slot is debatable but it is fine.

A bit about the tournament

I was not confident in this deck coming into the AMT. It had been fairly middling in what little testing it had been through. (Thank you, ever-approaching thesis deadline.) Most of my testing had been evening games in person vs AceEmpress, who was predictably playing girls. I was struggling to win, in part because I knew all the lines and could see how she could get into the remote if she wanted to.

Cut to the day before, when I played a few games vs krysdreavus on Gachapon Arissana. Again, I could see the lines - I've been playing Shaper for long enough to know the tricks, and I knew ey could get into the remote if ey wanted to. I could come up with fast advance lines and get close, but the curse of Ob R&D struck and I couldn't always rescue a trashed Slash and Burn Agriculture. I lost every game.

I was failing to internalise something important in my play, even though I logically knew it: runners can get into the remote if they want to. The whole point of never advance is to make that choice hard. They can Physarum Entangler the Archer, Propeller through the Sandstone, whatever. But they couldn't do it consistently.

After many of those games, my opponents admitted they were very hesitant to run the remote. I'd been fearing nothing, trying to fast advance to avoid a threat that was way less prevalent than I feared. krysdreavus said something really important about the deck: "It's six seamless, not six audacity".

I internalised that for the AMT, and made it my plan. I fast advanced less, generally sticking to using it for scoring an early Eminent Domain when rushing wasn't working and to score out the winning agenda at the end of games. I sat back a bit, avoiding panicking myself into scoring points I couldn't afford. I pulled cool tricks with Slash and Burn pretending to be Seamless rather than just fast advancing: the credit-perfect Az game involved me putting the single SDS in the potentially unsafe remote, and next turn scoring from 2c with Slash and Burn + advance + Audacity. I had long term game plans which were working.

Years of experience with the game meant that I had efficient play down, but am not so good at playing with a long term strategy in mind. I could do it somewhat unconsciously, but that didn't help with improving. Having a few simple plans for the deck consciously in mind to make it slightly more linear ­– score Eminent ASAP, get Archer on remote, play never advance games – meant I was consciously playing with a long term strategy! Combined with actually taking notes during my Runner games, I was suddenly playing noticeably better.

And with that, I finally made a top cut, after missing many others. I still have a lot to improve on if I want to actually win a top cut (my girls games vs Epiphany definitely showed an issue with planning) but I'm just proud to have finally made one after all these years.

Thank you so much to krysdreavus and AceEmpress for the focused testing and deck tweaks that lead to me pulling this off. Thank you to the local girls support group QEH for being a place where I can improve my play, even if y'all are mainly just bewildered by my Ob brews. And thank you to my opponents on the day for the games and conversation.