For the Culture (A Love Letter)

Cut I:

The year is 2013. I am in my third year of college. I am sitting in the union of the college I transferred to after moving back to my hometown of Madison, WI, in a fit of desperation. I am idly browsing Reddit when I stumble upon a subreddit for the game HeroClix, a prepainted miniatures game featuring characters from Marvel and DC Comics, among others, that I played during my adolescent years. I quickly seek out out a local playgroup in Madison, and my love for tabletop gaming is fully reignited. After attending my first tournament and taking a couple of games off of some of the tougher competitors in the group, it dawns on me that perhaps these goofy little games might be worth taking seriously. Despite this realization, I continue to mostly ignore the burgeoning competitive HeroClix scene and continue to try to win events using my goofball, comic-accurate teams.

Smash cut to 2014. I’m a year older and now wise enough to realize that while HeroClix may have an interesting game in there somewhere, WizKids seems mostly uninterested in maintaining healthy game balance. I begin to ponder the idea of getting back into Magic: The Gathering when one of the locals, Nick, shows up with a copy of the weird-looking cyberpunk card game that he picked up at GenCon a couple of years prior. I ask him about it, and he immediately starts gushing. It’s a reboot of a cult classic Richard Garfield design that has been begging for a second chance, as it went completely unappreciated in its day. I hear him out as a friend, but think very little of it as I take my HeroClix squad out of its box and begin to roll for map selection and first player.

A month or two go past, and at this point, I am fully disinterested in HeroClix. I start reading about a cool new Greek mythology-inspired plane that Magic is in when I remember my conversation with Nick from a few months prior. Just as he often was in our HeroClix games at the time, he was a few steps ahead of me at this point, having fully dropped HeroClix in favor of this game that had him so excited. I shoot him a quick text, asking if he could teach me how to play at an upcoming board game night. Within a couple of minutes, he says “yes”. In preparation, I go on YouTube to watch FFG’s “Learn-to-Play” video. I click play, and a low bass hum fills my eardrums. A faux loading bar fills. Images flash across the screen: identical sunglasses-clad agents standing at attention, a simulacrum of a human being shot in the head, a broadsword slicing through line after line of code, a virtual overseer surveying its digital realm.

Android Netrunner: The Card Game.

I have yet to draw my first card and I am hooked. Saturday night rolls around, and Nick hands me a corporation deck. I glance at what I now know to be an identity card. “Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World”. I set the identity card down and look at the next card. A woman with a bob cut looks out the window with a smile stretched across her face, watching a tall building in the distance burn. Scorched Earth. Within a few minutes, my smile matches hers.

I get home in a daze, my brain still throbbing from just an hour or two of Netrunner. I open eBay and immediately buy a full collection from a player in Canada. Two weeks later, an unreasonably heavy box shows up at my apartment full of cards in binders. I open one of the binders to find a hand-written note from the collection’s previous owner, wishing me well in my Netrunner endeavors. Years later, I will wonder if this buyer had any idea what was to come of this sale.

Cut II:

The year is 2015. Netrunner occupies its own corner in my brain at this point, and my grimoire is already full of tales and lore that could keep for going for years to come. I have chosen to fully ensconce myself in the competitive scene, opting to take days off and sacrifice large chunks of my paltry retail paycheck to drive to game stores in scenic locations like Wausau, WI and Niles, IL, just to say phrases like “Stimhack the remote” and “I hope that isn’t a Snare.” In 2015, I attend Worlds in Roseville, MN for the first time of many, carpooling with four other players from Madison in a cramped sedan. During the four-hour drive, we speculate as to what other decks we expect to see and how we plan to navigate the matchups. I have known these folks for maybe a year at this point, and already I feel a sense of camaraderie and love that no other hobby has ever provided. The night before the main event, we attend a fan-run team tournament called King of Servers, ran by a man from Milwaukee we know as spags. Spags is the Ian MacKaye of Netrunner: principled to his core, immensely influential as both a player and organizer, and one of the best to ever play the game. The event is in the basement of a VFW hall, and has a distinctly punk rock energy because of it. I opt to play a custom build of DLR Leela and Haarpsichord combo, a distinctly degenerate combination that would foreshadow the sort of decks I would eventually associate myself with. The event is as you’d expect a Netrunner tournament in a VFW hall to be: hot, sweaty, and cramped. After the event, I walk up the stairs with my teammates, the four of us drenched in sweat from a long day of hacking and corporate machinations. We wake up the next morning, walk to the FFG Game Center, and do it all over again.

Smash cut to 2018. I am in my own car making the same drive to Roseville, MN to attend Worlds, but this time I am alone. The Madison Netrunner scene has all but dried up at this point, with only a handful of players left. My former KoS teammates are not among them for a variety of reasons: some with newborn children requiring the bulk of their attention, others simply due to losing interest in the game. My devotion has not wavered; rather, it has only intensified. I am only alone physically, though; the aforementioned spags has become a close friend of mine, along with the other hypercompetitive players in the Milwaukee area: Aaron “aandries” Andries and Joe “Paranoid” Schupp. The summer prior, they formed a testing group to prepare for Worlds 2017, and invited me to join along with a couple of other very strong Netrunners, including Jesse “dashakan” Vandover and Sam “SamRS” Suied. Our testing group would later be known as Anti. Being part of a testing group made me feel like a Netrunner elite, the kind of status I had worked and grinded so hard to achieve. While our team didn’t win the event, we had an incredible run and were ready to make an even deeper run in 2018.

However, in the summer of 2018, a bombshell drops: an announcement that FFG is ceasing support and manufacturing of the game. The announcement article alludes to some vague issues with the licensing of the game: FFG had been licensing the game design from Wizards of the Coast all along, and they seemed unwilling to risk a lawsuit over game design conflicts. There is a vocal contingent of the scene that raises an eyebrow at this explanation, and to this day we have yet to receive a full explanation from FFG regarding the situation. However, FFG chooses to hold a final World Championship, the appropriately-named Magnum Opus, one last glory run for all the marbles. A game may live and die, but the exploits of the players live forever. Worlds 2018, then, has an air of finality to it, as we appear to be on the verge of crowning the final World Champion.

Much like in 2015, I attend the King of Servers Team event, though this time spags manages to sweet talk FFG into letting him hold it at the Game Center rather than a dingy VFW hall or an old-fashioned membership club in the boonies. My teammates are a collection of online friends, including fellow Wisconsinite Lucas “leburgan” Burgan, and a strange high-school aged Canadian named Eric “Whiteblade111” Keilback and his brother Hayden. None of us are taking the event terribly seriously - I run back my exact 45 cards from the prior year’s KoS on Runner with Apocalypse Ed Kim and go full-bore into the memes on Corp side, playing a homebrew list of Custom Biotics, seeking to use a combination of Dedication Ceremony and Reconstruction Contract to quickly and suddenly score agendas. I perform middling, but also help act as team cheerleader, aiming to lift my teammates’ spirits in times of struggle and celebrate any victories they achieve. My main event would go similarly, being eliminated from day 2 contention by the 2017 Worlds runner-up Grey Tongue. The games are jovial and light, with Grey being extremely gracious in victory, having just ended what could end up being my final Worlds run.

My teammates, on the other hand, are a different story, particularly Joe Schupp. Joe qualifies for day 2, which consists of a gauntlet of high-stakes Swiss rounds before a cut to top 16 and yet another series of grueling games against the best players in the world. Joe shows no fear and manages to grind it out and qualify for grand finals on winners side, needing just one more game to secure his crown. His opponent in grand finals is Chris “Nemamiah” Dyer, a British player who had won that same crown in 2016 and had a singular focus on reclaiming his throne. I will spare you the details of the game - they are irrelevant, and Joe comes out as the victor. Me and my Anti teammates are the first to rush Joe in the feature match area, the tears flowing as freely as our adrenaline. We revel and bask in our teammate’s glory - Joe has the crown (and the World Champion playmat), but the team wins as a whole. The festivities in the venue die down, and two-time World Champion Dan D’Argenio invites us to a party that his team, the Comrades, is holding at their Airbnb. The rest of Anti attends, but I cannot muster up the emotional fortitude. I am drained, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. For me, it feels as though what was a celebration of life has suddenly turned into a funeral, a wake for something that was so hugely important to me. I stumble back to the Radisson and order room service. After eating, I call my girlfriend in tears. “Please tell me that things are going to be OK,” I sob. She consoles me as best as she can, not yet fully grasping the weight of the situation from my perspective. I hang up the phone, and go to bed. Anti has one final breakfast in Roseville the next morning before I get back in my Subaru and begin the four-hour drive home. When I get home and check Stimslack, there are rumblings that the community is going to try to keep the game going, but nothing is concrete. Within the next two weeks, my local Netrunner meetups in Madison are empty. The body of Netrunner feels fully buried, and my mental health has never been worse at this point.

Intermission:

The year is 2022. I am lying on my back in a tattoo parlor in Madison, getting a tattoo of a combat knife on my left forearm for no other reason than I think it looks cool.

Cut III:

The year is 2024. Netrunner lives on.

The aforementioned fan group, now known as Null Signal Games, has fully taken over every part of the game, from design to organized play to distribution. There have been some bumps in the road, and many players have walked away from the game in the years between Magnum Opus and the present day. In their place is a new wave of players, players to whom the words “IG Prison” and “Railgun NEH” are meaningless. Even organized play is back, with the 2019 World Championships taking place outside Roseville for the first time, being held in Rotterdam. I am unable to attend for financial reasons, but help raise money for the still-reigning King Joe to attend. He is unable to repeat as champion, but still manages to make top 16, a commanding performance particularly when you consider that Joe had barely interacted with the game since taking the crown the year prior. However in March of 2020, the world changed again as the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world, forcing the remaining playerbase to cease play in meatspace and jack into jinteki.net to play online exclusively. Jnet was a tool that I used extensively when preparing for events with Anti but in recent years had been the source of much stress, and I was deeply uninterested in playing this game outside of meatspace. I almost completely check out of the game during the COVID years, only logging back on to watch Worlds coverage before jacking back out to work my corporate IT job. The lack of Netrunner in my life creates a void, one that causes me to spiral into the depths of anxiety and depression. My life becomes demonstrably worse, not just because of the ever-present stress of life during a global pandemic, but also because of the loss of one of the most important things in my life. I begin spiraling. Panic attacks become more frequent and pronounced than ever. I am prescribed medication to assist with the panic attacks and reenter therapy. I discuss the loss of Netrunner with my therapist in the same way that one might discuss the death of a friend or lover. After a certain point, I tell my therapist that I am at peace with potentially never playing Netrunner again, but deep down I know this is a lie. The thought of losing not just the game, but the community keeps me awake at night. The void continues to grow.

In 2022, however, we finally receive some good news: that Worlds will be in-person again, this time in Toronto, Ontario. Our faces will be masked at the event to help prevent the still rapidly spreading COVID-19, but our cards will be sleeved back up and on the table once again. What is dead may never die, and the idea of playing Netrunner in meatspace again begins to fill the void in my soul.

I renew my long-expired passport and head to Toronto, my now-dusty Worlds 2016 deckbox filled back up to capacity. As always, I participate in King of Servers with two players from the greater online community: first, Michael “neuropantser” Lawson. Michael runs a Netrunner podcast called Slumscast with another friend of mine, Joshua “Orbital Tangent” Swaner, and they were kind enough to allow me to come on as a guest during the pandemic. This particular podcast would be something I would use as a salve for my soul during hard moments, something to remind me that all of the time I have spent playing this card game has been worth something. My other teammate is Andrej “amavric” Gomizelj, someone who, in my estimation, is one of the biggest net celebrities in the community. Andrej runs a stream/channel called Metropole Grid, which started as a way to highlight his local community in Montreal and morphed over time into the highest-profile unofficial Netrunner channel. Andrej is often the first Netrunner content creator that many new players begin watching intensely, and for good reason. He is one of the most kind and patient people I have ever met, and has a real knack for explaining high-level concepts in a digestible and easy-to-understand manner. Beyond that, he is one of the premier commentators in the game, never stumbling over his words and always able to cleanly express the emotions and strategy at play, even in the most stressful of moments. My decks let my teammates down, and I use the lost games to rethink my strategy going into the main event the next day. The main event goes a little bit better, but at this point, it is beginning to feel as though my life as a Netrunner tournament grinder is coming to a close. A new wave of players has entered the game, folks with more time and energy to devote to the game than I have at this point. In some ways, they remind me of myself and the rest of Anti in 2017, coming together to outthink their competition and develop the secret tech of the future.

Late at night in Toronto, I survey the city and ponder my future in this community. I think back to my KoS teammates and how they have transitioned from tournament players into voices in the community. I was able to do a bit commentary during the 2022 competitive season, helping to commentate games during American Continentals and Intercontinentals, and was even asked to commentate a couple of games during the Startup event at Worlds despite having a genuine distaste for the format. I resolve myself to apply for a commentator slot at Worlds in the future.

Smash cut to 2024. I have applied for and was accepted as a commentator at Worlds 2024 in one of my favorite American cities, San Francisco. While I won’t be competing in the main event, I will be competing in King of Servers yet again. My teammates are the aforementioned hosts of Slumscast, neuropantser and Orbital Tangent. I am playing a Jeitinho Sable deck that I have been grinding in the newly reformed Madison meta. In round 2, I manage to get the better of my old teammate Andrej by completing the Jeitinho win against his Built to Last deck. After the “good game” fistbump, I roll up the sleeve of my hoodie to reveal my combat knife tattoo and say just three words: “for the culture.”

This year, I manage to do the carrying, playing my goofy little Jeitinho deck to a 4-1 record and Combo Kill NEH (a deck I describe as “mainlining adrenaline”) to a 3-2 record for a final tally of 7-3, a record that I could never have predicted. While the team as a whole is far from even the top half mark, I go to bed thrilled with my record, at peace with the idea that my sweaty, hypercompetitive days are fully in the rearview.

On Saturday morning, I roll out of my hotel bed, sleep-deprived as ever. I throw on my teal blue shirt provided to me as a member of NSG staff for the event, emblazoned with my handle that has defined me over the last ten years. A few hours later, I am wearing a headset in a dark room, my face and upper body illuminated by the glow of a computer monitor and a professional lighting rig. My friends and family, who have promised to watch the stream despite barely ever having looked at a Netrunner card, resolve to watch, if only just to hear my voice. The folks running the stream team, Cado and my Anti teammate Jason “wyrm” Deng, count us down as we go live for the first time of the weekend. “Five, four, three, two,” I hear them count. They point, we go live. Another dream realized.

When I arrive home late at night on Monday, my girlfriend embraces me and our two cats pretend I never left. That week, I will go back to work at my corporate job as Andrew, just another bald, bearded white guy from the Midwest. But the memories remain, and for one shining, glorious weekend, I was cranked, net celebrity.

A few shoutouts:

To everyone who has ever been in Anti: You made me feel like the tournament threat I always looked up to and wanted to be. This includes Aaron Andries, spags, Raja, Ran, CTZ, Jesse, Dien, Eric C, Niles, Jason, Sam Suied, Dan D, Lucas, Kenny, Jon D, Andre, and the immortal Zach Cavis.

To my commentary partners: Pants, Orbs, Juniper, Andrej, and Eric. Thank you for allowing me to share a mic with you and talk about the thing that I love most. I hope that I was an enjoyable commentary partner. Andrej, let’s make sure we cast together next year :D

To NSG for allowing me to commentate: I have been watching Worlds streams and video content since 2014, and since that time I have always dreamed of hearing my voice on top of one of these games, guiding an audience through the ins and outs of the highest-level of play. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would happen, but you saw something in me and allowed me to achieve this dream. Thank you.

To my Madison meta: Thank you for simply existing. When the meta in Madison dried up in 2018, I was lost. Thanks to all of you, I finally feel found. This includes Avi, Oliver, Hunter, Ben, Maparali, Crowe, Paul, Carlos, and everyone who has ever let me poorly explain Netrunner to them. If you’d care to join us, please let me know!

And finally, to my loving girlfriend Abby: Thank you for supporting me in this dumb little hobby and allowing me to yap on and on about how much I love this game. You are the greatest thing in my life and there are no words in any language that could accurately capture how much I love you.

Always be running.

Free Museum.

By the way, if you're going to sleeve this deck up, I would suggest the following changes:

-2 Window of Opportunity

-1 Slipstream

-1 Labor Rights

+1 Reclaim (this card is cracked in Knives and people don't even know)

+1 Malandragem

+1 Dirty Laundry

+1 Blueberry!™ Diesel