The Greedmonger (3rd @ OTG)

Okay so a friend wanted me to elaborate on my decklists more so here it goes. Let's take this back to where it started. [edit-be ye forewarned, this writeup turned into my netrunner life story somehow, skip all the way to the dotted line for the card choices and tournament recap if you like. I get into what happened in Worlds 2021 too before the line- all my future decklists will be shorter, I promise, I'm just making up for lost time]

The year: 2021

The player: Me

Activity: Playing Jank

Historically, I have been a very janky deck-builder and player. I started playing Netrunner in 2017 in a Netrunner desert, learning the ropes irl with my friend MulganDragon until he lost interest in the game the following year. Me, though? I was hooked. For good. I took my games to Jinteki.net by myself, where I played tons and tons of horrible decks, trying to make things like Laramy Fisk: Savvy Investor, Eden Shard mill, and Theophilius Bagbiter 100 card deck win. Playing on Jinteki.net really has been my escape over the years, and at times I've gotten addicted. There is a distinct possibility that 2018/2019 me was the most netrunner-addicted person to ever walk this earth. I literally couldn't go to sleep some days because another janky deck idea came to my mind and I couldn't stop thinking about it. All this time, I owned a collection (MulganDragon's he gave to me after he quit), but in person play or tournaments just weren't an option for me: in my hometown in Virginia the meta was dead and at my college I had to take an hour-long bus ride to the city and then ask a stranger to drive me 30 more miles if I wanted to play at a game store.

By 2021, I was less addicted, but still loved playing jank on jnet. However, I was starting to have an obsession with making my jank competitive. I had played in a couple online tournaments, bringing MulganDragon out of his netrunner dormancy to test with me, but always finishing near the bottom of the rankings (unsurprising when playing Laramy Fisk: Savvy Investor). The second online Worlds was approaching, and this time my schedule was more free. I decided to give it go. The runner decks I'd been playing lately were Divide and Conquer Sunny and an Az deck similar to this list except with only femme fatales as breakers, with the idea of recurring them a lot with simulchip. Remembering the good times I had previously testing with my friend, I asked MulganDragon if he would help me prepare for Worlds 2021. He agreed. He played some with me, and said the Femme Fatale idea was stupid but the decks engine (Tech Trader/Technical Writer, Masterwork (v37), Reaver, Prognostic Q-Loop) was actually kind of bonkers. I practiced Az against him piloting some of the corp decks the Process podcast said were good and won more games than I lost. Satisfied, I entered the event- I had some delusions of winning the thing, of course, but knowing how I'd done in all my previous online tournaments I tried to keep myself grounded.

I started the tournament off with a couple of corp splits. Az lacked the speed to stop Asa Group: Security Through Vigilance from scoring out before I could get fully-operational (the corp had no trouble drawing it though) and I thought I had stabilized against Pat from the Metropole Grid on Jinteki Grinder (he is secretly an evil man) using The Back, but he gave me an "oh, I guess I'll install this now" in voice chat, plopping something in his remote, a move which completely disarmed me. I didn't run because he was at 5 points and all the 2/3 agendas had been scored or stolen, but he proceeded to slap me in the face by playing a Biotic Labor and advancing out a Nisei for the win. Hopes for the rest of the tournament were low. But then I started playing against NBN. It turns out, once you can start removing tags with Flip Switch while gaining credits things really start getting spicy, and Sports Hopper is great natural protection for the deck to have against a Neurospike kill plan. I won 4 games in a row, one against groenkaaf, who in hindsight had a horrible CTM draw but regardless winning against a really good player was cool. On the verge of the top 16 tiebreakers, DoubleK and I agreed to a 241. Unfortunately, he way playing another Asa, and while Flip Switch gave me good protection against his surprise kill plan, he was still playing an Asa deck with good HB ice. I lost my Masterwork (v37) to Saisentan net damage on an ill-advised run, and from then on it became too difficult to build up money and find the necessary breaker to contest what ended up being a 3 Gatekeeper remote before he scored the winning agenda.

My run at worlds was over. It did not end without leaving something behind. Halfway through my game against groenkaaf, the nisei team started streaming it. Curious and excited at what the commentators and twitch chatters would say, I watched the Nisei VOD back after worlds. What I had thought had been a really clean game by me looked like what it was, a good draw vs. a very bad draw and a game that I dragged out forever by not trashing key cards. I read the twitch chatters roast my gameplay and my deck. I'm a sensitive person, so this was hard to take, but eventually, I was able to see it more objectively and take the criticisms at face value. And there were also people in the chat who really liked my deck. Turns out, Andrej from the Metropole Grid was one of these people. A few weeks later, he played my deck on stream, and watching him play it was a crazy moment for me, so much fun. I really love that he loved it. He built his own great deck, Palantir (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/0e6f3a49-595f-4201-9fd7-a61100b7472d/the-palantir-1st-undefeated-silver-goblin-store-champs), with a bit less "greed" (huge built up Technical Writers) and more early game action to counter Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design, and started winning store champs with it. I started feeling really sad about the upcoming rotation- there was clearly something to Tech Trader Az, but it was going to rotate away before I had the chance to do anything with it.

Unless I traveled to OTG, that is. Otherwise known as Off the Grid, otherwise known as the Midwest Championship, otherwise known as US Nationals (well, this year at least). The tournament happening before new cards released and old ones rotated was a turn-off for a lot of people, it sounds like, but for me it was a positive. Once I learned my work schedule this summer, it became clear that I could fit in a weekend trip to Minnesota without feeling really bad about it. I decided to take the jump.

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This deck is not Palantir. It is the deck I brought to worlds, except more tuned and prepared to beat HB decks that go fast. It is the Greedmonger.

The core engine is the same as in Palantir (Andrej does a great job of explaining this engine in his write-up), except with a third Prognostic Q-Loop and three Technical Writer. I think these cards play off each other really well in a deck full of Hardware and Programs. With Q-Loop, if you can fire it off consistently, you are digging yourself 1 card, or 2 cards deeper through your deck every turn without spending any clicks, letting you approach the "doom state" (have all three Tech Trader installed, break ice repeatedly for nothing with Boomerang) asap, and Tech Writer insures that you will have the funds to contest remotes at the end of all this setting up. I thought Reaver was good enough to be worth the 4 influence- if thought through more, this might not hold up, but I didn't want to make drastic changes in deck composition to a deck that was serving me so well.

The deck's win condition is Spy Camera + Mad Dash. You have to be careful with so many Spin Doctors around, ideally running possible spins before you start popping cams and running R&D. If you are losing the game of spin doctor whackamole, there is also a line where you pop camera and if you see agendas just let the corp to draw them- they don't know what you saw. Obviously, this lets them have a turn to protect their agendas, which is not ideal. Definitely avoid Mad-Dashing R&D while there is an unrezzed card in a naked remote.

As for what to do until you see the green lights light up on R&D? Lock the remote, run HQ with Docklands Pass, do anything to stop them from scoring out. Clot is really helpful towards this, and with a Self-modifying Code and two Simulchip you can find and keep clot on the board. For challenging remotes, you have Boomerang. Outside of that, Lucky Charm and Wari... exist. Both of these cards require a successful run on HQ to work for effects kind of like Inside Job and Political Operative except way jankier, but you must remember that these cards are ones you can install clicklessly from the top of your deck and put credits on Tech Writer, making them a lot better. With Wari, make your guesses educated by what you see on R&D with your spy cams and any other information you've gotten from central accesses, or if there is an ice subtype you really don't want to see, name that one. And yes, Wari is the preparation against HB I meant. It won me the only game I played against them, doubters, so suck it.

As for the orthodox breakers, Bukhgalter is a really good killer and while Revolver is nice and has a trash can, I didn't want my Simulchips to be taxed by another card- they are already putting in work to reinstall Fermenter, Bankroll, Abagnale, Self-modifying Code, and Clot. I used to have Makler, but its install cost is huge and it doesn't even break ice well. I think Tycoon is far better for the deck- sure, you're giving the corp money when you break, but this deck doesn't put on economic pressure well anyway, and you will have options to break barriers with Boomerang when you really want to keep the corp down. Lastly, Abagnale isn't a great decoder but the trash ability is good and 4 cost is much easier to install than 7 for Amina.

If they aren't threatening you that much, and we are already set up and see nothing with cams or don't have cams, clicking for credits is fine. The Back is a card you rarely want to see against most decks, but against Glacier it is useful and against Grinder it is crucial, because you have to dig through your deck so much just to get set up, leaving you soft to net damage.

I think that covers a lot of the bases- on to the games!

Round 1 against The King (Sportsmetal)| Close game. I started off strong with a Megaprix and a Vitruvius steal on a weakly-protected R&D, but he quickly pegged me back to a level score. He had assembled a three ice remote and had installed something into it, which if an agenda would bring him to 5 points, way too close for comfort considering he's playing 3/2s and Audacity. But this plan was no match for 419's favorite pet. For a long time, I had a Boomerang sitting on the bottom ice of the server, so that was no issue, I had a Bukhgalter installed, and I had accessed a Hagen from R&D the turn or two before, so I figured the outermost ice which had been installed since then was that. Click one, install Wari. Click two, run HQ. Prognostic Q-Loop reveals Tycoon from the top of my deck. Breaking the lone Drafter on HQ with my Bukhgalter, I trash Wari, name code gate, then expose the middle ice protecting the remote. It is a Magnet! I return it to HQ, install my Tycoon, run, and steal Offworld Office. I eventually find clot, which he powers through for his 5th point using Audacity, Biotic Labor, and Cyberdex Virus Suite, but my spy cam finds the winning agenda to close out the game.

Round 2 against Lukifer (Built to Last)| This deck is a horrible deck to play when under time pressure- there are so many triggers! I lost this game 3-2 on time- I think I probably had it if it had continued. The big mistake I made was not allowing myself enough clicks after I used spy cam to Mad Dash an agenda if I saw one, which would have brought the game to a tie.

Round 3 against ashleybergs| We 241'd and I rolled my corp.

Round 4 against Limes (Jemison)| Wow, I played against a lot of fast advance. I got to a really fast start, getting a smc down on turn 1 to stop fast advance shenanigans, but on a score Limes tutored with Malapert Data Vault for Ark Lockdown. I stumbled into a Virus suite, which left my clot vulnerable to getting locked down. After I lost the clot, I just started running manically for as many accesses as I could get, which ended up working out for me, finding me a Global Food Initiative that had been hiding in hand. Az takes me to top cut!

Top Cut Round 1 against Agasha (The Outfit)| Wow, I really played against a lotttt of fast advance. With the extra bad publicity provided by the Outfit, I got down to ABSURD shenanigans with Masterwork and Q-Loop, and clot-locked Agasha when time was called on the round with me up 6 points to 3.

I played corp for the rest of the top cut, so sadly I didn't get to see how I would do against sokka's grinder or rongydoge's gagarin.

And just like that, the tournament is over, and the deck is rotating. Losing Tech Trader, Spy Camera, and Sports Hopper is a lethal blow- some really weird cards (Cezve??) need to be released make a deck like this happen in standard again. I'm glad it carried me to my first top cut though! OTG was great, and I'm going to go to more in-person tournaments in the future, wallet be damned. Meeting actual people who play netrunner was so cool, and I want to meet more of you all in the future. Congrats to Sokka for winning! And lastly, bye Tech Trader, you have been a very good friend to me- I joked to my opponents after they cut my deck that they put all my Tech Traders on the bottom, but you always showed up on time ;)