Lemon & Herb PD - 4th at London CO - With PD Meta-analysis

On Sunday, 10th December, I went to my first Netrunner tournament. I have been playing the game with a small online meta since some time during the amorphous blob which was COVID, and went to my first in-person Netrunner meetup around September. Since that time, this game has absorbed so many more of my waking moments than it probably should have or that I care to count. I love this game, I love the people that play it, I love the weird quirks of this community, and I love the way other people love Netrunner.

I spent at least a whole week gently panicking about what decks to bring. As much as I don't like to admit it, being good at Netrunner or at least feeling like I am has become really quite important to me. I especially didn't want to make a fool of myself by getting something wrong or not knowing how my deck works. Yes, I know this an unjustified fear, but I still had it. So I went with PD and Lat. I have played a lot of PD and I get it, and I am a diehard Shaper (#SMC or bust). 4th out of 12 didn't seem like a great result to me. But after assurances that the tournament was absolutely stacked, and winning the highly coveted London Bell, I am still pretty over the moon with my performance.

Especially PD, and to an extent Deep Dive Lat, feel reasonably "solved" right now. The core ~35 are pretty consistent across most decks, with some minor incremental changes. My lists didn't do anything groundbreaking, and they didn't drastically over perform. This list is accidentally card for card identical to MotionBlur's PD list which they also took to this CO and came 3rd. I tested many small changes but settled on the original list as my favourite. The reason I decided to do this write-up though is that I did lots and lots of testing and thinking, so I feel well positioned to present the current "cannon" of PD decks and discuss some of the differences between popular decks and when you might want to play the different lists.

-- Bridgeman's EMEA PD

IN THAT LIST: 1x Magnet, 1x M.I.C --- IN THIS LIST: 1x Drafter, 1x Brân 1.0

Already we see how far we have come... This write-up is going to focus on what I call "Bridgeman PD" and its lineage. This is characterised most strongly by its agenda suite of Ikawah Projects and Offworld Offices, and a gameplan focused on rushing agendas out behind SkunkVoid. Brân and Gatekeeper are your key ice and should be installed carefully. In Bridgeman we trust.

-- Longi's Worlds PD

IN THAT LIST: 1x Magnet --- IN THIS LIST: 1x Brân 1.0

Longi notes here that Drafter is an extremely good piece of ICE in the current meta, with a series of inconvenient break points on popular breakers. Drafter does a great job protecting centrals if you don't want to dedicate a limited draw of end-the-run ICE on to them. Drafter is also the closest thing this deck really has to skateboard tricks, sometimes allowing you to prevent a game ending R&D run by installing a defensive upgrade on that server before success. In Drafter we trust.

-- Cahuita's Worlds PD

IN THAT LIST: 2x Border Control, 1x Spin Doctor, 1x Biotic Labor, 1x Mavirus, 2x Ablative Barrier, 1x M.I.C --- IN THIS LIST: 1x Gatekeeper, 2x Hagen, 1x Drafter, 1x Brân 1.0, 1x Anoetic Void, 2x Your Digital Life

Cahuita describes this as "no fancy stuff" but we can see it is distinctly different to Bridgeman PD to represent its own subspecies. The ICE suite is greatly diversified, pulling in Border Controls for 6 inf which is freed up by dropping an Anoetic Void and the YDLs. This deck, to me, feels quite a lot poorer than Bridgeman PD. Ideally we want to be sitting on enough credits to threaten almost any face down being a Bran at any point and so keeping a healthy credit total is important. You may think that the ICE suite is a bit cheaper so you save money (as I did before I did the maths), but the total rez cost here is 51 vs the 53 of the Bridgeman list. Technically this number varies a little as Border Control can refund itself, but the difference isn't drastic. Biotic Labor as a conceit to runners that can get into our remote is reasonable though, and makes the Project Vitruvius copies feel more valuable. In Money we trust.

-- NetDad's YODEL RIOT

KEY CARDS IN THAT LIST: 1x Too Big to Fail, 3x Midnight-3 Arcology, 2x Big Deal, 3x M.I.C --- KEY CARDS IN THIS LIST: 3x Brân 1.0, 2x Anoetic Void, 2x Project Vitruvius, 1x Offworld Office

List above non-exhaustive. Now we are talking, if the Cahuita list was a different subspecies, then I think we have just identified silicon-based life. We have a much slimmer ICE suite which is meaningfully cheaper to rez and is much less porous before the runner is rigged up. We have loads of money in the form of a full suite of Your Digital Life and the new gameplan of Midnight-3 Arcology to support. This list swaps some of the mid-game relevance of the Bridgeman ICE suite for raw speed. We don't even have time for Anoetic Void here, just slam agendas, score them, gain a bunch of credits, score more, and then wrap things up with a Big Deal'ed Ikawah Project. This is pedal to the metal rush gameplay and is heaps of fun, but I think can struggle with bad draws sometimes or the runner finding a relevant breaker quickly. In Yodel we trust.

-- RotomAppliance's UK Nats PD

IN THAT LIST: 2x Border Control, 1x Spin Doctor, 2x Regolith Mining License, 1x Mavirus, 2x Architect Deployment Test, 1x M.I.C, 2x Regolith Mining License, 1x Mavirus --- IN THIS LIST: 2x Hagen, 1x Brân 1.0, 1x Anoetic Void, 2x Your Digital Life, 2x Project Vitruvius, 1x Greasing the Palm

And for our final entry we have this lovely list, in the Cahuita genus (I am sorry if I get any of the orderings wrong here, I am not implying that any particular author first came up with a deck list or owns the idea). This list sees the economy issues I mentioned and raises with Regolith Mining License and Architect Deployment Test. Extra money, triggers for Tranquility Home Grid, free ice rezzing, control R&D to keep nasty runners in check. I personally think it's a much more coherent list than Cahuita's version, but loses the Biotic plan which hurts a little. I personally also found that the Regoliths ate up a lot of time and I frequently over-installed them with credits left, but maybe I'm just bad. In ADT we trust.

-- MotionBlur's PD list

Just kidding, one more. I settled on Motion Blur's list for a couple of reasons. I think staying on 2x Anoetic Void and 2x Manegarm Skunkworks really helps your draw consistency and your speed in getting the first agenda out there. I think Your Digital Life is an excellent economy card in this ID and a few more Hedge Funds does wonders for keeping the credit pool just healthy enough. I think Bran is still a nightmare to deal with. I think Greasing the Palm is low-key crazy efficient in a deck on Tranquility Home Grid. And I also just think it's neat.

-- Final Thoughts At this point I would include a tournament report, but I don't think anyone cares about my reasonably good performance at the CO, or how I should have won the whole thing if I just remembered to do my Steve trigger before I accessed. I think this absolute monolith of however many words is enough. Thanks for reading if you did, I hope some of my analysis was valid, and one day I hope to build decks that are as good as these.

P.S. my Lat deck was N00dleSoup's version of RIDE or DI(v)E with an Overclock swapped for the 3rd Stoneship Chart Room.