Seattle Regionals Red Decks Top 8

Tournaments and Events
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On something of a lark I was convinced to take two red decks to the Seattle Regionals and see how it turned out.

We had a huge turnout of 78 players, and had several large out of town groups show up from Portland and Canada. I ended up third seed in swiss, and was in the Top 8 after elimination rounds. We had 6 rounds of Swiss leading into a top 16 double elimination bracket. By the time I left, I had played 17 games of Netrunner over 12.5 hours.

My corp deck went undefeated all day, but alas, poor Whizzard was just not quite up to the challenge.

The Lists:

#Corp

Jinteki: Replicating Perfection (Trace Amount)

Agenda (9)

Asset (10)

Upgrade (4)

Operation (7)

Barrier (5)

Code Gate (4)

Sentry (10)

15 influence spent (max 15)
21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Honor and Profit

This Replicating Perfection deck is just a slight modification of a list given to me by @mediohxcore and posted in his StimHack Glacier Article. It put up a dominating performance all day, went undefeated, and beat several players that later went on into the Top 8. Overall I was incredibly happy with it’s performance, and think that this deck is definitely top tier.

#Runner

Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead)

Event (19)

Hardware (5)

Resource (6)

Icebreaker (8)

Program (7)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Double Time

This janky list is similar to something that @asroybal, @Genestealers and I experimented with on Stream to good success. Unfortunately, it ran into serious consistency issues during my games. I had several games where I did not draw the Prepaids until they far too late to make a difference. Additionally, the greedy lack of Plascrete bit me in the ass twice against Weyland in games that would have been pretty easy victories otherwise.

Whizzard is definitely worse than Andromeda currently, but if I were to take Whizzard to another tournament I would change this list drastically (not the least of which is to add Plascrete). I think that the Retrieval Run plan while fun, is terrible in a tournament setting. By the time you get to elimination rounds, your deck is probably at least somewhat known, especially if you play against people who you had previously played against during the Swiss rounds. I would also hastily cut the Prepaids. Anarchs already have huge consistency issues with their inability to tutor the needed breakers, adding extra economic uncertainty was simply a bad idea.

While I was able to go 4 and 2 with Whizzard in the Swiss rounds, he struggled all day. I have certainly gotten the itch to play Whizzard out of my system for quite a while. :wink:

9 Likes
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I’ve been wanting to try RP as part of my long-running search for a Corp to get comfortable with for Nationals. I will definitely be trying this list out.

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It looks very simliar to a decklist that I’ve been working on for a while now.

I’ve been going more down the Deep Red/Knight/Overmind/Feme route rather than the fixed breakers (which I found just increased the inconsistency beyond what was bearable - and also you can run out of MU due to Morning Star). Retrival Run stays in for now for Feme and for surprise Parasite plays, but I agree that in a tournement where Archives gets ICE’d early it’s not so hot.

I’m not so convinced about losing the PrePaids so quickly. The alternative, the Anarch resource economy, is just as inconsistent if not more so (I hate Liberated Account with a passion).

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As someone that plays RP, I really like seeing this list. Mostly because my own uses a number of ambush assets (Shock and Shi.Kyu, specifically) to deter runs on HQ, R&D, and Archives (through Inazuma forcing successful runs into the Shocks). Yanking them to provide even more economy and Ice seems like an interesting choice, especially seeing it done this well. I think I might give something similar a shot, myself, and see how it holds up in comparison.

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Bitchin’. Love the RP build. I was running a lighter ICE variant, and then tried make take on this out last night.

Rock star quality.

1 Like
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One thing to consider with the 3 Komainus is the blank nature of the card if a runner has 0 cards. Since you aren’t running any damage cards the runner can just blow past this. You saw this to great effect in our top 8 game. :smile:

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Thanks to everyone who played this deck to success. I initially thought it was too slow for tournament performance, and initially, I thought it might not have what it needs to stand up competitively next to NBN in any case. My doubts have largely been shaken. I had an RP glacier deck I was playing before H&P, and as soon as the whole set was spoiled, I knew I was going to build with 3 Pup, Komainu, Tsurugi and tax the living shit out of people. I am not totally sure about Shadow over Wraparound or the 3rd TFP, but both seem like totally reasonable choices. One thing I wouldn’t do is cut Komainus. They are the most brutal early facecheck, and often people just have to look anyway because they want to go after your remotes quickly before your econ gets out of control. I am playing 1 Fetal to discourage and punish the 0-card run-throughers, but it isn’t actually necessary. Sure, the runner might be able to go through a couple of times a game for free, but it’s very rare that they want to do it much on a central (where you put them), and it’s actually pretty difficult to go down to 0 cards without just letting it hit you, especially when Health Clinics are online. Basically, running through it is a thing, but not enough of a thing that you want to cut them.

3 Likes
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And, I mean, since Hokusai, Shock, Snare, Shi.Kyu, and Fetal are all things one can reasonably expect to see in Jinteki, as long as enough people are running them, most folks’d probably prefer to not take the chance of flat-lining themselves by running through with nothing. With only a couple of cards, maybe, but even then, it’s risky.

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Oh, I wouldn’t suggest cutting them entirely, but going down to 2 would be a good idea IMHO.

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The most viable RP decks these days seem to all run 0 net damage assets or upgrades. It’s risky, but in a tournament situation where you are possibly playing the same player twice, it makes it less of a risk if you are reasonably assured of no Shocks, et al.

2 Likes
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Well, I’m clearly just behind the times, then. Fetal’s still a pretty big potential risk, though certainly less of one.

This also explains some of my struggles against RP in Seattle, I was assuming my deck was more standard than it turns out to have been, and was dealing with the meta incorrectly.

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Nice work!

RP Glacier is definitely top-tier these days. Anarchs need consistency something fierce; I think runners in general need a lot more tutoring than they have.

In an unrelated note, I’m finding most of the good corporate decks really aggravating to play against, sadly.

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I wish people would stop posting about how good RP is because it makes it more likely that I’ll have to play against it :frowning:

1 Like
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It’s a tough call. I went from a Shock/Fetal/Hokusai build to this, and prefer this. However, it may lose some elim viability, as noted. Maybe a hybrid is in order?

I used that extra INF on Roto.

1 Like
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I didn’t play you personally Sneaky, but I heard lots of grumbling about your Corp deck throughout the day :D. Great performance! Would have loved to tried my hand at taking down your RP deck in tournament play. BazookaJoe’s RP deck was also a pain in my side.

As far as time concerns, I was also worried about it @mediohxcore, but @SneakySly piloted this with 60 minute rounds during regionals.

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Grats on top 8! I’m very glad I didn’t play your RP, I couldn’t really imagine taking a single game off that thing. What a monster deck.

It was an insane tournament. I ended up coming in top 12 with London Andy / Astrobiotics. The day was kind of a blur, but I think it was your Whizzard that knocked me out of the last round @SneakySly. Overall my corp performed terribly in the top 16, losing me both games that eliminated me. That said, it did manage to get some lucky draws and take a round off of @bluebird503 in the final round of Swiss(who ended up placing 2nd?). Coming into the tournament, I honestly did not expect Astrobiotics to be as high variance as it ended up being for me. In retrospect, I would have played a safer taxing deck.

I agree that it’s all about Andy right now though. Especially as Corps get more powerful. I felt in Swiss that Andy and maybe Kate were the only decks that had the versatility and speed to keep up with the wide variety of top tier corps.

2 Likes
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I feel like The Professor has a pretty good set of tools as well (actually more than Kate does, when you look at how much stuff are one-offs in the popular builds), shame the deck is such a bitch to play. Been learning for months and the most progress I’ve made is that I now lose by 1 click instead of 1 turn :smiley:

3 Likes
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I feel like there is probably a Chaos Theory build that can compete- something that tries to set up an efficient set of breakers plus magnum opus for the late game, to compete with taxing decks, while using enough tricks and ways to cheat out breakers to put on early pressure against the rush and FA decks. Magnum opus and morning star both seem like very powerful tools in the current meta, and Chaos Theory should be well placed to take advantage of both of them. I’ll do some testing and see if it works out.

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Congrats on the finish.

I’m very surprised you played whizzard without siphons. tag me whizzard does has consistency issues but if you run hot you can flatten every corp deck in the field. HQ will be triple iced the 2nd time someone plays you but that opens up other doors. retrieval run is ok but using the corps own money to play femme or morning star to in turn siphon again or start the deep digs is better imo.

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The easiest change would probably be to swap NAPDs for Fetals. Sure Fetal is harder to score, but it (arguably) taxes more than NAPD and will certainly deter Runners from running through Komainus for free if they’ve already seen that you run multiple Fetals.

1 Like