Giant Deck Tournament: April 26th

Sanjay · April 13, 2020, 9:56pm

Let me tell you about the GIANT DECK format. Here are the deck construction rules:

Decks must be standard-legal with ONE IMPORTANT EXCEPTION (see point 4)
Your deck must have as many cards as possible for your ID.
2a. For Corps, this means playing all legal in-faction and neutral agendas, and then playing enough cards that your deck is legal for that agenda point total. Don’t get too attached to the other cards on the Corp restricted list, because your restricted card is either Obokata Protocol or Global Food Initiative.
2b. For runners, this means saying yes to every in-faction card, yes to every influence-free neutral card, and restricting yourself to 1-influence cards so you can get in as many cards as possible.
Adam, Sunny, and Apex are all banned for being too dang consistent.
The ONE IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: The Professor is legal in this format.

Here are some examples of some legal lists:

I can sincerely say that not only this format quite silly, it is also can be fun, exciting, and skill-testing. It’s a joy to try and make the most out of

On Sunday, April 26th, starting at 11 AM Eastern Standard Time, I am hosting a giant deck tournament, hosted online, on Jinteki.net, with co-ordination on Discord. We will play 4 rounds of swiss with no cut.

You can register ahead of time here or show up on the day of and contact me.

I hope to see you there!

Sanjay · April 13, 2020, 10:00pm

Some strategy advice and spirit of the format discussion

The biggest problem both corps and runners face is, unsurprisingly, inconsistency. For corps, that means not necessarily having the ice you want, or the agenda flow you want, and for runners, that means being at risk of not having the tools you need when you want them. For both decks, it means probably being pretty poor.

Some IDs are better at mitigating this inconsistency than others. You are definitely in keeping with the spirit of this event if you try and figure out how your ID choice can help you out.

You are also in keeping with the spirit of the event if you say “to heck with that” and just fully embracing inconsistency and playing whatever.

Exile · April 14, 2020, 3:38pm

This is a splendidly ridiculous idea and I hope jnet won’t crash for you.

Are you interested in having someone stream at least a part of it for you?

theoneakaneo · April 14, 2020, 5:59pm

interested
but the deck-building seems a big hurdle

anyone with hints on how to get all the required in-faction & neutral cards relatively easily in netrunnerdb decks?

Sanjay · April 14, 2020, 6:24pm

The easiest way for runner:

Select your faction and neutral, and select all card types. They say yes to everything, except the few neutral cards that cost influence. Once you are done with that, choose how you are spending your influence. (Then, if you are The Professor, select the other factions and add one of each program you don’t have already).

The easiest way for corp:

Select your faction and neutral, and select agendas. Say yes to everything (unless you are Jinteki in which case you need to choose between GFI and Obokata). Then keep adding cards until your deck reads as legal (HB is a measly 439, Jinteki wants 459, NBN wants 474 cards, Weyland wants 484 cards). I would advise doing a first pass just saying yes to every card you think is vaguely good, and modify from there.

Sanjay · April 14, 2020, 7:19pm

Definitely interested!

Best way to go about that is just reach out to streamers, eh?

5N00P1 · April 15, 2020, 8:40am

Wow, this is … unbelievable huge!
495 cards Tenma

victorygames · April 15, 2020, 2:51pm

so, every deck of each faction is basically the same besides the fifteen or so one influence cards, and I would argue that there are fifteen or so one influence cards that are the best ones to choose for every runner and every corp…how fun is that going to be actually? Oh and any ID that lets you search your deck for any reason should also probably be banned, and Maxx seems broken as well

edit: actually, the more I think about it, shaper is probably the best runner faction period because of the deck search and the heap recursion and hb is probably the best corp for all the in faction card draw and the archive recursion

Exile · April 15, 2020, 4:08pm

Yeah, sounds like it!

Sanjay · April 15, 2020, 5:12pm

In my experience, the games have been pretty fun. Your mileage may vary!

I think you are right that the deckbuilding aspect this is a little less rewarding as the decks do tend to play pretty similarly within faction. That said, the decks don’t actually play in any one consistent way.

5N00P1 · April 16, 2020, 10:47am

Yeah, it seems more like a fun format!

Maybe you should make deck building possible, in a way like you may remove 50 cards? Not sure, but I have seen someone playing a 154 cards Maxx deck and this seemed like a physical limit, so JNet is a good choice for that.

scd · April 23, 2020, 2:41pm

I’m considering this but I’m a little confused. “As many cards as possible” is a bit confusing – Do you have to play 3x of each possible card? Or just play every legal card in your faction?

theoneakaneo · April 23, 2020, 4:40pm

that step-by-step helped

Sanjay · April 26, 2020, 10:16am

Sorry for the slow reply… 3x of each possible card (or sometimes even 6x)

Sanjay · April 26, 2020, 11:33am

Tournament Guidelines

It’s the day of the tournament! We’ll be starting at 11 AM EDT, which is about 4 hours from when this post goes live.

Register here before 11 AM: https://forms.gle/xXX37MpZh14k1CAC8
Join us on Discord by 11 AM for player check-in. Discord link: Discord
I’m hoping to get the tournament underway by 11:10.

If you are having any trouble, you can also reach out to me on stimhack slack, where my handle is “sanjay”.

Tournament format

We will be playing 4 rounds of swiss with no cut. Pairings will be posted here: Cobra

Report results here:

The player on the left side of the pairings should make the game and play corp first.

Despite the larger decks, we will be using the standard tournament timing structure. This means 65 minute rounds, and after time the active player finishes their turn, and the other player gets one turn. Time being called is measured by when a player notices our timer bot on discord expiring, or someone informing you that time is called, whichever comes first.

Deck legality

One of the complications for this tournament is that we don’t have a deck legality checker. So some of you might start the tournament with an illegal deck. With this in mind, we will be diverting slightly from normal tournament rules:

Make an effort to make sure yourself that your deck is legal. If you are unsure, please ask for help. Scrolling up in this thread, this post has some additional guidance.
If you notice your deck is illegal in the first few turns when your game starts, fix it and restart the game.
If you realize your deck is illegal mid-game, you will be issued a warning (this is different from most tournaments, where you would be issued a game loss). Please play the game out normally and fix your deck before your next game.
The second warning for the same deck and issue will result in a game loss.
If you notice your deck is illegal after the tournament, hey it happens. I once flatlined my friend with a surprise Marcus Batty out of Custom Biotics and didn’t realize until the next day.

Reporting Jnet bugs

We will be playing with cards that don’t get a lot of play! If you notice some cards aren’t working the way they are supposed to, jnet devs would appreciate you letting them know about it. If you can, reporting bugs here would be appreciated. It may seem like you are just giving them more work, but apparently they really do want to hear about it!

Jnet bugging out

If a game glitches out midgame, such that it is irrecoverable, restart the game. If both players are in agreement that the game was going to have a specific outcome, feel free to skip this and report the game as that outcome.

Spectators

I think jnet is mostly handling these giant decks pretty well, but I don’t want to overload it. With that in mind, please try and avoid jumping into any game that has more than 3 spectators already.

We will have at least two people streaming:

The excellent Vesper will be streaming the tournament: Twitch

The incomparable ctz will be streaming his games: Twitch

The amiable Iz will also be streaming their games! Twitch

You are encouraged to watch the tournament there, rather than on jnet.

Judging

I intend to TO and play this tournament. If you have a judge issue, please contact me at my table and we will resolve things on discord.

Users and great people internet and analyzechris have additionally volunteered to handle overflow judge calls.

Dropping and late entry

I’m hoping this tournament is pretty laid back. With that in mind, if you aren’t having a good time, or need to leave for some reason, it is quite fine if you drop (that’s true for any tournament, really, but this time you can do it with my blessing). I love this format, but you might discover it really isn’t for you!

Additionally, if you want to enter the tournament late, you can! You will receive no wins for the rounds you don’t play, but if you just want to get some games in, please join us.

Voice chat

Discord can enable voice chat with your opponent. You are by no means required to use this feature, but it can be fun and helpful to talk out weird card interactions.