Don’t be so harsh! It’s not that bad. Sure, he won’t get the world champs title but unconventional decks are still fun and GOOD. Not everyone wants to be that yet another PPVP Kate and a diversity in meta is good.
However, I do think that you should show him some online decks. I hate being the same as everyone else, yet I still netdeck. He doesn’t need to take the most popular decks, he can take some less popular. Also, if he likes Crim, he should maybe play Cerberus’ Leela? I don’t like Criminal, yet I found her really fun. And netdecking isn’t all about just copying the deck. You adjust it based on your own experience and play style. Having said that, I still know that feeling when you’ve got soo many decks to choose from and to try out but have too little time and everything seems to be letting you down.
Let him take it to regionals and then if he doesn’t make the cut, convince him to stick around and watch elims. That’s when the light bulb went off for me. When I watched the best pilots running the best decks head to head (RP, NEH, Kate, Whizzard, Val) I decided that while deck building is fun, that’s wasted time I could be spending learning to pilot the top decks instead. It all comes down to which is the stronger emotion, pride or competitiveness.
This is also huge. It’s way more fun to be playing against @zeromus’s IG, @webster’s Andy, @aandries’s Weyland, etc than watching the games from the sidelines.
Tell him to netdeck not looking for a deck, but to understand a deck. You don’t beat a meta by cloistering yourself from it - play all the common decks, to the point that you’re comfortable, and then go ham on brewing.
On the main topic, I have a bit of a different take. I built my game endurance in the best dumb way possible. A few years ago, the board game club I was part off was having trouble fitting longer games into our weeknight time slot, especially because we had to leave the room we were using by 10 pm. So we decided to meet on some Saturdays at the deli section of a local supermarket.
Some Saturdays turned into every Saturday (for me at least) and “to play a long game” turned into a board game binge. We’d start at noon, and play until it was no longer Saturday. Two rounds of Battlestar Galactica and a round of Power Grid would not be far from the norm.
This went on for over a year (with some big breaks in there, because this was a school club).
This was all before I got into tournament netrunner - where I’ve never had tournament endurance problems.
Some observations -
You can build this sort of endurance up, over time. Like physical endurance, a regular workout is preferable.
The exact training tool doesn’t have to be Netrunner - it just has to exercise most of the same mental muscles.
Variety is the spice of life! Don’t stick to one thing if your budget allows (A group of buddies with varied collections is always awesome).
If you want to be reliable, overshoot. If you practice 3 hours consistently, then you will get tired at the 2:45 mark regularly.
Following from the last, you can’t use weeknights alone to build up enough for a big tournament. There simply isn’t enough time.
Get sleep before and after! You want to prep for what mental and physical state you will be in at a tournament - and you aren’t cutting sleep the night before that, hopefully.
Chain his ass in the basement and only allow him access to like two good decks and force him to choose. Confiscate all the rest of his runner cards. It’s for his own good.
If that doesn’t work, you may need to clone him. You have a spare cardboard box laying around, right?
Make sure you position it so the open bit is down, toward the floor. Also ensure you write the appropriate name on the box, or else you may become transmogrified.
