My overall record wasn’t terrible but not great either. I expected a bunch of Whizzard, Kate, RP & Butchershop, so I went with Whizzard/NEH. I think Kate/RP??? would have been a better call. Corp is in a tough spot atm IMHO.
L4J Whizzard:
http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/22686/career-fair-whizzard
Tried Progenitor but didn’t like it, was nearly blank most of the time. 2x Plascrete because I would rather Butchershop die in a fire instead of me.
Shutdown NEH:
http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/22687/shutdown-neh
Expecting Clot Kate & Whizzard, this was the best idea I had but I wasn’t super happy about it. I couldn’t get HB in a place where I wanted it, Blue Sun seemed tough to play and lacklustre in the Anarch matchups, IG seemed sketchy and my psi skills hadn’t been tuned enough for a day of RP. I thought the Kate matchup would be rough but if your plan is to get lucky, NBN is your corp.
Qualifier #1, Edinburgh Blue Sun: I’d tested Blue Sun a fair amount so I knew this kind of game from the other side. Ate a Shattered Remains, narrowly dodged a lethal Punitive.
Qualifier #2, Ken Tenma: new player, he didn’t really have a chance in this one.
On to Regionals! No names, because I have nothing resembling a memory for people and I didn’t make notes. I should have the rough idea right but apologies for errors in details.
Round 1: He ended up making top 8.
Whizzard L4J: mirror matchup, rushed Astro behind Lotus IIRC, quick game.
Shutdown NEH: He had Blacklist + PAD instead of Cyberdex + Marked, otherwise same as me. Again, he had t1 Astro behind Enigma, I had Corroder instead of Yog and I never recovered. #anarchproblems
0-0-1
Round 2:
Late-game Andy: T1 Supplier into Underworld Contacts told me I needed to score while the scoring was good and did so.
RP: 2/6 psi games was enough. Very long and hard-fought game. The key play was him not using a Nisei counter on a Knifed for Heimdall 1.0 on R&D.
1-0-1
Round 3: I think if I win 1 more game then he makes top 8, as it was he was 9th.
Reg-Ass MaxX: solid piloting on his part. This game came down to 2 things: (1) Turntable scoring NAPD the turn after my Astro. (2) Late-game, I shut down NRE 3 times but it wasn’t enough and his post-Levy hand had the 4th NRE to close it out. I have no idea how he was managing memory in the glacier matchups but the Turntable was clutch against me, pretty sure I win without him having it.
Blue Sun Scorch: hard-fought but I defused the Oversights before his econ got out of hand. Housekeeping did quite a bit of work. IIRC time is called with me on 6 points and I pull Government Takeover off R&D for the win.
1-0-2
Round 4: He ended up in top 8.
Valencia: she got a t1 Desperado and all 3 Blackmails very early. I could have played this better for sure but I don’t think it would have made any difference.
RP: I should have won this one but played like a total muppet, failing to trash enough asset econ. 100% pilot error, mea culpa.
1-1-2
Round 5:
Bootcamp Blue Sun: Adonis staring at me all game behind a Lotus Field was frustrating. Both NRE and the Atman were in the last 10 cards of my deck. After finally getting the NRE, using a Plascrete to shield the card I needed, the key play: his remote is Curtain, Lotus, Adonis. I run Curtain, he hard-rezzes to put him at like 2 credits, I bounce and come back in with Knifed. He didn’t recover. Very long game.
Noise: I rush Astro behind Enigma and the whole game is just a race. I draw 2 ice all game and they both die to Parasite in short order. Time is called, I score a Beale with the Astro token and it’s a timed draw at 5 points each.
So overall including the qualifier, Whizzard went 4-2, one of which should have been a win if I played better. NEH went 3-2-1. Shutdowns didn’t really do a lot in the end because I didn’t play any Clot Kate and only 1 Whizzard.
The top 8 games were interesting, especially including an Andy with NRE, 2x Medium & Unregistered S&W '35! Kody dragged me in for some incoherent babbling in the background of the Twitch stream. The Twitch archive will still be up for a while at Twitch but I’m not sure for how long. I expect there’ll be matches up on Joe’s Youtube channel at some point as well: https://www.youtube.com/user/CascadeCollective
I’m not a consistent enough player to win tournaments at the moment, but I am good enough to crush some dreams and occasionally make top 8s. I managed to get sick right before the tournament which didn’t help a whole ton, but I don’t think I can really blame that. You learn from your mistakes and move on.
Props to the tournament organizers: Joe Held, Kody Christoffer, Jacob Morris and Patrick Day! It all went very smoothly. Also to my opponents, we had some great games this weekend!