Brief Netrunner Tournament Report from 5/5/16

On May 5th, I played in a Netrunner tournament at Cardboard Gaming in Odenton. We were playing with the Spring Kit (whichever one had the full-art Leela Patel card as a prize), which I had already won a tournament for a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to go for something different.

For the Runner, I tried to build a Professor deck. I had hoped to take advantage of all the new tools available for Shaper, and tried to build around Brahman and the Cerberus icebreakers, thinking I could use Brahman to reset them at will, and then use a card like John Masanori to redraw them, and maybe Savor-Faire to replay them as needed. Of course, a strategy like this is expensive, but I hoped that running every type of economy possible would help make it doable.

On the Corp side, I attempted to run Palana Foods: Sustainable Growth. The goal here was to build a lot of servers, force the Runner to draw a lot of cards, get a SanSan out, and try to fast advance agendas. Occasionally, I would try to sneak out a Chronos Project and score it after the Runner had filled up his heap.

The tournament ended up having 12 players, I think. Pretty good turnout.

Round one, I played against Joey, who I had beaten in the finals of the last tournament. He swore to get his revenge, and... well, I let him. He was using Harmony Medtech as his Corp, and I really could get nothing going (I did not draw any icebreakers, or any cards to go get icebreakers the entire game), and he was able to win easily (6-0, I think). We switched, and I took my Corp deck against Ken "Express" Tenma. He installed Desperado early, and ran ever server I installed. He quickly found the key cards I needed to leave out there, trashed them, and hit me with three account siphons, ensuring he had money. I believe I managed to get an agenda scored, but he easily took the rest of them. I end round one 0-2.

Round two, I played Rob, who is the person I have played Netrunner against the most (and it's not even close). I started playing as Corp against his Hayley deck (Hayley is his favorite Runner, so I have seen many different styles of Hayley deck from him). I keep him drawing a lot of cards; I set up from time to time, scoring one or two agendas in spurts until he gets in to trash my SanSans. I manage to score a Chronos Project mid-game, hurting his potential use of Levy to maintain any sort of momentum, and end up taking the game from him.

We switch sides, and I play Professor against his Foundry deck. Once again, I do not draw icebreakers I need, and he takes the game easily. Just could not get the Professor going! I am down to 1-3 after two rounds.

As an aside- in all three rounds of this tournament, I was the first player done- so at this point Rob and I played another game using my Professor deck, he could not draw ice he needed, and I scored a bunch of agendas off of R&D. So I did manage a win, but in the least skilled way possible.

Round three, I am matched against Cas, who was flush from winning his FIRST EVER game of Netrunner (go Cas! Whooo!). I start with the Professor, and he ran Argus Security. Here, I actually get things up and running- I get two dogs out along with Brahman, and get through his servers (eventually making decent R&D runs) and take the win.

Switching, I face off against his Gabe deck. He immediately Account Siphons me turn one. Then again on Turn 2. Then manages to score a couple points of agendas from my hand, and then I start getting set up, starting to score a few agendas of my own. I am down 6-4 when time is finally called, so I get a modified loss. I was actually starting to get in good position, but Cas was doing a good job keeping me from getting too much momentum. It could have gone either way, but really, any small misstep would have cost me the game at this point, so taking that loss was not too hard a pill to swallow.

I ended the tournament 2-4, which is perfectly fine, given that I was not bringing my top stuff. Unfortunately, I do not recall who won. I am confident I will never bother playing the Professor again (I tried him quite a bit when he originally came out as well). Just too little consistency to be fun. Other than that, it was a good time, and I look forward to the next tournament.