Oh hi guys. It’s the end of the year and you know what that means – our regular end of cycle awards! To help you forget that Red Sands finished months ago, here’s my good buddy Santa to help out.

This was obviously done 100% on purpose to let the cards settle into the metagame, and not because I forgot. I’m also going to ignore the banlist and rotation to some extent (ie whenever I feel like it). LEEEEET’S GO.

THE “JESUS STOP PRINTING EFFECTS WITHOUT A HARD UPPER LIMIT” AWARD: Salvaged Vanadis Armory! A theoretically vaguely janky card that unfortunately can be used to nuke the opponent’s entire deck. WHOOPS.

THE “CONTROLLING THE MESSAGE” AWARD FOR BEST CORP ID: Get Aginrused! Turns out getting a free Nisei token every turn (kinda) is super good.

THE “PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES” AWARD FOR REPLACING COMPETENCE WITH MONEY: Bloo Moose! Together with Temujin, runners the world over were lulled into a false sense of complacence where they could just throw infinite piles of money at their problems instead of playing good Netrunner. Thankfully, Boggs has come to lead us back to the light.

THE “TRAFFIC ACCIDENT BRYAN STINSON SCORCHED EARTH BOOM!” AWARD FOR WEYLAND CARD THAT’S BEST OUT OF FACTION: Tithonium, probably! 2 influence isn’t much and it’s a hell of a facecheck. This is mostly because of the combo with Aginfusion and IT Department. Priority Construction gets an honorable mention for Tennin shenanigans.

THE “DNA TRACKER” AWARD FOR “ICE SUBTYPES ARE A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT”: Also Tithonium, because why shouldn’t a barrier also be able to blow up all your stuff?

THE “SMOKE” AWARD FOR FORCING THE BEJEEZUS OUT OF AN ARCHETYPE: The Jemison cards! You know what’s more fun than scoring agendas? Forfeiting those agendas to score more agendas! Or doing some other thing! Then losing after scoring 10 points!

THE “DAY JOB” AWARD FOR BEST ART: I know there was a lot of debate about whether Maw is actually good per se, but you can’t argue that he looks cute as all hell.

THE “FORCE OF NATURE” AWARD FOR ANARCHS GETTING THE WORST THING IN CLASS WHEN THEY ALSO HAVE THE BEST THING IN CLASS: Berserker. Come on now.

THE “AVIARY” AWARD FOR DOING A BUNCH OF STUFF THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY HELP YOU WIN BUT IT’S PRETTY NEAT: Los and his good friends, Rubicon Switch, Exploit, Leave No Trace, Keros Mcintyre and Flashbang. It’s not quite reaching Smoke levels of saturation but you can tell Damon really wanted you to derez the heck out of some ICE.

THE “PACTUM” AWARD FOR HOW EVERYONE LOVES AI’S WITH EASY CONDITIONS: yeah, Aumakua is kinda good huh. Also God of War if you’re into that kind of thing, and that thing is accessing a million cards from R&D in one go, which is pretty good.

THE “RUMOR MILL” AWARD FOR HEAVY HANDED TECH CARD: Caldera, which is related to the phase of the game’s life in which Criminals’ solution to everything was throwing infinite piles of money at it.

THE COVETED “DATA HOUND” AWARD FOR BEING A DOG: Rover Algorithm. Soon the pack will rule the meta.