I didn’t feel good enough for the league meeting, so I decided to take shelter from the Forces of Cold and stayed home. Few matches at Jinteki.net later I stumbled upon one of the dumbest game in my netrunner career.

Yesterday while browsing Netrunnerdb I noticed “N.E.A.R.P.A.D for the Poor” deck by Landerah. It was different take on Near-Earth-Hub, without all the fast advance mambo jumbo. I played some games with it and it was fun.

Until I came across Valencia Estavez.

Ugh.

This deck is fun, because it tax runner so hard, s/he doesn’t have money to steal NAPD contract. Unless its Valencia, who plays of course many copies of Investigate Journalism. At one point I had four Bad Publicity tokens with Itinerant Protesters on, so my hand size was reduced to only one card.

Runner could fire Journalism one more time, but forgot/decided it’s not worth it.

I had 4 points, with one AstroScipt Pilot Program token ready to use, she had one Astro and Beale. Valencia decks are about playing Blackmail on remote servers with unrezzed ICE, but this one forgot about it and bounce once from my Wraparound.

Behind it was NAPD Contract, which at this moment needed 8 advancement tokens to be scored. But she didn’t have any breakers.

For six long turns I placed only one token on it each turn, and was trying to distract by creating as many remotes as I could. I wouldn’t be allowed to keep those assets in my hand anyway. With four bad publicity, Valencia could trash basically everything I installed, but at least she was wasting clicks and didn’t run on my HQ, where behind simple Pop-up Window was lone Project Beale ready to be scored in one turn with Astro token when the time is right.

At this moment I was mainly waiting for third Astro to land in my hand, but this is one of the cons of playing with decks you don’t make by yourself - I didn’t notice, that there is no third Astro. Welp.

So each turn I was hoping that she won’t run on HQ and invested tokens on NAPD. When it was at six, I spend two clicks to advance it to eight and scored! 2 point NAPD for 9 clicks! The dream! Government Takeover is real! Then I installed spare card in my another remote, behind unrezzed Rainbow. It was 6 to 4.



She took the bait and once again blackmailed the remote, leaving the lone Beale in my hand. Spent other clicks on something else. And bam. I managed to score Beale from the hand with Astro token.

That was fun.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I could manage to play it face-to-face, maybe my body language would tell HQ bluff. Since she didn’t have anything to break thru my Wraparound (Darwin was only at 4 strength and needed 3 more turns) I could probably use Astro token early on some 1 pointer that I gave up as a distractions and could proceed with advancing NAPD in two next turns. But well, win is a win, huh.