“Want It More” is a new series of post-event chats with the people who wanted it just that little bit more and managed to climb to the top of the field during a given event. We’re asking about impressions, strategies, good and not so good plays, and more.

We’re kicking the series off with the winner of the 1st NISEI Online Eternal tournament, which took place over two days in December 2018.

Name (or username): lostgeek

Personal flavour text: Oguz Han “lostgeek” Asnaz: Memeing Experimentator

If you had an intro song: KOAN Sound - Funkblaster

Event: 1st NISEI Online Tournament: Eternal

Placement in Swiss: 1st

Path to the final: http://cobr.ai/tournaments/602/rounds

3N1GM4: Congrats on the win! Was it fun to go back in time and be able to rebuild some of the most iconic decks in new and interesting ways that may have bordered on “broken”?

lostgeek: Thank you and also thanks for inviting me to this interview! That Eternal tournament was a lot of fun and very special for me, since I only joined this game at the end of the Flashpoint cycle. So I joined in the high tide of Moons spam while trying to wrap my head around this complex game and only really got into it after rotation had hit all those iconic cards. Jinteki.net was a wonderful tool to guide me through those first months, before mustering up the courage to go to a tournament, since I didn’t have a local meta. That being a Regionals meant getting swept a lot, but also meeting a lot of very nice people.

The Eternal tournament made me go back to the meta and cards that I had only heard about but not quite gotten the hang of. It was a great experience and has shown me once again how wonderfully diverse the cardpool of this game really is!

3N1GM4: How did you prepare for that event?

lostgeek: I mostly just theorycrafted for myself and tried to find out what the field might look like. I’ve always liked to play decks that are not just good-stuff decks but are trying to make some sort of meta call or use the knowledge of what the opponent's deck is trying to achieve to put them in a place where they have to deviate from their plan and find answers to your boardstate.

3N1GM4: What were your ID and card choices for the event and why?

lostgeek: After quite some thought I realized that the meta would be centered around the best Runner deck being Andromeda. With all the incredibly powerful (and rightfully banned) Crim tools 3x of both Account Siphon and Diversion of Funds, Temüjin Contract, Aaron Marron and so on - it seemed to be the deck to beat. I played around with a Parasite recurring Noise deck, but decided it was too fiddly and hoped that no one else was able to find a way to make it work.

Going from there, I thought about Corp decks and remembered bringing NEXT Design to German Nationals back in 2017 (the third Netrunner event I had ever attended). It went horribly for me, but NEXT Design was really good at denying that turn 1 Temüjin on Archives. I built up something similar to the Jinja lists that are currently played (which is why I totally forgot about Jackson Howard) and playtested it a bit on jnet and remembered that there was a reason why every HB deck back then was playing EtF. It simply makes any deck you’re trying to build go so much smoother.

Having decided on the Corp deck, I realized another thing: With all the powerful tools like Sensie Actors Union floating around, whatever degeneracy the other players might be able to come up with would probably happen on remotes. And going with the same meta call that led me to play Apocalypse Steve during Regionals 2018, I decided to take Spags’ great 419 list from Worlds and go from there.

3N1GM4: What was the most exciting play (or plays) of the event for you?

lostgeek: https://youtu.be/TpDPZLeOB0U?t=16196

There was a single point in the finals game against Rob (groenkaaf) that has stayed in my mind. The situation was as follows: I was on my second click. Aumakua was purged a few turns ago. I had an almost empty Temüjin Contract as well as two little-loaded Bankrolls. Rob was on 8 credits.

At that point I realized that I could run the remote and make him rez what I believed to be the Fairchild 3.0 protecting it. Some of my cards would get trashed, but he’d be left on too little money to rez his R&D ICE, which would give me free accesses on R&D as well as leaving me in a good spot for an Apocalypse later on, getting rid of the investment on Fairchild 3.0.

Later, I realized that that move wouldn’t even remotely have been on my radar a year ago. If I had even suspected that to be a Fairchild 3.0, I would certainly not have run it, fearing to lose my board state. It showed me how I had progressed a little bit further in my journey of getting better at this game and seeing things that I couldn’t before.

3N1GM4: Do you have any misplays or mistakes from the event that you’d like to share?

lostgeek: https://youtu.be/EGUBi0crIZU?t=21879

Not exactly a misplay, but a very bold start that I did in the last round of swiss. Once again this was against Rob and he had refused to ID against me (totally fair!). I won the first match, so I was certain to be in the cut and went into the second game. I saw my starting hand as EtF. Jinja City Grid and a Violet Level Clearance. I couldn’t resist but keep it, ice up R&D, put the Jinja down on HQ and VLC last click. Probably a play with waaaaay too high variance, but I was rewarded with an Eli 1.0 sandwiched between two Seidr Adaptive Barriers!

3N1GM4: What was the most fun deck to play against?

lostgeek: https://youtu.be/TpDPZLeOB0U?t=691

I loved my first game in the cut against netjogging on SYNC. I included New Angeles City Hall as a 3-of for exactly this matchup and tried to contest their board up to the point where they had two agendas in their score area, Breaking News being one of them. I knew I was likely to watch a 24/7 News Cycle while a friendly missile would come crashing through my window, so I had to drop the NACH on the table. Without any other means of protecting it, I had to frantically draw for my second one, to be able to steal agendas again without dying. That worked out, but only left me with a Kitty in my score area, so I had to continue drawing through most of my deck for the third NACH to close out that game. Shoutouts to netjogging for keeping me on the edge of my seat during that whole match!

3N1GM4: Here’s the final game one more time, courtesy of Métropole Grid - anything you’d do differently if you were playing one more time in the final?

lostgeek: I would love to not steal that agenda while trying to land the Apocalypse! I think even after the end of the world, that game would not have been decided yet, since it would have left both of us at next to no money and no more board state!

3N1GM4: What do you think is the best thing about the meta in this particular format?

lostgeek: I love playing in unexplored metas. I’m experimenting with bad ideas all the time and love the creative aspect of deckbuilding a lot and theorycrafting and building for the Eternal tournament was really fulfilling! I’m excited for the new MWL for Eternal and will probably delve into the realm of horrible Museum decks. ;-)

3N1GM4: What was the main prize for winning the event and where is it now?

lostgeek: I got a big dump of promo cards as well as the GNK mat and promos. But the most awesome thing is that I got to design a card for the Ashes cycle! I won’t spoil anything at this point, but I’m excited about how it turned out and am looking forward to seeing it in play!

3N1GM4: What would you consider a good way to get into competitive Netrunner?

lostgeek: Competitive Netrunner is something that needs both skill and an exhaustive knowledge of the card pool, especially when deckbuilding yourself. This will not come overnight and that is fine. The journey that led me to this point was a wonderful one with great moments and experiences (and I still consider my placement in this tournament a lucky fluke!).

The greatest part of Netrunner is the community. Especially the competitive one, where you might expect only the harshest and most cut-throat to survive, is one of the most welcoming and lovely bunch of people I’ve ever met! If you ever get the opportunity to get your ass handed to you by one of those great people (and believe me, I still get to experience that myself often enough) just ask them about what they think you might have done wrong in your game. They will probably have thought more about your options in the game than you have and be able to provide incredibly valuable insight that will help you a lot to get better at the game!

3N1GM4: Have you had any notable competitive success in the past? What result(s) are you most proud of?

lostgeek: This was my second ever top cut of a tournament, so the only other occasion that comes to my mind is the first ever top cut ;-). I always have made a point of bringing at least one completely self-built deck to tournaments and managed to make eighth place in the Bochum Regionals 2018 in Germany with a spicy Apocalypse Steve deck that unfortunately met a total of 4 Crisium Grids in the two games it played in that cut - *looks at a certain Belgian player*.

3N1GM4: Do you prefer online or offline events? For what reasons?

lostgeek: Honestly I like both for different reasons. I love playing in offline events and am indeed just typing these answers on my bus trip back home from the amazing Double Play Community Event in Berlin. The people you meet there, the stories you tell each other afterwards over a beer and the sheer excitement in the room about the game we all love just isn’t conveyed in an online tournament.

But easily being able to bring together so many people from all over the world like in the NISEI online tournaments is great, especially for a community as relatively small as ours. Also, there is something to be said for playing tournament games from the comfort of your couch in your pajamas...

3N1GM4: You reach the top cut and you get to choose your side: Corp or Runner?

lostgeek: In general, Corp. I love to be the puzzle maker that the Runner has to react to.

3N1GM4: What’s your antidote to tilting? What helps you overcome stress when the game goes against you?

lostgeek: Tilting often happens for one of two reasons. One is making a mistake and beating yourself up for it. Forgetting about that False Lead, when installing Misdirection on your second click for example. In those cases there is not much to be done about it, but marking it up to experience and trying to not make the same mistake twice.

The other is tilting over bad luck. If I’m playing as the Corp and have done everything I can to keep the Runner out of my scoring remote, just for them to topdeck an Agenda off of R&D on a single access, I just keep in mind that I am playing a card game and the same will probably happen to me as a Runner at another point. It is a game of percentages and playing for that improbable out can also be the most satisfying part of the game!

3N1GM4: Any lucky charms or superstitions about the game itself you’d like to share with us?

lostgeek: Always bid 1 on the first psi game as Corp. Always.

3N1GM4: Any format or card pool you’d like to see an event for?

lostgeek: I really love the Cache Refresh format, or more precisely what the Stimhack Online Cache Refresh (SOCR) group has done for 8 tournaments now. As I’ve already said, I love building decks in unexplored metas and those tournaments are very much that!

3N1GM4: Any other games or hobbies you’re partaking in on a competitive level?

lostgeek: Besides working on my PhD in physics, I unfortunately don’t have the time to pursue a second game competitively, but that also means that I can focus on Netrunner!

3N1GM4: Thank you for answering our questions and all the best in your future tournaments!