[ This guest report comes to us from Joe Held, a great Netrunner player and the mind behind the Cascade Collective Netrunner videos. ]

June 14th. Bellevue, WA. Uncle’s Games. 78 People.

The day of the Seattle Regional had arrived. Originally I was just going to film for my YouTube channel (cheap plug! Cascade Collective) but decided to play with decks I don’t normally play. If I fizzled out…great! I could concentrate on filming matches.

Getting to Uncle’s, I find out that all the tables are out there in the middle of the mall…In the middle of the food court no less. This was kind of weird but kind of awesome. During long tournaments it is easy to get fatigued & having all this food nearby (there was even a grocery store attached to the mall) was excellent to keep yourself in it mentally.

I run into Anthony Giovannetti aka SneakySly and we chatted about our decks a bit. (Replicating Perfection High-Five!) I was happy to see I wasn’t one of the only ridiculous people running RP. He had went with the Whizzard route which is awesome, since I have always loved Whizzard but never really been able to get him to a top tier except for the Siphon/DLR combo, which says more to the power of Siphon if anything.

I went with two decks that are away from my personal “Norm”. I’m a Gabe/Whizzard/Kate guy, in that order, & on the corp side I’m a Weyland/NBN/HB guy. I took Andromeda & Jinteki: RP to the Seattle Regional.

Runner Runner!

I finally gave in to the Andromeda thing which I feel is stronger now since a lot of corps are moving to a much more taxing format. Glacier, Red Coats, Yellow Jackets, everyone comes up with silly names for these things…but corp decks are getting more expensive to run on & you have to be prepared to grind it out. Gabe is stronger in the early game, especially against FA decks, but what Andromeda sacrifices for early game pressure she makes up for it with consistent pressure.

Andromeda: Dispossessed Ristie (Humanity’s Shadow)

Event (20)

3x Account Siphon (Core Set)

3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)

2x Emergency Shutdown (Cyber Exodus)

2x Infiltration (Core Set)

2x Inside Job (Core Set)

2x Legwork (Honor and Profit)

3x Special Order (Core Set)

3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (4)

3x Desperado (Core Set)

1x RAD Interface (Future Proof) ••

Resource (9)

1x Data Dealer (Core Set)

3x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)

3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

2x Security Testing (Honor and Profit)

Icebreaker (7)

1x Corroder (Core Set) ••

3x Faerie (Future Proof)

1x Femme Fatale (Core Set)

1x Gordian Blade (Core Set) •••

1x Mimic (Core Set) •

Program (5)

3x Datasucker (Core Set) •••

2x Parasite (Core Set) ••••

Data Dealer was a total meta call as I am used to getting Shi Kyu’d all the time, but I didn’t use it ONCE the entire day. The 2 Infiltrations could be swapped out to maybe 2 Planned Assault, 2 Daily Casts, or 2 of whatever your style is. Gordian Blade instead of Yog.0 to keep me in it once Viktor 2.0s, RSVP, etc. start stacking up.

Other than that, nothing too surprising in here. I play it more like a Gabe Deck, if that makes any sense.

Corp Corp!

We’ll call this deck, Red Jackets. Red Sweater. Red Poncho.

I’ve never been a Jinteki guy, even though they were the first Corp I ever used back when I picked up my first core set. I started toying with RP right after Sundews hit the scene. Db0 & his many iterations of “Untrashable” were fun & annoying to play with. He was on to something with a taxing Jinteki deck & it prompted me to build a random RP deck that I won a Store Championship with. I still never felt they were a “top tier” build but they were definitely fun to play.

Fast forward a few months later & I was randomly nerding out & watching Twitch streams. I stumbled upon MediohXcore & GeneStealers (sidenote, every time I listen to MediohXcore, I picture a guy in a wife-beater & sweat pants, it’s awesome). They were both separately testing RP Glacier builds & I thought that it looked like a blast to play. Most people were still focusing on RP Kill decks but they completely moved away from that aspect. I’m far from the greatest deckbuilder in the world, but Mr. Medioh & Geney-Poo were definitely my inspirations for this deck. I saw the main tactic they were going for & just made it how I like. Not sure what they ended up with, I’m sure SneakySly can find a link somewhere around here.

Jinteki RP Annoyance

Jinteki: Replicating Perfection (Trace Amount)

Agenda (9)

1x Fetal AI (Trace Amount)

3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)

3x Nisei MK II (Core Set)

2x The Future Perfect (Honor and Profit)

Asset (9)

3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) •••

3x Mental Health Clinic (Honor and Profit)

3x Sundew (Mala Tempora)

Upgrade (5)

2x Ash 2X3ZB9CY (What Lies Ahead) ••••

3x Caprice Nisei (Double Time)

Operation (7)

3x Celebrity Gift (Opening Moves)

3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)

1x Interns (Mala Tempora)

Barrier (6)

3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof) •••

2x Himitsu-Bako (Opening Moves)

1x Wall of Thorns (Core Set)

Code Gate (3)

1x Enigma (Core Set)

1x Inazuma (Honor and Profit)

1x Tollbooth (Core Set) ••

Sentry (10)

1x Ichi 2.0 (Creation and Control) •••

3x Komainu (Honor and Profit)

3x Pup (Honor and Profit)

3x Tsurugi (True Colors)

I’ve been torn between Fetal or Future Perfect as the last agenda. Sometimes you get to 4 & you just want that 3 pointer to close it out, but I also don’t like having extra points in my decks. You could even toss in a Philotic or Braintrust if you want. Inazuma was kind of meh & ICHI 2.0 was just OK. Another Tollbooth & a Quandary might be better.

You play this deck like HB rather than like Jinteki. Be ready for a longer grind of a game. Try to get out your econ assets out as fast as possible, protecting them or not is a call on who you’re playing. It is good to lightly protect Sundews. Ideally, I liked to have some type of ETR ICE as the innermost ICE protecting centrals with something they’ll HAVE to pay for as the outermost. You don’t want them just running into your server for free, only to jack out & run the remotes. A Remote with 2 or 3 stacked ELIs & a Caprice hiding behind it can be amazing. 12 credits with Corroder & THEN a PSI game to get through?! FML. You’ll feel poor at first but will eventually stabilize & the money should start pouring in. Scoring a NISEI MKII should be your first priority. This is like an AstroTrain but for Jinteki.

The Matches!

It was a ridiculously long day that got started around Noon…ending at 3AM. Apologies for not having a detailed breakdown of each match, but it was a long day. I’ll just put in the details that stand out & hey…at least I remember all my opponents.

Round 1

SuperBye. Nothing exciting here. There were 9 of us.

2-0 // 4 Prestige

Round 2

Alexander (Andromeda, HB:Next)

When he was Corp, he FAILED 2 Beta Tests. He had 27 Pieces of ICE in his deck. I’ll chalk this up to the Netrunner Gods favoring me. I abused the Siphon since he had a sole Quandary protecting HQ, I felt like a terrible person. I think I hit him 5 or 6 times. As corp I got the money-train going then the Nisei-Train going. Alex is a great guy from the Bellevue area.

4-0 // 8 Prestige

Round 3

Mike (Kate, HB:ETF)

We had a pretty epic match as me being Corp. Kate Recursion can be kind of tough, he would kill Komainus here & there, trashing my assets kept him poor too & I finally got a Nisei-Train started. The match went long & we went to time when I was runner he was Corp. He got slightly flooded & I won on time 4-2 with a last run on R&D pulling another 2 pointer. Mike is originally from England, I wanted to make him read all the flavor text on every card he played.

6-0 // 11 Prestige

Round 4

JD (Iain, Jinteki:RP)

Iain is a great (poor?) matchup for me against my RP. Usually Iain decks tend to not be too aggressive, which lets me get set up & the first agenda I score can be a Nisei which helps me set up even more. He started to get a ton of economy going too & popped out a MASS INSTALL which I promptly exclaimed, “That’s Awesome! I’ve never seen that used before!” You’d think I just saw a magic trick or something. This was like the RP table of the day, we were running RP, SneakySly was running RP right next to me. High-Fives were had all around.

8-0 // 15 Prestige

Round 5

Kyle (Andromeda, NBN:MN)

Kyle James. The Portland Regional Champion. One of my buddies. Kyle is a great player & knows his decks well. I started off as Corp & got ridiculously agenda flooded. I knew there was no way I could win this, he was already at 4 points, I had a Future Perfect already dumped into Archives, I just said F it & Celebrity Gifted my hand to show him 5 more agendas. We both laughed at that. He eventually won off the Future Perfect in Archives. On the runner side I got set up real quick & made sure to trash any SanSan that went down, since he was looking pretty good on money. SideNote! If you run into a SanSan City Grid & the Corp has money, TRASH it. They WILL start scoring. I won it quickly & we relaxed & chatted about food.

9-1 // 17 Prestige

Round 6

Kody (Reina, NBN:TWiY)

Final Round of Swiss! I started off as Corp & got a lucky Tsurugi on him that trashed 2 Overminds. I already pegged him for running Siphons & that almost confirmed it. SideNote! You should expect Siphons out of Anarch as much as Criminal. He struggled for money all day & I just started scoring. On the reverse side it was a race, he was running Biotics & he started scoring, I tried to keep him off of money & I was scoring. I reached the finish line first which is what you sometimes have to do against TwiY. Expect to play low on money against them, which can SUCK if they have a surprise Midseasons, etc.

11-1 // 21 Prestige

So I was ranked 1st going into Swiss with my buddy Kyle right behind me at 20 Prestige. Anthony was sitting at 3rd. Yeah, Team RP!

Top 16

Chuck (Jinteki:Tennin)

We’ve played a few games online before & Chuck is a super nice guy. He had a HIVE over HQ with a Caprice installed as well…I gave up on HQ after a few failed attempts. He had quite a few counters on cards but I started stealing stuff off of R&D with Kati Jones continually banking money. It almost went to time when I pulled the winning agenda off of R&D. He looked through it & found a glut of them at the bottom, which obviously helped me out in the end.

12-1

Tom (Jinteki:RP)

Another Portland player. I don’t like playing against friends, because either I lose or they lose. I HATE playing against RP too. I stole a couple of Braintrusts randomly & tried to keep his economy down until he double ELI’d a remote Sundew, me with no Corroder. R&D was pretty open so I started hitting that pretty hard & eventually won out in another grind of a game. Tom’s beard remained velvety smooth throughout the entire tournament.

13-1

Top 8

Raj (Reina)

Reina Roja is another good (poor?) matchup against RP since they aren’t the wealthiest of runners. He was accessing but didn’t get a whole lot on what were expensive runs. He parasited my Pups, etc. but I was able to start scoring behind a Caprice & Ash.

14-1

Top 4

Kyle (Andromeda)

Kyle again! We started out Top 4 match with me as Corp. This was a pretty epic game, he quickly went up 6-2 & started digging R&D for the last agenda. I had most of mine in my hand so I wasn’t too worried. Was eventually able to score behind a triple ELI & Caprice server.

15-1

Final

Kyle (Andromeda)

Kyle, again! Hi Kyle. I had to play Corp again since he had Corped more & I was even? Something like that. We are so tired at this point. Games got stupid. There really needs to be breaks for long tournaments like this. We had to have the onlookers help us keep track of clicks, automatic money things, etc. since we were so tired. Another Epic game where I had the winning agenda about to be scored in a remote, but he Legworked on his last click to see 3 cards of my 4 card hand & grab the NAPD Contract. I was undefeated so we had to play another game. UGH

15-2

Final (pt 2)

Kyle (NBN:MN)

Kyle, again. Hi Kyle. A grind. An epic grind. We’re on Autopilot now. We’re sleepy. He is getting money, is ICED up heavily. Tollbooth on R&D, HQ, & a Remote. I get to 4 points & he gets to 2 points off an Astro/SanSan behind that remote. SHIT. It’s way too expensive to get to so I unfortunately have to leave that SanSan. I had trashed 3 already. I plan to now lock him on R&D & Parasite the Tollbooth there leaving a Caduceus & 0 STR Draco. I dig R&D before he can, getting to 6 points. He scored a Breaking News & Closes my Accounts. I take credit, credit, credit, run R&D for 2 more cards. 1st Card, ICE. 2nd Card, Astroscript. That’s GAME. We can now go to sleep…..I cuddled with the trophy.

16-2