Hey guys

I’m going to try something a bit different this time. The Snapshot hasn’t been changing quite as much as I was expecting and we tend to see a pretty static group at the top. In particular, NEH Astrobiotics, HB Glacier, Noise and Whiz variants seem to be pretty much superglued into Tier 1. Plus, as talked about before on previous versions of the Snapshot, player skill is such a huge factor in Netrunner that tiers become quite blurred.

Luckily for us, we’re smack in the middle of Store Champ season which gives us as a community lots of opportunities for tournaments and DELICIOUS DATA. This edition of the Snapshot, I’m going to break things down into different categories: decks you’ll definitely see, new archetypes you should expect, and my picks for potentially strong meta calls.

JENNIFER LAWRENCE: DECKS YOU’RE DEFINITELY GOING TO SEE

Corp: Astrobiotics, HB Glacier. Runner: Noise, Ice Feast Whiz, various flavours of Reg-Ass Anarch

If nothing else, you can be about 99% positive that you’re going to play against one or all of these decks at a store championship event. Astrobiotics and Foodcoats have very strong, difficult to disrupt game plans. Whiz and Noise have ridiculous lategames, and your reliable options for beating a ridiculous lategame include scoring out as quickly as possible, leverage Caprice or Always Be Beta Testing. Right now the madness that is the Anarch card pool means that as long as you put a whole chunk of their good cards in a deck, you’re probably going to have a good time.

Corp side, make sure your ICE can deal with Faust and that you have some kind of plan to rush out. Runner side, I highly recommend #slottheclot, because lord knows it’ll do work.

RYAN REYNOLDS: SO HOT RIGHT NOW

The cool thing about store champs is that people win them with all kinds of weird stuff. It’s great! Here’s a few new (or new-ish) decks making waves that you can expect to see around.

Bootcamp Glacier: Not new, but making a resurgence because of a good Whizzard matchup. The bad news is that this deck is very hard to pilot correctly, meaning that unless you’re a seriously good player you’re going to get remote locked to death. Gagarin is also seeing some play right now, enabled by Mumba Temple and Museum of History.

Replicating Perfection Glacier is always solid, but not quite as resilient against Anarch shenanigans as HB Glacier. It’s still really good and you’re very likely to see it.

SYNC/Haarp/Sol: Basically different flavours of NBN – not as ubiquitous as the Hub, but NBN has good cards and you should expect to see some of these.

Jesminder Vamp, High-Stakes Ken Tenma, HyperFaust Kate, various Hayley Pawnshop builds: all builds that have been improved (or created in Jesminder’s case) by Kala Ghoda. The exception is the HyperFaust Kate, which is a fairly classic Shaper deck but uses Hyperdriver to accelerate setup and Faust because it’s a good card. Artist Colony is showing up in many of the new breed of Shaper builds because it enables absolutely god-tier Shaper Bullshit and gets crazy useful if News Team is widely played near you.

Apocalypse MaxX: yep, still good.

Decks with Faust and a draw engine: Let’s be real, Faust and a good draw engine will put you a long way towards winning some Netrunner. Look at these decks! They’re good and worth playing.

WILL FERRELL: META CALLS

Faust is pretty popular, and Faust hates it when you steal all its fuel. PE and IG Grindcore are solid meta calls right now because they can really annoy a Faust player by grinding away all their resources. To that end, Snare is looking pretty decent in glacier Jinteki builds right now as a way to both protect against Medium digs and potentially blow up Wyldsides. 6 Agenda Medtech is underrated and has some surprisingly excellent matchups. Speaking of which:

Resource destruction. Losing your Wyldside is a major hassle, particularly if you’ve already fed the rest to Faust. Corporate Town, Elizabeth Mills and leveraging tags are all options.

Leela is dope right now. She’s always had a killer Fast Advance matchup and NBN is everywhere. If you’re struggling with a Fast Advance problem, give her a shot.

7 Point CI is good against Whizzard, but just about auto-loses to Noise and anyone that can repeatedly Clot you at instant speed.

As always, thanks for tuning in! I’d love to hear any thoughts on this format.