After quite the hiatus from Netrunner I had a chance to join a tournament here in Linköping with 14 participants. The number of players has grown a lot since the previous tournament which is really great.

As I really wanted to win the wonderful Day Job playmat I went with two of the best decks I could come up with. I went with the Noise deck I’ve been playing a while which has been performing really well. I was expecting a lot of EtF so I was on the verge on playing a classic Looking 4 Job Whizzard deck but I switched to Noise just before the tournament as I’m more comfortable with it but I also find it more fun to play Noise than anything else. As for the corp I had played a little Foodcoats since it dominated worlds and it has felt extremely solid overall.

Tournament structure

We did 4 rounds of swiss without a cut, even though I was personally hoping for 5 rounds. The more games I can play the better it is, I just love to play you know. As usual you get 2 points for each game you win and 1 point for a timed win.

Round 1: Dan, Reina/Sync

vs Reina

He got me low on credits early but I played it slow and slowly but steadily accumulated enough credits to build rez enough ice and score out. Foodcoats destroyed the game.

vs Sync

I was really scared of Sync as Noise is weak against tags and I don’t run any meat damage protection. But I got a nice start and got a few points lead but he still managed to score out some astro counters and I carelessly gave him a Quantum Predictive Model so he got up to 5 point. Luckily I had set up the shard combo with utopia and hades shard I maged to score out with them the click before he would have won.

Generally I need to be more mindful of quantum predictive model. I actually think it’s a really good agenda in this type of deck.

4 points, 2-0

Round 2: Johannes, Leela/Haarpsichord

vs Leela

I was really, really poor in the beginning of the game and I had trouble getting my campaigns to stick. I made the really big mistake of trying to rush out an Accelerated Beta Test but I was too poor and too scared of Legwork and The Maker’s Eye after bounce to do it. In the process I had blocked Breaker Bay Grid from my campaigns which made the game really slow… I think I could have won in the end anyway but he got through my remote twice by forcing through an Ichi. Well played by him but I feel like I should have done better.

vs Haarpsichord

A bit rushed on time and super scared of 24/7 News Cycle I got a fairly good grip in the beginning with a Lamprey lock and I stole a couple of agendas early. Unfortunately I accumulated two News Team and nullified my lead. I still managed to find a couple of agendas to have the lead.

In the turn I went through a Gutenberg and took a tag (which I could have avoided with Faust) and gave him a Quantum Predictive Model while I was on 4 points. If I had just broken the sub I would have gone up to 5 points and I had a Hades Shard with at least one 2 pointer in the archive… Once again I need to be more mindful of taking tags. Still had more points and got the timed win.

5 points, 3-1

Round 3: Henrik, Noise/Blue Sun

vs Noise

Etf got set up well and the runner didn’t do anything useful at the start and I got set up really well economically and I was quite safe. Game ended early due to a faceplant into Assassin with only 2 cards in hand and I had a ton of money.

vs Blue Sun

I knew Henrik ran an Accelerated Diagnostics combo deck and I was again scared of dying to Scorched Earth with my not having any protection. But I got a lot of HQ and R&D accesses by trashing two Spiderwebs and an Assassin and I managed to ping away some kill pieces. He drew a lot with jacksson and managed to end up with all three copies of scorch in archives and I finally won by a Medium for his whole R&D.

9 points, 5-1

Round 4: Fredrik, Kate/EtF

The last game of the tournament and I and Fredrik were the top dogs. As I had one timed win but Fredrik did not so I had to win both games to win the tournament. Tough task as Fredrik is a very solid player.

vs Kate

I was a little flooded in the beginning but I didn’t get punished for it and after that I drew really good. I managed to stick the campaigns in the remote and I had a ton of money basically the whole game. Fredrik security nexus kate and I managed to get two 2-points early and I didn’t draw any agendas in the midgame when he was set up with his monster rig.

At the end of the game I had built up a 4-Ice remote and a 5-Ice R&D. He hit me with an Escher which felt quite awful as he had a bunch of R&D interfaces but it turns out my super taxing ice and R&D luck saved me. Foodcoat can and will make extremely taxing servers it turns out…

vs EtF

Fredrik ran a sort of Team Sponsorship fast-advance/rush EtF which I wasn’t looking forward to all that much. But luckily he didn’t draw a lot of economy and I managed to keep him down economically by a combination of lamprey and forcing him to rez ice. I also sniped an early 2-pointer by clicking through an eli and breaking a marcus with Faust, which felt really good admittedly. Overall I managed to keep up a ton of pressure on him even though I didn’t find aesop’s until fairly late.

I really felt in control the whole game and the game ended as a timed win for me. The only bigger mistake I recall is one I did on my last turn in the game where I installed a cache and then ran on the remote server thinking I could beat the ash trace just to plant into a Turing. At this point I was already at 5 points and what I could have done is walk through R&D 2 times by taking assassin to the face to maximize my chances of getting a regular win.

12 points, 7-1

The results

I was a bit down after loosing points in the second round but I managed to recoup very well in the end. I felt I had some really good in some key matches and my decks served me very well. I will probably try some other corps but I may still continue playing Noise even after the most wanted list.

In the end I managed to win the whole tournament which I didn’t really expect. I was hoping to do well but I wasn’t expecting it.

As my prize I naturally chose Day Job. The Ice Wall participation prize was great as well. I’m a little sad I didn’t get the Corroder one as I think it looks really good, but you can’t get everything in this world.

Was a good tournament and everyone were once again awesome! I’m already planning for the next one!