Click Here To Check Out This Episode!

On our agenda:

Chrome City Card Highlight!

– With Chrome City now legal for Regional tournaments, we take the time to discuss all the cards from the latest pack, including an extensive conversation about cybernetics; the new HB identity and it’s support cards; public agendas and how they will change the way we play; and which of the new ICE is the best to bring to your next tournament!

Click Here To Check Out This Episode!

On our agenda:

Special guest 2014 World Champion Dan D’Argenio!

The Decks To Pilot, The Decks To Beat

– Regional season is nearly over, so we take the time to analyse which decks have come out on top, where we think they will go, and which of them it will be most important to beat coming into National season.

Deck Tech: Replicating Perfection

– Dan presents an RP for the modern day. He discusses how his list has changed since Worlds 2014, why these changes were made, and how the meta has responded: Like ebbs and flows of the incoming tide.

Dan D’Argenio’s 2014 Invitational Card

– As the 2014 World Champion, Dan has been given the opportunity to design his own Netrunner card. Stay tuned, as Dan goes deep on the card’s design, what it does, the changes it’s gone through, and when you can expect it in a Data Pack near you. You won’t want to miss this!

A long time ago I was a Magic: The Gathering player. And I would have been what I consider a “Casual Tryhard.” I wanted to be competitive but never had the resources (time, money, personality), to do so. Some would also consider me a scrub. But as a Casual Tryhard, I devoured strategy articles (Jamie Wakefield was my favourite author), and the first article that completely blew me away from a strategy point of view was Mike Flores’ “Who’s The Beatdown?“

I loved the concept so much that I even wrote an article about it for the game Race for the Galaxy (highly recommended to all of you who like competitive card games; it was my Cardboard Crack for a good 3 years.) I’d been looking for something to replace Magic in my life; unfortunately all of my regular playing friends moved on to other things).

This concept was briefly explored in Episode 11 of The Winning Agenda, but I’d like to try and delve into it a bit more. Certainly, this only represents my own point of view on the subject.

In essence, the concept of Who’s The Beatdown? comes down to:

Misassignment of Role = Game Loss

The original author used mirror matchups in Magic to illustrate his point; when two similar decks play against each other, both cannot execute the same strategy at the same time, because, due to minor differences in deck choices and board state, one deck will be better than the other in executing that strategy. Therefore, the other deck needs to deviate from the original strategy in order to have a chance at winning.

But how do we apply this to Netrunner, which does not have mirror matchups?

Let’s examine the concept of your ‘Role’. And let’s do this at both a macroscopic and microscopic level.

For the purposes of illustrating my point, I’m not going to use the terms ‘Beatdown’ and ‘Control’ until the end, as it will confuse matters given that I’m not referring to the traditional definitions of ‘Beatdown’ and ‘Control’ (Beatdown usually meaning the deck that’s playing aggressively and tries to win quickly and Control being the deck that slows down the game and reacts accordingly to the opponent).

Instead, I’ll be using the terms ‘offence/question’ and ‘defence/answer’.

Every deck, Corp or Runner, is built with an overarching strategy in mind. This is what I would term the deck’s offence. This is the question that the deck poses. If the opposing deck cannot deal with the deck’s offence, or if it cannot answer the question, then the opposing deck will lose.

Now, of course, the opposing deck will also have its own offence and question. It then falls to the player(s) to evaluate which decks’ offence or question is stronger, in which case, the role of the deck with the stronger offence is to execute its offence as well as it can, and the other deck will have to go on defence; i.e. deviate from its original strategy to disrupt the opposing game plan.

Why are good decks good? Because they have questions that demand answers.

The current Replicating Perfection lists asks:

“I am going to set up an unassailable credit lead with Sundews and Mental Health Clinic, and then win by setting up a remote server that you need to get into multiple times. In the meantime, my agendas protect themselves by 1) being expensive to steal (NAPD), 2) by being ridiculously hard to steal (The Future Perfect), and 3) by being scarce (only 8 or 9 agendas in the deck). Furthermore, I have very taxing ICE that you need to pay through your nose to get past. Can you deal with this?”

How about Near-Earth Hub Astrobiotics?

“I’m going to get good economy with cheap operations and expensive to thrash assets. After that I’m going to win by scoring out of hand with 3 different fast advance tools. In addition, I have assets (Daily Business Show), and operations (Fast Track), that help me break out of an R&D lock. Can you deal with this?”

I’ve purposely phrased the above paragraphs as such, because I am actually listing out what I believe to be the pressure points, (you might have heard Shielsy mention this multiple times before in the podcast), of these decks.

You can approach the issue in 2 ways:

For the Replicating Perfection example, you could answer the question by:

You’ll usually have a chance to win (as opposed to having no chance to win), if you are able to do a combination of some/all of the above.

Alternatively, your deck could pose a question that the opponent must answer before asking theirs. For example, you might be using a Noiseshop deck. Your milling pressure might be strong enough that they have to defend against that before they can execute their game plan, which buys you more time to execute your game plan.

Some decks are peculiar in that their question is actually multiple answers. The best case example would be the current Calimsha PPVP Kate lists. That deck’s question is essentially: “I have dirt cheap burst economy and card draw that I’ll snipe the agendas that you put into your scoring server. If you don’t put agendas into your scoring server, I’ll Legwork and/or Maker’s Eye them out from your HQ/R&D.”

Playing against Calimsha Kate requires that you respond to it in multiple different ways, e.g. stacking Barriers to tax their Lady; having multiple different servers with Code Gates to tax their Cyber-Cyphers; or perhaps even stopping their recursion by using Blacklist.

You’ll find that more often than not, once you get past the initial stage of figuring out who asks the questions and who provides the answer, the game will devolve into a fluid state, where, the roles change from turn-to-turn depending on the game state. You’ll be jockeying for a position where you are the one posing the question that demands an answer.

This is where you then need to examine your role on a microscopic level.

“What is my role this turn, knowing what I know about the overall roles that our decks are supposed to be playing, to get me to a state where I can be the one posing the question?”

The question “Should I trash the PAD Campaign?” should perhaps be “Should I trash the PAD Campaign now, or should I trash it later, or should I even trash it at all?”

And the answer to this will be different every time, depending on the decks and the evaluation of the game state.

An example:

I was playing NEH Astrobiotics against Desperado Kate. I knew that it wanted to use Professional Contacts to set up a gamestate where it could run efficiently and establish an R&D lock with multiple R&D Interfaces and The Maker’s Eye. Sure, I could potentially escape an R&D lock with Fast Track, but going for the usual game plan of shoring up centrals and waiting to score out Astros with either Biotic Labor or SanSans was going to be a bad thing to do.

Two key plays here that I will note:

First, I rushed out an Astroscript behind an ICE first turn, as I knew it would be very unlikely that the opposing deck will want to sacrifice money and set up time to get to it. That worked. My opponent got a first turn Professional Contacts, and I knew I was then on a clock before he could set up an R&D lock. I did not draw into a second Astro, so at one point in the game, I decided to Fast Track for an Astro and let it sit in HQ for one turn (with 4 cards in HQ), to score out the next turn. My opponent was still in the setting up phase, but already had a Self-modifying Code on board to get past my ICE protecting HQ.

Essentially the question that I posed to my opponent here was: “I don’t want you to continue setting up your board. I now have my 2^nd Astro in hand which I will score out my next turn. Do you want to deviate from your game plan to come get it?”

If I had played conservatively and waited for Astroscripts to come and score them out one by one, then I am essentially leaving my fate to the order of the cards. Yes, Astrobiotics can certainly win this way, but I had evaluated my gamestate at that point and decided that I needed to do something different. One more turn of Kate setting up with Professional Contacts would have left me in an unwinnable position.

I won’t say who won that game, because I don’t think this is a situation where the end justifies the means.

In conclusion, when you next sit down in front of your opponent, you need to ask yourself the question: Are you the person who is:

If you are 1), then go for it. Go hard. You are the Beatdown.

If you are 2), then react. You are not the Beatdown now. But you need to become the Beatdown. Do something different. Change the status quo.

Because if you misevaluate your role in the matchup, you will lose the game.

Remember: Misassignment of Role = Game Loss

crushedguava (Reddit/OCTGN/Netrunnerdb), is a guest writer for The Winning Agenda and an avid gamer. He listens to TWA during the long drive to his day job. He has multiple opinions but finds it difficult to articulate them. This is his first attempt at doing so.

Round two is live!

We have Wilfy Horig piloting Stealth Andromeda Versus Tim Cuozzo firing away with Blue Sun Scorch!

Be sure to check back next Wednesday for Round 3!

Click Here To Check Out This Episode!

On our agenda:

Special guest 2014 World Champion Dan D’Argenio!

The Competitive Scene: Community Tournaments

– Dan has a passion for community run events, so we chat to him about projects like the ANR ProCircuit and what they mean for the game and the competitive scene moving forward.

The Stimhack Store Championship Invitational

– The SSCI was a community driven event played over OCTGN, and was a huge success. Dan tells us the trials and tribulations of organising the event, and his plans for future invitational and qualifier tournaments.

Upgrading Your Tournament: The Stimhack Floor Rules Project

– Obviously sharing similar passions to that of the TWA crew, Dan and co. at Stimhack have recently decided to band together to create what will be The Stimhack Floor Rules: A document of solutions to problems that occur during tournaments, usable by TO’s.

Be sure to join us next week for Episode 34, where The Winning Agenda gets an exclusive spoiler of Dan’s World Championship Invitational Card!

 

Let me get this off my chest.

It’s the first Store Champs of the season, up at CanCon in our nation’s capital. The first few rounds have been okay, but I really want to slay my round four opponent 2-0, seeing as my good mate Liam ‘Shielsy’ Prasad had swept me in the previous round.

I’m playing a standard Kate Control list that goes for R&D lock, against a Harmony Medtech build. I’m ahead on economy. I’m ahead on board. My opponent has a few unrezzed remotes I hadn’t bothered to check because they’d been there since turn 0, doing nothing.

And besides, I was hitting R&D every turn for like, four cards. And I was bricking every time. I saw nothing hostile, or anything to suggest I’d be in trouble. Just more permissible ICE and Medical Research Fundraisers.

Each turn I’m slamming in for at least three fresh cards off the top of the deck, and hitting nothing. It’s getting late in the round, and I’m concerned about going to time for a measly single point.

I do a glory run with The Maker’s Eye, and hit all but the winning agenda. My opponent has five cards in hand. I hit up HQ. I break through, and before access he rezzes a Dedicated Response Team. Like, whatever. I’ve got four cards in hand, right?

I access a Snare and die.

My god, was I shitty. I’d been so ahead, and was hitting R&D with multi-access every turn. Things were going so well, and then I make the mistake of not checking those remotes to know what to look out for.

And then, my opponent decides to say ‘Wow man, there was only one snare in hand and I had two Medical Breakthroughs in there!’

I felt the crunching in my stomach. There was only one round left and I’d have to win the next two games of the tournament and still have good breakers to make it into the top 8.

That crunching feeling got worse and became a hot flush up my neck and around my ears. A friend of my opponent comes up to him, and they both start laughing about how he got me, and how strange his deck is.

I felt like lashing out, telling him that he pointed out how high the variance was. Hell, even as I sit here typing this I’m remembering how angry I was. What a douchebag I am, right? Who does that?

I packed up my stuff and went outside. It was hot in Canberra, even for January. I’d sat in the TWA-Mobile eight hours to be here, just to die to some Harmony Medtech pet deck that some scrub decided to bring along. How was that fair?

I hate-ate a beef and gravy roll from a food truck (I can still taste it in the back of my throat; it was rank), and then went back inside and proceeded to win the next three games and make it into the top 8 on breakers.

Reflecting on this that night, and many nights after, I realised that I’d let the tilt get the better of me. How was it fair that I’d somehow felt entitled to win the game? And therefore made the mistake of not checking or considering all possibilities, only to die? My opponent was a reasonable person. They’d set that DRT there since turn one. I hadn’t checked it. I’m sure they were just waiting for me to make a small mistake.

And I made one.

The tilt was strong in me. And I knew it had gotten to me deep, and affected my poor performance in double elimination.

Later, my teammates would tell me that in the top 8 I’d been playing awfully. Jesse Marshall told me that in the weeks leading up to the Store Champs season, my play (and Corp play in particular), had been super smooth. For some reason in the top 8 I’d made error after error, all the while inadvertently flashing HQ to my opponent whenever they accessed, as Shielsy pointed out to me.

But I wasn’t alone.

In the winner’s bracket of the top 8, Shielsy had had to wait around for a couple of rounds to finish before playing his match; something that often happens in double elimination. Then, after nearly an hour, he sat down with his opponent. He mulliganed into garbage. He copped a turn one Account Siphon. Then his opponent plucked all the agendas he needed in the first six turns of the game.

‘This is so obnoxious.’ He muttered bitterly to himself while shuffling a HQ full of Nisei Mk 2s for his opponent to access.

I could see Shielsy was tilting hard. I felt it because I was intimate with that horrid emotion that we let get the best of us from time to time.

The round ended.

‘Will I have time to get to Hades and back before the next round?’ Shielsy asked of the TO.

‘C’mon man. Let’s go get some air.’ I told him, a hand on his shoulder.

We went and walked past the food trucks and drank some water, and I let Shielsy vent his frustration to me. Then I vented mine to him. Then we mostly felt better.

Tilt is a huge issue for me. It was oddly comforting for me to know that a teammate, good friend, and someone who I still consider to be a far better player than myself still wasn’t immune to it.

So how does tilt come about?

I could be wrong, but I think it’s far more prevalent in competitive players. People who take the game seriously, want to test and play as often as they can to hone their abilities and best their opponent. They enjoy the challenge, and winning is their reward.

This isn’t to say casual players can’t be disappointed with loss. Nor is it an attempt to glorify the competitive scene. It’s just a symptom of the competitive bug, and unfortunately one of the reasons I think the notion of ‘competitive’ players sometimes has a nasty stink around it.

‘Competitive players ruin the game,’ is a phrase I’ve heard more than once. While I disagree with it, I can see where it’s coming from.

Thankfully, my tilt isn’t vocal. I’ve known players both in Magic and Netrunner to really let their opponent have it when they’re tilting. I’m going on record right now: That kind of behaviour is unacceptable, and should be rewarded with a DQ.

Tilt is harmful not just for your personal health and relationship with the game, but to the community as well. Netrunner is still a fledgling game, and it’s important to make sure everyone in the community feels welcome and happy, especially in the tournament scene.

‘This is bullshit!’ Came the cry of one of our local players here in Melbourne when he lost to someone playing their first tournament. ‘Absolute bullshit!’ He stood up so quickly his chair knocked over, and then he stormed out of the store.

We had to console the new player, and let them know they’d done nothing wrong. Thankfully, this player is still around and still regularly attends tournaments.

Can I understand the frustration of the tilting player that caused him to lash out in the way he did? Of course. If I sat down opposite someone who told me they own the core set and half a data pack, and that this is their first tournament, I would, unfortunately, expect to win.

Such is my entitlement as a competitive player. And this is a bad thing. It’s what leads to tilt in the first place.

Now, can I condone the behaviour that was a result of his tilt? Absolutely not.

This kind of behaviour is why it is sometimes so hard to celebrate competitive play. Anyone who has been in the tournament scene for any game long enough has a story to tell you about a time they’ve witnessed the result of an especially bad tilt.

But the effect tilt has on your opponents and community at large is also only a by-product of what it can do to you, the tilted, if you don’t learn to keep it in check.

My good friend Nick Watson wrote an article about how he believes depression to be prevalent among magic players. I personally believe it to be the case in Netrunner, and geek/gaming communities at large.

If you, like me, have battled depression, then let me tell you: Tilt can really exacerbate it.

Competitive players put pressure on themselves to perform. I’m no exception. Christ, I host a podcast called The Winning Agenda, with some of the best players in the country. It’s not called The I Go to Tournaments and Always Go 0-2 Drop Agenda, (even though I know the panelists would still love me).

The point is, the pressure we put on ourselves, coupled with depression, anger, or other issues we may have can make tilt extra sour. Most of us prioritise Netrunner highly, choosing to play tournaments or test over, say, doing something else with friends, or our partners. Maybe you, like me, have taken days off work, maybe spent money to travel to tournaments interstate.

When you’re making that kind of investment (annual leave, travel expenses, not to mention your most important resource; time), and putting pressure on yourself, you expect to do well. Hell, you need to do well. You need to justify the time and energy you’ve put into this, and winning is the only way you feel you can do it.

During the 2015 Store Champs Season, I had an awful time.

I attended all of the Store Champs in our state, plus the one in Canberra (some seven or eight tournaments), and didn’t win any. I made two top 8s and one top 4. I told myself that if I’d just make top 8, then I’d be okay. That was worth my time. I wouldn’t be a failure. But even then, it’s wasn’t good enough.

So, while I was mostly happy with three of the nine performances, the other six left me abysmally flat. Thinking about Netrunner became a chore. Dwelling on my losses, all those mistakes I’d made took up the time I’d usually spend testing.

My tilt had gotten to the point where it was affecting my personal life, and the enjoyment of my favourite hobby. It also made it harder to deal with the ‘anonymous’ internet trolls posting smear campaigns against our podcast; something I spend many hours each week working on.

I even envied the opponents I beat, who were just able to laugh and say, ‘well, that was some classic Netrunner, hey?’

What a way to be.

The Store Champs season paved the way for Regionals. I wasn’t feeling any better.

In the weeks leading up to the Melbourne Regionals, I was really feeling the pressure. And that pressure was coming from nowhere but me: I wanted to do well.

I convinced myself that maybe I’d let the sheer number of Store Champs events make me complacent. Perhaps the fact that there were so many of them lead me to think something along the lines of; ‘Well, it’s okay, I’ll do better at the next one.’ But the Regionals event wouldn’t afford me that courtesy.

Tilt comes in waves. Learning to deal with it occurs in three stages:

The first stage is when you’re a fresh faced competitive demon: Anyone who beats you is a filthy scrub; a try-hard; a neck-bearded GamerGator of the highest order. Their deck was jank and they got lucky. Your deck just wasn’t performing. You drew all your agendas or you drew none of your economy.

In the first stage, every possible element of the game, bar you and the skill of your opponent, is the reason you lost. And your opponent never truly ‘earned’ their win in your eyes. By tilting, you try to rob them of the validity of their victory, but really only end up looking like what you are: an entitled jerk.

The second stage of tilt only really occurs once you’ve been called out about it. It happened to me a long time ago, when a friend told me that whenever I lose I always seemed to have something bad to say about my opponent.

And you realise that what you’re doing isn’t fair. You’re trying to justify all those things I talked about earlier (time, resources, priorities), by saying that you shouldn’t have lost. But here’s the truth bomb: You did lose. You lost because of actions you took, that didn’t coincide with the actions your opponents took. At least not in a favourable way. For you.

Once you’re aware of this, you can start to try and remove the anger/distress you feel from your tilt, and use it as an exercise to get better at the game.

You can easily separate the human being sitting on the other side of the table from the fact that you lost, and instead analyse why you lost, and turn that into information on how you could have won. This is part of the process of becoming a better player, and some people manage to skip stage one and go right to this.

The third stage, I think (I’m not quite there yet), is when you’re at the point where losing doesn’t feel bad. It doesn’t feel good, but you’re aware that it’s just something that happened. Maybe you’re a good enough player to know that there wasn’t a whole lot you could have done, maybe you can very safely say that you had a choice that was 50/50, but you had to make it and you lost.

Netrunner is a game with a bit of luck, and sometimes you just cop it to the face. And that’s fine. But it’s nobody’s fault, and you shouldn’t let it make you angry at your opponent, or yourself.

This is the stage everyone should aspire to.

I placed thirtieth at the 2015 Melbourne Regional. It took me nearly a full minute to decide if I was going to commit to writing that just now. But here we are.

I was doing well, but in the penultimate round of Swiss, I had two very tight games with another very good player in the Melbourne scene. I feel like both of these games came down to those 50/50 situations, and in each, I made the wrong call. I’ve thought back and dwelled on those games, and I’ve learnt from that.

However, my transitioning from stage two to stage three of dealing with tilt still isn’t complete.

As such, in the last round, I was barely paying attention. I played sloppy, and I knew it: I was tired. I was depressed. I was tilted. I honestly can tell you far more about round five on the bubble than I can tell you about round six. I can barely remember what my opponent was playing.

I went downstairs and helped with the video coverage and waited to see Wilfy make it all the way to the finals.

Then I went home and lay on my bed, stared at the ceiling and felt like a piece of shit for the rest of the night.

A few days later, I confided in Jesse Marshall about how down I was on my performance.

He told me he knew that I was determined to succeed. He expressed his support and his concern. He put things in perspective: If I’d won the penultimate match, I would have been top 16. If I’d won both the last rounds I would have made top 8. But the fact of the matter was I’d let my tilt get to me for that last round, and didn’t even strive to be the best I could be. I played just because I was there, because my goal was already dashed away.

We make a lot of jokes about tilt, about being ‘salty’ or ‘sour.’ But as I’ve said above, a lot of people tilting need to be told to pull their head in, to put things in perspective, especially if they’re being rude or abusive to other people.

But othertimes, people on tilt need support. I’d never advise attending a big tournament as a competitive player without a buddy. You need someone there to share bad beats with. You need someone to grab you on the shoulder and suggest you take a walk together so you’ll calm down.

You need a teammate. You need a friend.

Russell Cutting, a mate of mine from South Australia, has a deck box where he keeps his sleeves for Magic tournaments. On the inside of the lid, he has written: ‘Keep calm and enjoy this children’s card game. You look good.’ I think more of us need to echo this sentiment.

While I host a podcast with some of my best friends that is about celebrating competitive play, encouraging our listeners to challenge themselves, and being the best we can be, sometimes you need to remember that winning isn’t everything. Even though if you remove the drive to compete from the equation, the hobby seems far stranger.

Winning is the reward for all your hard work. It’s not something you ‘get’ because you’ve been testing a lot. It’s the reward at the end of the road, and for most us, that road is still stretching all the way to the horizon.

Over the past few months, tilt over various tournaments was stimulating my depression. This was really bad not only for me, but my girlfriend and my relationships with my friends. Keeping it in check is really important, and something I am continuing to work on.

For those of our readers and listeners who think we’re big, bad, tilt-fiend competitive players, I hope me sharing my personal experience has helped you see that it’s not the case.

We love the game. We love competing. But above all else we want to stimulate a community, and you can’t do that if you’re a salty, sour tilter. Nobody will want to spend any time with you.

To those of you who might know someone who has trouble dealing with their tilt, I hope some of my suggestions allow you to speak with them about it, and help them out.

For those of you who are reading who might suffer from bad tilt, I hope I’ve given you some insight to continue to learn from your mistakes.

Because that’s honestly what we’re really all about.

Brian Holland, (affectionately known as The Big Bad Wolf), is the host of The Winning Agenda Podcast. He may one day be a published author, but until then, he’ll wallow around, complaining about card rulings. But that probably won’t change even if he does get published. You can check out more of his inane ramblings on twitter @bwholland

Check out the first of our Melbourne Regional coverage videos.

In this first round, we have TWA’s own Wilfy Horig piloting his IT Department Control list, against local player TD running with a Contacts Kate build!

Each Wednesday for the next six weeks we’ll be posting a new video. So be sure to subscribe and check back in!

This is the second part of my article on the current Netrunner meta. The first part was posted over at Netrunners.co.uk and you should check it out here. If you’ve not already taken a read of this.

This part of the article will focus on what the meta looks like for runners. I am aiming to talk about what has happened in the meta recently, and what are some of the top runner decks. What are good counters to cards that are frequently within these top decks and about the decks that are on the rise due to the meta changes.

What I am hoping that you take away is what some of the competitive decks look like for each faction, so that when you sit across from one in a tournament you already have an idea on what it may be. Additionally, when you are at home deck building you will have an idea of what cards are strong against those decks.

The Meta Last Year
The top runners at the end of last year, were Andromeda with Datasucker, and Prepaid VoicePAD (PPVP) Kate. These decks were every where because they were the best decks for dealing with Near Earth Hub (NEH) AstroBiotics.
Quite a lot has changed since that time, with the Anarch (and Weyland) big box hitting and then some key anti Fast Advance cards coming in the early San San cycle packs. This means that a lot of Anarch identities are now competitive and there is a dominant runner archetype.
That archetype is PPVP Kate.

This deck’s economy is based on the PrePaid VoicePAD economy engine, using event economy at reduced cost, and then cycling them back eventually with Levy AR Lab Access. It is also able to run early and very cheaply, this is because it contains lots of tutoring and draw, and specific breakers that are cheap, Cyber Cypher as the classic example. This in combination with the multi access events, means this is a formidable deck.

Why is this currently the top runner deck? Well, in my opinion it is because it is versatile, it can deal with NEH AstroBiotics thanks to the large amount of multi-access cards it contains in combination with its cheap specific breakers that allow access at a reasonable price. It also has Clot, and this puts a lot of pressure on the Fast Advance strategy, and since NEH was the top corp archetype and is still a viable one, this is an important point. It can also deal with glacier decks because it can attack early before they are fully set up and apply pressure with the multi-access events. It can also deal with specific threats thanks to Atman and Parasite, and can generally always just find a way.

There are a number of cards that are good against this deck archetype: The first is strength 4 or above Sentry ice. This is because the decks main sentry breaker is Mimic, with Sharpshooter or Deus X as back up to break specific sub types, but repeated use of these tools taxes the decks recursion a lot.

Cards such as Susanoo-No-Mikoto which are over strength 4 and do not have the Destroyer or AP sub types are the best counter. Barrier ice with multiple sub routines are also extremely good against this deck because it is reliant on Lady which will run out of counters and tax the decks recursion, therefore cards like NEXT Silver and Ashigaru are good, as is simply stacking cheap barriers.

Another card that is good against this deck is Crisium Grid. This is because a lot of the Shaper multi access is event driven and this card turns off the threat from The Makers Eye and Indexing if you can keep it on the board.

Finally, a recent popular counter that has come up is Blacklist, which stops the Shaper recursion, this is very strong if the Kate deck is using Scavenge and Clone Chip to reset their Cyber Cypher and Lady.

It is worth noting that most of these counters to this archetype are likely not permanent solutions. The deck is versatile and will find a way around most of these problems given enough time, however the addition of these cards will often give you scoring opportunities or prevent your R&D quite so much.

Other Shapers

I think there are a number of other Shaper decks that are also very competitive, if these are top tier is another question, and maybe the answer is no. They are often less played so it is hard to get a true answer, and I’ve done limited personal testing. That being said, I’m still seeing rogue Chaos Theory and Exile decks placing well in some competitive tournaments, so it’s something to consider.

Criminals

Andromeda Datasucker decks were probably the best decks for competitive play in 2014, and while they are not the unstoppable force they were, they are still definitely a force to be reckoned with.

A few things changed to take the top slot away from Andromeda; the first is the move away from pure End the Run ice and into a more taxing set up; high strength Barrier ice is still expensive to break; Lotus Field and higher strength code gates mean that Yog.0 isn’t as effective and there is a need for another code gate breaker which takes up precious influence and isn’t as efficient. Finally, the multiple sub routine Sentry Ice run by Jinteki again added a tax to a deck that was all focused on efficient runs.

However, Andromeda decks are still seen at the top, they just aren’t as common/dominant. They have also evolved, using Stealth to retain the efficient runs. Some decks go all in on the Stealth aspect, others are much more a kin to the original Datasucker builds but using Switchblade to deal with taxing Sentry ice and Yog.0 as their primary and another Decoder to deal with high strength problems.

Many of these decks are not a million miles away from the Andromeda Datasucker decks of the past year, therefore (and because of my love of the ID) I’m going to talk about the newest Criminal: Leela Patel, is in my opinion a top tier runner ID and one that has been seeing significant success.

Here, (and with no bias on the deck selection), is a sample Leela Patel deck.

This deck is strong because of its simplicity; it has a large number of economy cards and a large number of breakers and tutoring. The plan for the deck is simple, which is to get an economy up and running and apply pressure while building your rig as you need it. If you score or the Corp scores during the game it will traditionally open up an opportunity for an Account Siphon, or a multi access run of some kind. Because of this threat rushing out an early agenda against Leela is very difficult to do without doing a lot of damage to the corps defences. It also means that decks with high agenda counts are badly handicapped and they are very susceptible to Leela’s ability snowballing, and their entire board position unravelling, though it is possible for this to happen to any corp.

This deck is not well positioned to deal with strength 4 or above sentry ice on a regular basis, as its only pumpable ice breaker which is permanent is Femme Fatale. Taxing ice such as the NEXT suite or high strength ice like Eli and Viper all cause this deck problems as they are extremely taxing to break and not susceptible to Emergency Shutdown like more expensive ice. If the ice becomes too taxing to allow regular runs then this deck falls back on big digs following agenda scores or steals, so protecting R&D, ideally with an upgrade such as Ash or Caprice, and archives is important to cause lock out.

Why am I giving away secrets about my favourite deck???

Anarch

The Anarch faction was, in my opinion, the weakest one for most of the games life, and I imagine that the meta would have been even healthier than it was if the Anarch cards had come out when the Criminal big box was released. Regardless of random speculation, since Order and Chaos, the red faction has definitely been doing well.

We saw a lot of MaxX decks in the early days after, focused on using Eater and combining it with cards that replace access such as Keyhole and Account Siphon. Then we saw a more standard build using good cards and using MaxX’s ability as a form of tutoring, which the World Champion has been behind, and had a lot of success with.

Interestingly, I think that Valencia is the runner of the moment, and she has really evolved out of the move away from AstroBiotics and towards glacier. She is a runner who has come to strength, in my opinion, as a response to the current meta. What is great about Valencia is that there are a number of different builds available, one of which has a great article written about it by Alex White (VinegaryMink)which you should check out here. Another version of Valencia to check out is the one run by Joey McMillan to second place at the London Regional.

Now, both of these decks are different in their play style, but both have things that make them strong in the current meta. Firstly, they are running economy denial in the form of Vamp, this is a play that has come about because of the strength of Replicating Perfection, which relies on its economy to play Psi games on cards such as The Future Perfect and Caprice Nisei. By stopping the corps ability to play Psi games or rez ice it allows for the stealing of critical agendas and trashing of important upgrades. The good thing about Vamp is that it is not just a card that helps against RP but is good against most glacier decks, its weaker against aggressive and fast advance decks such as NEH but is still useful.

One of the key Valencia cards is Blackmail: This is extremely strong as without a defensive upgrade such as Ash or Caprice, or a way of rezzing ice without interaction from the runner, it is possible for Valencia to get into any remote. This makes any agenda that requires advancing over two turns particularly vulnerable. As well as this strong remote pressure, this deck uses the combo of Eater and Keyhole to apply R&D pressure, this which is very effective.

There are a number of ways to make this deck’s life more difficult. Firstly, there is the obvious choice of Bad Publicity removal, while this is a strong defence, I generally wouldn’t recommend that you put this into your deck list unless it fit in with your general deck strategy. The other option is to use upgrades for defence, or cards like Executive Boot Camp to rez ice and protect against Blackmail, and this I would recommend as these cards are strong in most match ups in the current meta. Crisium Grid is a good card that hurts the Eater Keyhole combo as well as Vamp and is also useful in other match ups such as against PPVP Kate, so this is worth considering. Finally, cards that are strong against AI breakers are good includes in the deck, so Wraparound, Turing and in some decks Swordsman are a useful addition to your deck if it ties in with your overall strategy. Valencia is strong in a glacier heavy meta and I believe NEH AstroBiotics is a tough match for it, though if you are willing to risk it NEH is definitely something to base off your metas use of Clot.

Runner Summary

There are lots of great Runners at the moment, and I definitely haven’t mentioned all of the ones that I think I would consider taking to a tournament, just the top ones. There are definitely still strong MaxX decks out there, Noise is still placing well, and in fact most of the Anarch identities are performing well. If anything I would say that it is the Criminal faction that is the most stale right now for competitive choices.

It seems to me that the meta is in a very healthy place for runners, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t see these top decks around a lot as people are drawn to the good decks that they know work and are consistent. Therefore I believe that Crisium Grid, high strength sentry ice and good upgrades are very key right now and will give you a good edge against a number of top decks.

Do you think that there is something I have horribly missed and that will be the next big thing? Let me know!

Dave Hoyland is a panellist on The Winning Agenda and is the 2014 UK National Champion as well as a 2014 Worlds Top 8 competitor. He has a huge love of board games, martial arts and Japanese animation (Anime). You can follow him on Twitter @Cerberus__d

 

 

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On Our Agenda:

Quintin Smith from Shut Up And Sit Down!

This week we are proud to have special guest and fledgling Netrunner enthusiast Quinns join us all the way from sunny London! In this exciting interview, we discuss:

– Why Netrunner stood out to someone who plays games for a living
– The London tournament scene and community
– Quinns’ vision for Organised Play
– The ‘Intercity Friendly’ Team Tournament Quinns is running in June
– And yes, we actually spend a few minutes talking about flavour, if you’re into that

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On Our Agenda:

Gauntlet Testing 102

– This week we continue the discussion of Gauntlet Testing. Many players around the world are in the midst of their regional season. As such, with the help of playtesting expert Wilfy Horig, we go deeper on the subject, covering such topics as:

• Which decks belong in the Gauntlet? How are decks eliminated?
• How many people should be in my Gauntlet?
• What is the most efficient way to organise the testing session?
• Can I still test in the Gauntlet as a newer player?