Facechecking Nationals - Part 3 (Go Big Or Stay Home)

Continued from Facechecking Nationals - Part 2 (7 Rounds for 7 Agendas)

After the last round had finished, Paul and I jumped in his car and drove to the hotel - fully planning to drop the stuff off and go and meet some people for a well needed drink. Unfortunately we got to the room, and by the time I'd found out where everyone was meeting I was pretty much asleep.

For the second day, I walked around catching pokemon while Paul made some rapid adjustments to his Corp deck, and built a whole new Runner deck before heading over to play some side games. We only ended up playing one as the four of us decided to play a double elimination format, which as one of the four was a new player took a total of 3 hours! I came second, but the winner (Matt) had already got everything you could get with one winner ticket, so he gave it to me and I got myself an alt-art Political Operative to go with the alt-art Chronos Project we all got for entering the main event itself.

All in all, I have had a most excellent adventure... I met some awesome people, caught up with a few of the MK crew that I'd met before, and played more Netrunner than I usually do in a month.

What's next? My goal for the next year are:

1. Hit the top 50% of a Winter GNK event. It looks like my local events are near the end of the season, so I will probably travel about a bit to get lots of practice and the best chance of hitting my target. 
2. Get comfortable with factions I don't usually play. Next I'll be going for Criminal and NBN, as I don't think I've ever played either and they were the decks I had biggest problems against.
3. To take part in at least 2 regionals, and get more wins than I do losses.
4. Next year for Nationals... I want to reach the top 64. I know it's going to be difficult, but if I can win 2 more games over the course of the day then it's achievable.
5. Use this blog to tracking my progress, and record all the things I learn along the way.

Again a massive shout to Rasmus, Alex, Joseph, Damien, Ben, Leigh and Andy - thanks for being great opponents - and to the TOs and judges from the weekend for doing a stirling job.

Oh and thanks to Paul for a) driving me there and b) getting started in this crazy hobby with me :)

Facechecking Nationals - Part 2 (7 Rounds for 7 Agendas)

Continued from Facechecking Nationals - Part 1 (The Road To Birmingham)

At this point the tournament starts, and I sit down to face my first opponent...

Game 1 vs Rasmus - IG/Wizzard

Turns out to beat Prison IG, I need to get into archives to flip the face down cards - so Eater won't do the job*. Started burning through my deck hunting for a blackmail, and then he dropped Genetics Pavilion and even with Sports Hopper I was limited to 4 cards a turn (2 on mine, 2 on his). I rather quickly died to Bio-Ethics Association, and then discovered all my Blackmail was in the bottom 10 cards of my deck. Sad face.

* Although apparently I was wrong about this... could have done with knowing it on Saturday!

Wizzard vs Tennin went better, and I managed to Fast Advance out 4 points before he double-Medium-dug me down to the bottom of my deck and stole 7 points before I could blink.

Rasmus then kindly went through a few options I might have missed when facing Prison IG in case I faced it again and we went off to wait for round 2.

Result: 0-2 (Rasmus finished 25th)

Game 2 vs Alex - Weyland/Geist

My Val deck did it's magic, and I found 7 points worth of agendas very quickly though Eater/Keyhole and Blackmail. Weyland struggled against the speed a good starting hand gives me, and I got my first win!

My game vs Geist however was my favourite of the whole day - such a tense finish against a lovely opponent. We were both on 6 points when he discovered a Future Perfect in my archives... along with 3 Shock! He lost the psi game and went to 2 cards. Drew up to 3, and ran again only to lose another psi game. As the agenda score would have won him the game before he took the damage, Alex decided to make one more run... meaning the game came down to how many counters I had in my hand! Luckily for me I won the 3rd psi game in a row and he flatlined himself.

Not only was this my favourite game of the day, but Alex was also my favourite opponent (and he had some very tough competition, as everyone I met was a pleasure to play against) so big shout out to him.

Result: 2-0 (Alex finished 155th)

Game 3 vs Joseph - Palana/Quetzal

A slow build up by Quetzal gave Tennin a chance to build up some tokens on ICE, which gave me all the time I needed to FA out 7 points.

Sadly in the reverse match, I missed a card being installed unprotected and didn't run it - the Global Food Initiative then got scored, and I never quite caught up from there.

Result: 1-1 (Joseph finished 106th)

Game 4 vs Damien - CI/Andy

Got to 5 points as Tennin, had a Biotic and Braintrust in hand... then got Siphoned into the floor. Didn't manage to get my economy back on track before Damien managed to steal his 7th point. Disappointingly close!

Employee Strike managed to disrupt CI for a turn or two, and I managed to snipe agendas out of a 15 card hand, but couldn't get into R&D to Keyhole and then failed to trash one of the two Jackson Howard on the board because I didn't have the money at the time. The next turn, his combo went off... and I lost.

Result: 0-2 (Damien finished 96th)

Game 5 vs Ben - Sync/Hayley

5 minutes into the match, one of the judges handing out the result slips told Ben how much he loved his decks... not what I wanted to hear!

Many desperate runs and a Turntable got me several agendas from Sync (including his Astro, complete with token) but eventually had to go Tag-Me, and then Exchange of Information switched my GFI for a Breaking News, and that was game over.

Playing against Spy-Camera Hayley I had a good start while he set up, had all the cards I needed to score out AND the money... but couldn't do anything against his clot. One thing I never got to practice against was how to deal with a Clone Chip > Clot threat when your opponent is on game point and you don't have a Jackson about... still not 100% sure how I could have dealt with it, but as it went to time and he had no cards left it was a very tense finish :)

Result: 0-2 (Ben finished 54th)

Game 6 vs Leigh - Palana/Ken

Blackmail and Keyhole did the job against Palana, the speed of the Val deck gives them no time to get set up and that's why I love it.

Against Ken, he just ran constantly and I couldn't ICE up fast enough to keep him out. Security Testing is a pain, it counts as a successful run but without him actually accessing archives my plan failed terribly.

Result: 1-1 (Leigh finished 138th)

Game 7 vs Andy - Biotech/Sunny

I got some lucky runs early (although did hit a Snare) but never let myself get below 4 cards as I couldn't remember how much damage the Brewery did! Eventually Keyhole dropped something that wasn't a TFP into Archives - I'd already seen how that might go in round 2 - and I scooped up my last few points from his bin.

Sunny proved that her weakness was a lack of speed, and without Shaper-bullshit to save him like Hayley had earlier in the day, I finished my final match with a sweep.

Result: 2-0 (Andy finished 140th)

So all in all, I finished with 6 wins and 8 losses, giving me 18 points and the position of 111th in 157 players - on the same points as the person who finished 94th, just with a worse Strength of Schedule (in fact the 2nd worst SoS out of anyone on 18 points!).

For my first ever Nationals tournament, and only my 2nd day playing someone face to face who wasn't Paul I'm feeling pretty good about this. If I can get my head around some of the intricacies (such as how to stop being Clot-locked) then I know next year I'll be able to significantly improve on my final position!

Continued in Facechecking Nationals - Part 3 (Go Big Or Stay Home)

Facechecking Nationals - Part 1 (The Road To Birmingham)

While I've been playing A:NR for over a year, until very recently I had only ever played against my friend Paul (who I played the original Netrunner with, back in 1999). In June we discovered a GNK was happening in Milton Keynes. so we popped along, only to get utterly destroyed. The two games I won that night were against him, and he didn't get a single win... but we had a lot of fun in the process, and decided to go along to more competitions.

So this past weekend, as you may be aware, was the 2016 UK Nationals.

Yes, my second experience of the competitive Netrunner scene was the biggest event in the UK because apparently I'm a bit of an Anarch in that regard.

Which decks to take? Runner was easy - my Val deck (Drinking The Pub Dry) was fast, resilient and above all fun to play but I just couldn't find a corp deck I enjoyed playing. I spent a lot of time trying different netdecks out, seeing what I liked amd how they worked (so I would know how to face them) but just never felt inspired. They just weren't as fun as playing my dodgy Tennin deck!

Discussing this on the Facebook "UK Netrunner" group, someone said to me:

"Take the deck you know, and that you enjoy playing. You're better off with an uncompetitive deck you like and have experience with than a top tier deck that you either don't like or haven't played much with"

So "Damned If You Do..." Tennin it was! I did make some fairly major changes to it, moving its concept from asset spam shell game bullshit to remoteless fast advance but it was still a tricksy deck full of traps capable of flatlining people who weren't careful and that's really what I enjoy about Jinteki. There's something delicious about the runner feeling like they need to make a run on your open archives to avoid you getting the free advancement token and then finding out it's full of Shock, Shi-Kyu and Space Camp... *evil laugh*

The day itself eventually arrived, and Paul picked me up at 6:45am which means I had to get up earlier for Netrunner than I do for work and we set off for Birmingham with 90 minutes to spare before the end of registration. Which it turns out was damn lucky as not only was every motorway full of roadworks, but somehow we'd both got it into our heads that it was at the NEC after getting there, realising our mistake and then driving to the ICC we arrived with 15 minutes before registration closed! Quickly writing out our deck lists (me because I'd brought a printed out email, him because he'd not done it) and having a quick smoke, the round 1 pairings were posted...

Continued in "Facechecking Nationals - Part 2 (7 Rounds for 7 Agendas)"