Chatteris Drive By

Yesterday saw the second Android Netrunner event being held at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. Once again we would be competing over the spoils from the Spring 2016 OP kit.

The decks I'd be playing for the tournament would be my usual NEH with a couple of tweaks on the ice front, plus my janky Criminal deck.

My first match up was against Chris from the store/Warlords. You remember Chris he's the only person I have ever had a turn two win with. I'm just saying that because it makes me feel better that he beat me two nothing today.

Our first match up was my criminal deck against his Jinteki. I swapped from Andromeda to Silouette. With two Gang Signs out, scoring an agenda was going to punish Chris. And this bit of jank worked really well once in place. When Chris scored his second agenda I think it was, he only had two cards in HQ, both agendas! Which caught me up fast. Early on in the match up Chris quite rightly iced up HQ and Archives. Especially after I'd used Archives and Sneakdoor Beta to circumvent his ice on HQ. In the end Chris scored a third agenda to get the win.

My NEH is a tag/kill deck, with little tricks firing off the tags. Chris knew this and played accordingly, avoiding my tags. Which if I'd played my Breaking News better (as I did in my next match up) might have given me a win. Instead I just scored it as quick as possible to keep me in the points race, that this time Chris won.

My second match up was against a new player both to the store and the game. I was facing off against his NEH kill deck first with my Criminal deck. My opponent failed to ice up HQ! So I was picking off agendas, and was happily sitting on five points to one. My jank was working, I was avoiding being tagged. In all rights I should have kept the faith. Instead I did a reclass run on R&D to try and hopefully nab the winning. Instead I took tags, failed to get an agenda, and got murdered!

Our next game was Noise against my NEH. The runner scored a two point agenda Private Security Force. I scored a Chronos Project early in reply taking out about two cards from his heap. However I did land a tag briefly allowing me to play Exchange of Information. Yep I liked swapping our agendas over. Guess what the runner decide to clear the tag then. I had two Scorched Earth in hand. I just needed the credits and a tag to kill the runner. Wait if I played Breaking News properly I would have the tags I needed, and the clicks. I had enough credits to play the two scorched earths, and advance the agenda once, but was short a credit for the plan to work.

I installed Breaking News behind a couple of bits of ice ( that fortunately had been rezzed earlier), I advanced it once, and took a credit. I had the money I needed, I just needed the runner to ignore that server and think it was a trap. The runner did indeed ignore my server on his turn. My turn, murder was ago. Advance and score Breaking News for my first click. Two tags delivered. Click two play one Scorched Earth, click three play second Scorched Earth. Smouldering runner corpse on the floor.

My third and final match up was against the winner of the last OP event. Boy was our first game a long game. My jank was working to the max. I was cash rich, I got Femme Fatale out for free using Test Run and Scavenge. I was exposing cards. The old Gang Sign, Leela Patel combo was making the runner reluctant to score agendas. Leela had returned some ice back to HQ to help me get into servers. We were both sitting on four points each. Drive By, Infiltration and Satelite Uplink had helped me avoid some traps, and trash the odd asset.

But the game was drawing on! I was down to three cards in my stack. There was an installed card that had been advanced and was behind three unrezed ice. The corp had more than enough credits to rez them, I didn't have enough to get through. I used my last same old thing to pull back an Infiltration. Bugger it was an agenda. Game to the corp.

A quick time check, we had less than six minutes to get our second game in!

A tactical error and the runners lucky draw cost me the game. I had agendas in hand, so I put both my ice in front of HQ leaving R&D open! Should have put one on each. The runner naturally ran R&D, scored a two point agenda. I quickly scored out a one point agenda. I hit the runner twice with News Team traps on remote servers. Both were cleared and getting the runner nine credits in the bargain! Bugger. That was time and I'd lost. I had done well to be able to compensate for the initial tactile error, sadly my opponent had an answer in hand. A great intense, second game. Wow the pressure of time.

So in the end I ended up fourth in the tournament. I had a blast with my criminal deck. I got such a kick when the jank paid off. It was a fun deck to play. I've got it out of my system and can now return back to my true runner home, Anarchs. It was cool when I got the NEH murder in also. I need to master this deck and how I should be playing it. At the moment I'm making silly tactical decisions that are costing me games.

Such a great day playing Netrunner. Great, friendly competitors. Just great fun.

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