The winter season of Netrunner is coming to a close and the Common Ground Games tournament is the last one before the Most Wanted changes hit and Store Championship season comes around.
I took a Sol and a Whizzard deck which you can peruse here at your leisure:
Let’s get into it!
Round 1: Stefan
I was playing Stefan round 1 and he set off against me with Leela. I’d played some Leela with the deck and knew to be cautious with when to score. I mulliganed into a bad situation and it wasn’t long before he had 6 points on the table. I came back a way but I knew it was going to be a hard ask to win and I fell short. (Total = 0 points)
Stefan was playing Harmony medtech and I got up and running quickly scoring out 5 points as time came round for the end of the match. I had a last ditch dig into R&D and missed but got the timed win. (Total = 1 point)
Round 2: Peter
I was running first this time against a Titan deck going full on fast advance. I basically couldn’t do much about this one and Peter scored out quickly and efficently. Clot would have helped a lot in this game especially since I had an SMC on a Peddler that I didn’t fire. That change will come in the next version of the deck. (Total = 1 point)
On the runner side Peter was running Andromeda and much to my disappointment I didn’t get to hit him with a Sweeps Week. Anyway I built up slowly and successfully destroyed the drip economy he got going. Peter was running Peacock, which I saw in a deck later on that day as well, and I am really not sure about it as it made some of my servers extremely expensive to get into. I scored out in the windows between him building economy without too much issue. (Total = 3 points)
Round 3: Lachlan
Lachlan was also running Leela and I built up some big servers to keep him out. Took a while but I got there in the end scoring out a GFI for the win. (Total = 5 points)
I had expected to see more of this but Lachlan was the first HB:ETF deck I played that day. I didn’t manage to really keep on top of the economy meaning I had a bit of a hard job getting in everywhere. We eventually went to a timed win in my favour with us both missing the last points we needed by me not running R&D, hitting what I thought was a last minute Agenda instead, and Lachlan not drawing it the previous turn. (Total = 6 points)
Round 4: Gus
It was a long time since I had seen a NEXT deck but I knew what to roughly expect and what to hit. I used Parasites to great effect to keep the Ice strength and subs down on the NEXT ice that appeared and deep dug R&D for the win. I think I could have got it faster if I could have figured out how to install the second medium I had hiding away in hand, but I’ll take a win where I can get it. (Total = 8 points)
Finding myself against Reina I was dreading some Headlock shenanigans. An early error on Gus’ part saw him Queen’s Gambiting an Astro for me and I got a fairly quick score out after that. (Total = 10 points)
Round 5: vs. Ash
My win rate against Noise is very 50/50 and I didn’t do it right this time. A couple of misplayed Ice allowed him some quick scores out of Archives and I just never really got going properly. (Total = 10 points)
Against Spark with my Whizzard I was kept a bit poor but not too badly. I mediumed out for the win once I got going. (Total = 12 points)
Overview
So my Corp went 3/2 and my Runner went 4/1 for the day and I ended up a fairly respectable 8th out of 23. I was really pleased with my runner play as it is somewhere I have been missing tricks recently. The change to Whizzard seems to have done me some good and I am really enjoying playing Sol. I am going to look at the ICE mix and I need to make the MW changes to my Whizzard deck. That is proving hard at the moment as I have a lot of tough choices to make and I really need to fit the Clot in. I’ll be taking the new decks to my first Store Championship of the season this coming weekend so expect a follow up report then.
Big thanks to all at Common Ground games which is an amazing venue you should all visit.