Hi, my name is ... WT Ari [Overall #4, German Nats]

Hello world,

probably nobody knows me, so let me tell you a little about myself: My name is Micha aka MihauStunet, he/him, I live in Germany and have been playing Netrunner for about two years. At the beginning of the year I had a 6 month break from running because of real life, but I was registered for the German Nats (great idea!).

First of all the disclaimer:

I am an average Netrunner player with far too little knowledge of the meta. Decks I write are even more mediocre. Props therefore go out to TorpedoTyrus and OF15-15 for the R+ deck I modified and major props to all WT-Ari deckbuilders and an extra big heart to Jai, whose Green Paradise deck (LISAN AL GAIB!) I used.

In addition, I am unspeakably bad at creating memes, a disadvantage that should not be underestimated when creating NDB entries.

This will be less of a deck description and more of a small tournament report. Due to my break I missed the complete RWR meta shift. It made sense to me to play a Boring Lat and something with PD. Torpedo was able to convince me of his NBN deck, scoring is overrated anyway, and the deck looked fun. After my winrate with Lat turned out to be rather modest, I decided to give BigDeckAri a chance.

My love for Ari:

I played tabletop games (Waramachine/Hordes) for years before the pandemic. Ari feels like a paper version of my favorite caster (Haley2). Stuff happens all the time, interaction with the opponent here, magic trick there. Even though I'd go 0-5, at least I'm throwing programs at 'em!

The Deck:

After playing a few games, I noticed a few little things that I wanted to adapt to Ari. First of all, life as a Runner is dangerous. Since I certainly don't have all the kill options on screen, it seemed pragmatic to increase my hand size. Since the numbers up to 8 occasionally cause me problems, I also wanted to stop counting MU. Welcome aboard, T400! (-1 DZMZ Optimizer, +2 T400 Memory Diamond)

Jai also played a blue program that cost two influence and had some candles in the picture. A visually appealing card, no question. Combined with No One Home, it devoured 3 inf. Since both cards required knowledge that I lacked, I decided to replace them with a slightly simpler card. So we welcome the second Entangler! (- 1 -No One Home , -1 Cupellation, +1 Physarum Entangler)

The tournament/ Swiss:

G1 vs Quercia (Outfit, Sable) Fun games, Quercia crushed my corp. Outfit is one of the few corps I know well (since I played it myself for a while, shoutouts to Santa!), for Ari an excellent matchup 3:3

G2 vs gegenzeit (Outfitv, Kit) gegenzeit gave me some lasting lessons on my first tournament, many greetings go out! The Outfit game was pretty thankful for me (was just in the flow) and with Kit he unfortunately had little luck 6:0

G3 vs. Longi (PD, Kit) The game against PD was straight forward, there were no big surprises. I was able to trash an Anoetic early and quickly had my tree-nursery on the table 6:0

G4 vs. ryanbantwins(OB, Sable) I had taken a trip with Torpedo to last year's Belgian Nats, where we already got to meet Ryan. I was a little confused in the OB game. I hadn't seen an agenda for an extremely long time, I just didn't really know what to expect, boom, headshot. 0:6

G5 vs. AlPi (Mirror Morph, Lat) after my SOS was relatively okay, I asked AlPi for a 2f1 since I had a small chance of making the cut if I won. This shows why I had an extra dose of luck these days. I played against AlPi on Jnet two weeks ago, of course I knew the name, so I remembered the HB deck, and the round ended 6:0 in my favor.

There I was. Young, unsuspecting, with too much luck, in the first top cut of my life.

The tournament/cut:

To bring in a personal component: I'm not the most confident person in the world, so when something is important to me, I quickly get nervous. It was an interesting new experience to get into the top 8 of a big tournament and not have any expectations (a 5-5 at the end of the Swiss tournament would have been good enough for me).

G1 vs ryanbantwins (OB) Time for a rematch. I was well prepared, swapped a simulchip for a T400, DJ Steve for Stoneship. I knew that there was no danger from punitive and that the ice was rather soft. I picked two Agendas out of RD and got a The Basalt Spire from HQ, win

G2 vs AugustusCaesar (PD) it's fun to play against the people whose lists you usually read. The scoring remote was hard as a rock, I didn't get into the game, loose.

G3 vs. der Kaiser (Lat) a game I enjoyed very much, exciting until the end, in the end it was enough for a kill, win.

G4 vs. ryanbantwins (Sable) Ryan is simply a very good player and knew exactly what my NBN deck was doing. He played it well and deservedy won, loose for me.

With a bit of luck, the right pairings and the right decks, I ended up fourth, nice experience. l It was a great tournament, many thanks to the organizers, the judges, the helping hands and all the players. Awesome community.

See you, peace out <3

Micha