Fake it till you make it (SoS 2023)

I played this going 4-1 in the NYC Sovereign of Subways team event! My team name was “I haven't seen Lost but after googling it it seems like it could be my kind of movie”

My R+ Experience

I feel like this title fully describes my experience playing this deck. Runners are overloaded with forks against an R+ who constantly installs cards. Is it Crypto? Rashida? Marilyn? Oracle Thinktank? Spin? Is there Amani somewhere? What is the ice? What can the corp have to follow up any of the above possibilities?

Present those threats! Force the runner to make tough decisions even if your draw isn’t ideal and you’re economically behind. It’s going to feel uncomfortable and risky but find the lines where there’s some amount of compensation in the worst case; usually, I’ve found naked Thinktanks or Headlines followed by an Oppo to be a good aggressive line when clawing back from behind.

Throughout this whole time, you’ll learn valuable information about how your specific opponent chooses to respond to the threats you’re presenting. Do they only run when they have a run event? Are they checking naked cards? How safe are they playing? This is where things are most fun because you can get away with some sneaky stuff if you can correctly predict how your opponent will respond to your moves. Speaking of fun…

No Funhouse, No Fun

In my view, this style of R+ deck needs Funhouse. Pre-tagme, it’s simply the best ice because it is taxing for the runner almost regardless of what they have and it gives you an R+ trigger. It brings a degree of resiliency and board play that I think is extremely important in an asset deck. The lack of Funhouse in the circulating R+ lists personally confuses me a lot but perhaps there’s a significant play-style difference that I don’t fully understand here.

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The event was streamed on The Métropole Grid. I play this deck on stream in Round 1 and Round 5. I feel both of those games illustrate some of the above points very well, especially in Round 1 where the runner’s turn prior to me scoring Bellona was exactly what I predicted might happen following my install pattern. I was very behind all game following a rough start and it was quite the uphill battle. If you do watch that game, I try to play Oppo twice mistakenly thinking I was able to 😅; in person Netrunner is hard sometimes. Also, at the end, the Spin shuffle was because Bellona on top and I reveal the agenda because a last click run on R&D was initiated which just makes for an exciting final access

Shoutouts

Huge shoutout to kysra for organizing a great event! Thank you to my team @meetingadjourned and @OnTheNightrain for being amazing teammates. Flying to NYC and hanging out with so many wonderful people was the best way to spend 5 days! This game’s ability to bring people together never ceases to amaze me ❤️