I won something! And Khan made it happen (3-0)

Sanjay 3561

My competitive accomplishments with Android: Netrunner are pretty lackluster. Before the last night, here is a complete list of events I've won:

  1. One league I did with some Delaware friends
  2. A Sovereign of Subways team tournament

In other words, I've been participating in Netrunner events for five years and in that time, I have never won a standard Netrunner event. Not a GNK, certainly not a Store Champ, not a Regionals, and not anything else. Here's my Always Be Running graph:

A graph with a bunch of circles and none of them suggesting I've won anything

It would appear that my tournament finishes are basically random, so you'd think that even without clucking like a hen, I'd be bound to win something now and then.

Well, yesterday I successfully random walked into a first place finish!

I already published my Khan list when I went 2-2 at a Store Champ, because pretty reasonably I didn't think I'd do any better. Well, now I have because I went undefeated at Kevin Tame's extremely excellent Hactivist Tournament.

A bit extra on the history of the deck

  • I initially was trying out this concept when Crowdfunding was legal, and the deck worked pretty well. Though the Crowdfunding and Aesop's together give you so much money that pretty much any runner deck would work well. So when we lost Crowdfunding, I tabled the deck.
  • At a recent tournament under Diversified Portfolio rules (each ID is worth a certain number of points and you can only have a certain number of points), an opponent (who has done some pretty cool decks themselves) kindly expressed some disappointment that I picked such a mundane zero point runner (Null). That was motivation to revisit the deck concept. As a side note, they are doing more Diversified Portfolio tournaments, if you like exploring weird decks, it's a pretty fun format.
  • I got some excellent help tuning the deck from my friend, and excellent Netrunner player, Laura.
  • The new Nisei cards, specifically Boomerang and Bravado, really help Khan, and so does the relatively new card, Tycoon. So don't let anyone ever tell you that the designers have abandoned our favorite bird-loving bounty hunter (unless they are the designers and they tell you they are only helping Khan by accident).

What should you do to tweak the deck?

The deck is really hard to modify because you have a 40 card deck and you are including a bunch of silly ice breakers. So good luck finding slots. But some cards that would be nice to find room for:

  • No One Home: Khan really dislikes Hard-Hitting News, but the biggest reason to include this card is because Khan is a skiptracer and this deck doesn't skip any traces.
  • Datasucker: Good with Aumakua. Good with running a lot.
  • Hunting Grounds: Good with Aumakua. Good thematically because Khan is a bounty hunter.

Some pictures of my process

Me, wishing I could build a Khan deck that worked:

Screenshot from music video Gengis Khan

Me with this Khan deck:

Screenshot from music video Gengis Khan

Jesminder Sareen:

Screenshot from music video Gengis Khan

11 comments
1 Apr 2020 I Am Jessica

Null is not a mundane zero point runner at all!!! Null is the greatest <3 Otherwise, this is great! How come no Inside Job though?

1 Apr 2020 Sanjay

@I Am Jessica To clarify: Null is not mundane whatsoever. He just was a bit overrepresented because he was undervalued at zero, which I assume was for thematic reasons.

There's no Inside Job because Boomerang is playing the same role. It's historically been a very good Khan card though and I just don't have the slots for it!

2 Apr 2020 Toper

Why is this writeup the one that made me realize you are the Sanjay of Cowbirds in Love? I have no idea, but I was a big fan of the comic and am glad to see that you continue to produce high-quality internet content such as these Khan decks.

2 Apr 2020 boreira

@SanjayYou are a shining gem in our worldwide comunnity

2 Apr 2020 Sanjay

<3 <3 <3

2 Apr 2020 ycombinator

How many times did you actually use Khan's ability?

3 Apr 2020 Sanjay

@ycombinator Pretty frequently. You install most of your breakers with the ability, unless you really need to pre-install something to avoid a facecheck. And once you have your breakers down, you use the Khan ability to install spare breakers to sell to Aesop.

4 Apr 2020 Council

I get a little bit Genghis Khan

Don't want you to get it on, with no other decks but me

5 Apr 2020 hcook

Why is aesop here?

9 Apr 2020 meta4

Any way you could play Cybertrooper Talut? Seems like it could get you lots of value throughout the game. Maybe cut a mining accident? Could also think about playing a second hostage to get both Aesop and Cybertrooper out faster.

11 Apr 2020 Sanjay

@hcook He's the main econ backbone. You play a bunch of spare breakers and sell them to Aesop. @meta4 That's a really cool idea! I think I'd have to play with it to really have an idea of what the impact of it would be, but it would certainly be fun.