Medium Punk Rock (undefeated and 1st at Bristol GNK)

3N1GM4 364

I thought I might be able to play it cool and pretend that finally winning a GNK with at least 8 players was no big deal to me, but I'm just not cool enough, so:

Woman dancing

Having not really played any competitive/organised Netrunner in 2020, I took to NRDB to find something to netdeck and change slightly to make it strictly worse, but allow me to claim my place on ABR with my own deck instead of someone else's - an approach which has taken me right to the bottom tables of many a Netrunner tournament (as well as the bottom of one London canal).

I've always been an Anarch fan, with a particularly soft spot for MaxX, as evidenced by my range of alts:

MaxX Alt Arts

Before too long, I came across @Watzlav's Apoc MaxX which came 9th at Domecon and quickly set to work breaking the previously beautiful homogeneity of 3-ofs.

Dropping a Deuces Wild for a Rebirth was my first atrocity, but I have a box full of nice old man alts and I wanted to use them, so sue me. Next was dealing with Gachapon, as I've never played this card and when my opponents have been, it's looked awkward. I also wasn't convinced I had enough targets that I could happily RFG and my only install target was DDoS, so I went with a straight swap for Street Peddler, which has the added benefit of a little secrecy so your opponent won't know if you've got another Buffer Drive available, or can get a breaker out for a cheeky 1cred discount, all while possible dumping other bin breakers where they belong.

Finally, I thought back to previous Apoc decks I've played and remembered how often Amped Up had saved me and allowed an Apoc to get through. Without Same Old Thing to mitigate the risk of your Apoc in hand being lost to the Amped Up damage, I'd have to rely on Buffer Drive to be that safety net, but I thought it was worth it. I was too lazy to find a cut, so that's how I ended up on this 46 card monstrosity (for which I await condemnation from Chris @Nemamiah Dyer).

I was able to triumph over Argus, Azmari, Earth Station and GameNET over the 4 rounds of Swiss, in part thanks to some really excellent access "skill", for which I will again apologise to Ian @Algebraic Gallagher.

I can't offer an awful lot of insight into the deck beyond telling you it won games, although I did notably not use Amped Up all day, so perhaps that's a candidate for being cut, or more likely I made some mistakes and could have used it to greater benefit. Buffer Drive is the clear MVP in this deck, allowing you to mitigate the MaxX mill and recur back key pieces when you need them, whether it's grabbing a milled Apoc a turn before ending the world or after it's lost because you did some drugs I guess, pulling out a Liberated when MaxX decides you're not allowed any econ, grabbing back a DDoS because you like hearing your opponent sigh, or anything else you might want.

Anyway, I enjoyed playing this deck (although it might be less fun to play against) and it won more games than I usually do, so I guess it might be ok. Big thanks to Andy "Sixtyten" Parsons for putting on the GNK and to everyone who came along and played!

7 comments
2 Mar 2020 ilksvorbern

This is a very good writeup Ian. Well done again on your win (I can't even remember if I said Well Done on Saturday? I was very tired).

Even though my record with MaxX wasn't great, I 100% agree: Buffer Drive was fantastic.

One possible benefit of Gachapon: Shuffle the deck, allowing potential earlier access to non-milled cards?

2 Mar 2020 Havvy

Congratulations Ian! Loving the write up, tempting me to the Apoc side!

2 Mar 2020 3N1GM4

Thanks @ilksvorbern, that's a good point about Gachapon too, having a shuffle effect is definitely valuable when playing Buffer Drive, which I didn't realise until now!

@Havvy - dooo ittttt! It's so much fun!

3 Mar 2020 Saan

You were wary of Gachapon for fear of lack of targets, so you throw Street Peddler into a deck with 19 events. You absolute madman.

Seriously, though, grats on your performance! I think Apoc is great right now, barring some Earth Station builds. Question, though, and it's the same question I asked Watzlav here in Berlin, so I'm curious about your answer as well. How was Hacktivist? It's always my first cut in Appoc decks, as I ended up doing in my Alice deck that I ended up getting 5th with. However, I'm never sure if it's right to. Thoughts?

3 Mar 2020 3N1GM4

Haha @Saan, yes, that's a very good point. I'll pretend it was a deliberately audacious move on my part rather than just an oversight, lol. As for Hacktivist, it mostly did work in order to clear Scarcity, which at least a couple of my opponents were on. Not being able to get a Liberated out due to Scarcity felt really limiting, so I think it's probably worth keeping on that basis, but if there was less/zero Scarcity I'd agree it probably doesn't do much. Out of curiosity, what was @Watzlav's response to the question?

3 Mar 2020 Japoco

Congratulations Ian! Gutted I couldn't be there on Saturday to witness the win!

5 Mar 2020 ilksvorbern

Another Gachapon interaction: DDoS in the bin, Buffer Drive and Gacha on the table. Can Buffer the DDos to the stack, then Gacha to install it for 1!