Goodbye turtle, hello the dolls (4-1, 2nd @ Wuhan District)

Before the write up

Due to the Chinese distributor abandoning the licensing of FFG‘s Netrunner after the third cycle, Chinese players lost access to official cards with native language support, and official tournaments became nearly impossible to organize. This led to a massive player exodus, plunging the Chinese Netrunner community into a prolonged decline. Fortunately, NSG eliminated Chinese players' concerns about "official support". With an increasing number of old players returning and new players joining, the once-dormant Chinese community has rised-up again, now even reaching the scale capable of supporting events like district championships.

While I may not fully agree with some of NSG's card designs and decisions, I must acknowledge that this write-up wouldn't exist without NSG's efforts – they've done a really good job. Special thanks to the g00ru of Chinese Netrunner players 螺旋的风筝 and tournament organizer x0215hui. The Wuhan District Championship is the first post-FFG-era district championship, and it felt like a dream journey, making me believe that China's Netrunner community will continue thriving thanks to such dedicated players.

However, as the current standard format includes two FFG cycles whose cards are extremely difficult for many new Chinese players to acquire or proxy, the organizer adopted a special NSG-only standard format for this event with the 24.12 banlist, prioritizing accessibility for newcomers. This created a highly unpredictable tournament meta, making the meta speculation both challenging and fun.

About the special NSG-only tournament meta

Most competitive runner decks in standard format barely rely on FFG runner tools, allowing them to be used in this tournament with minimal adjustments. In contrast, due to the absence of many key corp cards and IDs (Sports, Asa, Ag, Outfits) in FFG cycles, I think there are only 4 IDs that are competitive and need to concern about after glancing through all NSG cards: PD, Ob, BtL, PE. Thus, despite not the the deck I am best at among all the decks I have prepared (Price Lat, Mulch Hosh, Crew Hosh, DD Sable), Crew Hosh becomes my pick for its robustness (it also performs well when playing against potential kill NEH). As for the Mulch, I personally struggle playing against super-glacier glacier with it, maybe it's just me.

The deck is basically the same as the standard crew hosh, but change the powerful FFG AI breaker to not that powerful NSG AI breaker, and the deck still feels quite good. The dolls is not that aggressive as the turtle, but it's OK since corps are much slower without rashida. In some cases, the dolls perform even better like sudden purge or scary Stavka in Thunderbolt, and 4 is the most comfort number of copies after bunch of testing on JNet and in local group.

Slots

The first version of the deck is 47 cards, but I found the early-drawn Twinning would provide extreme pressure on corps during several final tests before the tournament, and even a 49 cards deck could easily be drawn out in turn 8-9 with the help of our draw engine. Thus, I hastily added 1x Twinning and 1x Mystic to the deck, which turns out a mistake: I never installed the Twinning even once throughout the entire tournament. Also, I found the deck could easily be cut down to 45 cards after the tournament:

• -1x Twinning and -1x Mystic, as shown above
• -1x Fermenter, eco is not that bad
• -1x tech card based on the meta, but those two cards played really important roles in the tournament, and 46 cards is okay

Games

Swiss

• Win vs. BtL, crew two Valentão
• Win vs. Issuaq, Light the Fire! and Eye for an Eye to win
• Loss vs. BtL, can't draw the tool to deal with early double iced Charlotte Caçador

Cut

• Win vs. PD, crew two bran, Light the Fire! to win
• Win vs. BtL, crew one Archer and one Winchester, pressure on HQ to win