Liberate your clicks - Americas continentals winner

syd7 704

This is the runner I took to win the Americas continentals. Prior to this, I had spent most of my netrunner career playing janky big-rig shapers and I had generally gotten tired of playing decks that spent most of their clicks installing cards and clicking pro-co's, so I set out to build something that runs as much as possible. This was certainly my weaker side, and was the source of my only played loss in the tournament (others were IDs). I definitely managed some favourable pairings on the day - I think its well-paired against Titan, CTM, and Asa, but I don't know if I would ever have beaten the heavy GameNet glaciers that dominated swiss.

I think this deck is most easily defined by what's missing: Liberated Account. Although it provides an abundance of credits, the click investment necessary to harvest one was exactly what I was trying to avoid here. The plan here is to get in the corp's FACE as soon as possible, and to generate value while doing it.

Also missing: Zer0 and Earthrise Hotel. I tired it with Zer0, but found there are enough cards you can't afford to lose to random net damage - often I'd find I was holding my last Odore while contemplating a Zer0 click, which was not a feeling I enjoyed. Furthermore, Hoshiko + DreamNet means that your first successful run each turn draws you TWO CARDS (also a turtle counter and a sucker counter and a TTW counter and it was a bravado run and you imp'd the corp's win condition).

More hot takes: Gachapon is as good as Zer0. I think my favorite netrunner experience ever is bravado facechecking ice and hoping Gachapon happens to pull exactly the breaker you need. Gachapon draws you three cards (you don't need Hunting Grounds and No One Home in this matchup) and installs one at a discount. Sometimes you just get to rip the Stargate on turn 1 and really surprise a corp that didn't ice R+D.

2x Imp was intended as a tech against Titan, but I think I'll just run them in any deck I can from now on. They often trashed 15+ credits per game of assets against CTM and Asa, and "trash an accessed card" is such a pattern breaking ability, it changes so much of what's possible on the runner side of the game.

Stargate deserves a special mention. Of course you know Stargate is good, but its key is that it lets you make a run without accessing cards, so you can keep applying pressure and flip back to your non-digital side to stop the credit loss from your ID.

This list is far from invincible though - Hoshiko asks you to run on turn 1, and without the LAs to build a dragon's hoard of credits, you're often vulnerable to HHN early. The deck is very efficient, but its hard to maintain a credit total above the 8-10 you need to resist most punishes.

This was such a great experience for me, and I'm really thankful to the NISEI team for running the tournament and the stream, and to my gracious and talented opponents all the way through the weekend.

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