Banana Bread Strats (14th @ Summer Showdown 🍌🍞)

This deck somehow got me into my first ever top cut, and I'm still reeling from that. My Deep Dive Sable deck (well, Sokka's Deep Dive Sable deck) hard carried me in the swiss rounds. I went 5-0 with it in the swiss. That deck is absolutely cracked.

This corp deck on the other hand is something I put together the night before the showdown.

I had no idea what corp I wanted to bring. In the last meta, my deck of choice was an RH List trying to Regenesis out a Jumon and then win with either Clearinghouse or insurmountable value. Unfortunately, the new Jumon nearprint doesn't work that way, so I had to figure out something else. There weren't many corp decks that were super exciting to me. I've been trying to make a midrange glacier A Teia list work, but it's not quite doing enough.

So I turned to The Egg.

I didn't want to play a grinder assets list because I don't find that super fun to play. Instead, I tried to make something in the image of those Loud PE decks from before rotation. After all, making clones is what AU Co. does best. The gameplan here is to start drawing cards with AU Co. and Cohort. It turns out that drawing cards is great. You need more credits? Draw some cards. You need to get rid of agendas? Draw more cards and put them in archives. You're about the deck yourself? Draw some cards. You'll find an answer. Eventually, you want to trash a Fuji and score it with Regenesis. Then you can do the same thing with another Fuji or a Longevity Serum and win. All the while, keep the runner guessing what they need to run on the table, and have the threat of Phật looming over them.

I would make some changes to this deck. Hybrid Release is secretly the best card ever. I want more of them. You can trash something with AU Co.'s ability at the start of turn and then immediately install it with Hybrid and trigger Phật. Scatter Field is a fun include to protect Phật and Cohorts, but you can probably go with Diviner and save the influence. Measured Response isn't really working. The dream is that you feed the runner a Fuji and some Stings in archives and then flatline with MR. Or maybe you use it for tempo to open a scoring window. I didn't manage to pull off either of those.

The night before top cut, I baked a loaf of banana bread. Netrunner is still a game we play with our bodies, and I wanted to make sure I'd have enough snacks to get through. One takeaway from this event is that it's good to play decks that have fast games. If you end the game with time left in the round, you have more time to decompress and have some tea.

The bigger takeaway is how lovely everyone in the community is. Yes, it's cliche, but it's cliche for a reason. Everyone was very understanding about me having almost the same screen name as the more famous Diogene. I got a ton of advice and support from people in discord. In the last day I think I've experienced the best of the Netrunner community in every sense of the word.

Aesops Tables Link

ABR Link

This deck ended up on the livestream. Check out the game here!