harmonbee's thoughts

UK Netrunner Nationals

(This post was originally posted on Cohost.)

Axi the Axolotl plushie balancing a credit token on his head.

(Pictured: Axi mechanically cosplaying as Mystic Maemi.)

It's early morning and I'm sat blearily on a train to Cardiff going to the Pride in STEM conference as I write this on my phone. More relevantly to the title, it's been a few days since the UK Netrunner Nationals weekend and I'm still reminiscing about it. Since I was judging (and I don't want to publish the lists I played at Startup and President of Servers since they were not great) I don't have a decklist description to be sappy in, so instead I get to be sappy here in what I'm jokingly calling my ✨ UK Nationals Judge Report ✨.

A huge group of us travelled up from the Midlands to Sheffield for Nationals, with basically no performance aim (some people in the group were aiming for coming in the top half of the main event, I was lightheartedly aiming to win Startup again but was correctly not optimistic). A few of us had also formed a chill testing group in the literal days before the event, Quear Earth Hub (QEH, the spelling was not my choice) although no Nationals testing had actually happened in that group. Despite this lack of serious testing, our results surprised, well, all of us. (Look ma I wrote foreshadowing!!)

A trio of us arrived early on Friday to take part in the President of Servers team event - the eggbug-friendly team of me, Harper (@l0velace) and Fern (my partner @AceEmpress) with my flash of inspiration team name of Elizabeth Mills effectively used girl power. We did not win Best Team Name despite a barrage of compliments.

In this team event, every player had to play a different faction, which posed a problem for Fern and I since our decks at the time were both Shaper and Weyland. I cut a deal - since I was a more confident Criminal player than faer, I would play Criminal instead of Shaper and fae would not play Weyland. This is why fae built faer weird R+ a week before the tournament. By the end of the team event, Fern had lost only one of their eight games (with R+ undefeated), while Harper and I only won two each, carrying us to the middle of the tables. Given that we were aiming to put the mid in Midlands, this was a success! I also found issues with my decks which I can solve, which is still a good result (my Ob needed more economy, and my Ken needed more event multiaccess).

There was a "card art" quiz afterwards, which I was very excited and confident for due to my skill in the Gordian Blade puzzle (where you recognise Netrunner cards from their art). This confidence was matched by Matt, the literal art director at NSG. We were humbled more than I've ever been when it was revealed that the round would be on whether cards had flavour text, based on their art. My and Fern's team, Elizabeth Mills Was Robbed, came second.

The second day was a bit of a rollercoaster. Because I had missed judging at Worlds due to COVID, this was my first competitive level judging (I've judged a lot of casual level, being the local TO for a long time). Luckily, the TO Paul was super welcoming and helpful. Also dreadmaaw (Lew, who is Nottingham's TO and a good friend) was in a similar position to me except it was his first head judging experience, so we ended up shadowing each other a bunch - me helping with complex rules queries and him the OP side of things like game losses. It was absolutely the best way to get into competitive judging! Dreadmaaw and I are now officially judge friends (it says so on his playmat), which I presume is the highest title.

The other part of the rollercoaster was that my friends were doing really well. Like, really well. I had partner anxiety as I watched Fern hover at the top tables, knowing that they were only a few sweeps away from reaching the top cut, far beyond any of our wildest dreams. A lot of my other friends were also hovering bewilderingly near the top tables. This anxiety peaked when Fern was matched against Tim (Hello) - a close friend and the first person I ever taught Netrunner to. You can see the matches on Twitch, which also has some prime plushie stream content and the microphone gently picking up the conversation I had with them afterwards. It was especially funny when I said "I hope this bit isn't being streamed" and then was quickly messaged that it was in fact being broadcast. I nearly cried after the games!

By the end of the day, Fern had made a top 16 cut at one of the most challenging tournaments in the Netrunner calendar, with Aniccam Lat and last-minute R+. Tim came 19th. Zoe, who has been playing for less than five months, came 39th. Harper came 29th. The rest of our members still did well, but there's too many to list. This was the greatest result that our local meta had ever had, at one of the hardest tournaments we've seen in a long time. And people outside of my meta, people that I knew and loved from meeting them at other tournaments, were doing well too: @CobraBubbles with his super cute pink hair made top cut and not_yeti came 17th.

The big thing for me though was that this was a tournament where the people doing well weren't just those who've been playing since the FFG days - the people doing well were those who I knew and loved. People who I've watched grow into stellar players, people I've hung out with in late night discord calls, people who are queer like me. People cheered when Fern was announced as being in the top 16 - one of the biggest cheers that evening - which they deserved so much.

Those in my local meta in particular give me an immense sense of pride - I was a part of their growth, I've been one of their opponents that have hopefully helped them and inspired them to keep playing, one of their friends that have made deck suggestions. Their local tournament organiser, judge, cheerleader. I'm so proud of each and every one of them for showing their skills and bringing their passion to the game.

The final day was a little less exciting. I played startup instead of judging, which was fine with some good highlights. The first pair of games against Zoe were stellar and showed why she did so well on the previous day. The second pair of games were against a nice Ampere/Nova player who I swept. The third pair of games against Cobalt (from QtM) showed why they'd done so well in a bunch of tournaments by sweeping me, but they enjoyed the games which is key. The fourth set of games were pretty frustrating though - my opponent was obviously pretty new to the game so I lost the first game in a 50 minute slog which could have probably taken 20 minutes, and won the second on time.

Startup was pretty rough as a result - not just because I'd not defended by title, but because I'd done worse than hoped, and my decks weren't great. My meta call to bring a deck with lots of small ice to target Bankhar and boat was a mistake as I mostly faced reg Crim decks. Meanwhile, all the players I was friends with who made the cut were knocked out at the earliest possible moment - I was obviously sad to see them get knocked out, but they still did so well. That all being said, I still enjoyed Sunday because of the stuff outside of the games - hanging out with people I love.

And that holds for the entire event. UK Nationals is basically a chance to meet up with Netrunner friends and play some Netrunner on the side. And wow, my friends really did play some Netrunner on the side.

In true style, I played a game of Netrunner vs Fern in Kommune after the event - in our defense, I'd not played much Netrunner that weekend and she'd only played two games that day - which was a delight. I lost with my slightly-short-on-economy Ob, but it felt close (Fern had to pull off a double Deep Dive and find both SDS left in the deck to win) so I was happy with the game, and it made up for my rough final Startup round. I'm honestly really thankful she gave me that game, because it meant I could end (games-wise) on a high note. We also played a pair of games yesterday evening using her decks and I won both of them, so it was nice to see that I can play good Netrunner (when given good decks)!

This post has already gone on a bit, so I'm gonna be quick with the thanks.

#from-cohost #netrunner