Life on the NET # 11

Hello people,

So, back down to Warboar yesterday for my third Store Championship and the best day of competition Netrunner that I've had to date. Running tweaked NBN Sparks and Criminal Ken I scored 7 Prestige across five rounds, only blanking in the final round.

As much as that's my best performance to date it was more that I felt far more comfortable in the environment and enjoyed all of my games, taking something from each of them, against some good opponents, both as people and players.

As a side note I've noticed that Netrunner players, probably card gamers as a whole, are a slightly different different breed of geek / need.  Having had this discussion with a couple of gaming buddies we think it's because of the inherent game mechanic being very maths based. Unlike any dice based game the only true variable is card draw, which itself can be manipulated / tutored. There's a strong theme of resource management and a strong theme of "efficiency" to all aspects of gameplay.

I also read an excellent article on Netrunners.co.uk by Iain Reid in the week about induction, making the best possible conclusion from observable facts. For Netrunner the ID of opponent, game state, plays made etc. Very obvious once pointed out to me but isn't that alway the way. Not only did it make me more of my opponent's play it also made me think about what mine says. As such a set of Data Ravens went into Sparks. I know I'm not trying to kill, but you don't ;)

And this is what I really enjoyed about the day, the feeling that I'm making the transition from Unconcious Incompetence to Concious Incompetence and the improvement in my gameplay that's come from that. I've had a few post game compliments about my play recently which have, naturally, been very pleasing. Not the reason I play but motivational nonetheless.

As to the actual games I split a lot winning my first two Corp then drawing an winning as Runner. Ken was definitely more consistent with all but my last game being very close. Sparks either did what it needed to or flooded my hand with Agendas and Upgrades, TWICE, to hamstring me horribly.

Both will be going to Dark Sphere next Sunday with a few more tweaks. After that I want to try Wayland-Argus and maybe something Jinteki at which point NBN will be given a rest as I haven't played any other Corp. Ken will definitely stay for the forseeable, I really enjoy him, but I want to give Anarch a go.

Definitely want to have two Corp and two Runner decks in circulation as it seems that I rather enjoy this game :)