Arissana (almost) undefeated at ICC
Lisan al-Jaib!
Intercontinental Championship (Invitational)
13th July 2024
Online
16 Players
Double Elimination Bracket
Watch the action on the official NSG twitch.
Find decklists here.
16 of the best netrunner players from across the world gathered online to fight it out in a brutal double elimination format for the title of Intercontinental Champion. A week ago we introduced those players and speculated on their decklist preferences, but what did they actually bring on the day? And how did they do?
Runner
The TAI Breakers (Jai, Augustus Caesar, xiaat) and Amarum chose to bring World Tree Arissana, with a variety of different tech cards (Cupellation, No One Home, Lucky Charm, Light the Fire!). Regardless of the chosen tech, this proved to be a strong pick, with all 4 players making the top half, and Arissana winning 9 out of 10 games.
There were three different Lat decks on display: Sokka’s trademarked “boring” (control) Lat, the popular Swift Deep Dive Lat (Wenjong), and an unusual Pawnshop engine build with a very Pretty multi-access solution (Bridgeman). Sokka had a bad day—proving that it really does happen to the very best of us—but, otherwise, Lat performed very well overall.
In a surprise showing, Muntal Bost (ManintheMoon, Santa) bought a previously unseen Ayla list that spent 12 influence on Rosetta, and used it to tutor out Coalescence and other programs at will—effectively clicking for 4 credits, or getting a 2 credit discounted breaker install. World Tree and SMC eat your heart out.
Styx and jan tuno’s Esâ decks were almost card for card the same (props to jan tuno for managing to get the list down to 45). They used Spark of Inspiration to find and install Begemot or Laamb (discounted by Ghosttongue and Maemi). Testrunning played a very similar list, but with multiple Cupellation instead. Unfortunately, none of the Esâ lists got much of a chance to do their thing. Such is the way of the double elimination format.
DeeR played their signature Hoshiko deck—a very aggressive build with multiple Boomerangs and Finality—and did very well with it (3-0). Kikai played his favourite Bankhar Steve deck (unchanged from EMEA). Rielle played the popular Spark + Lobisomem variant of her namesake Kit. Finally, ryanbantwins played a hyper aggressive (and terrifying) triple Deep Dive + Swift Sable list.
The overall Runner win rate was 67%.
Corp
Amarum and jan tuno both played variations of facet Ob, with jan tuno swapping out Calibration Testing for Tranquility Home Grid and Thimblerig, an innovation cribbed from testrunning’s more glacier style list. Sadly, our favourite superheavy container ship lost all 6 games on the day.
It was a similarly disappointing day for Sportsmetal, which lost 4 of 5 games. Styx and Rielle bought slightly different variations of Nightmare Sports, while Kikai channelled his inner koga with a triple Amani asset build.
The three PD lists were surprisingly varied. MainintheMoon went undefeated (as Corp) by importing Sudden Commandment into a Midnight-3 build. Xiaat went 1-1 with a very traditional skunk void build. Ryanbantwins, however, cooked up something especially spicey, with a previously unseen fast advance build that uses harmonic ICE to secure centrals.
There were also three Jinteki glacier decks on display. Augustus Caesar and Sokka opted for Charlotte AgInfusion builds, whilst Wenjong, in a shock move that might have caught players by surprise if the tournament had not been open decklists, cut Punitive Counterstrike from his Issuaq. Unfortunately, Arissana made short work of all of these lists.
Two players who didn’t cut Punitive Counterstrike were Bridgeman and DeeR, who fielded classic Punitive RH lists (at 44 and 49 cards respectively). Both leveraged Boto to it’s full effect, but were only able to find the win in 1 out of 4 games. EA-zmari—another popular Punitive deck—was notable in it’s absence.
Santa continued his reign of terror with his signature Thule asset spam deck. And, finally, Jai went undefeated with Holo Man Asa—an archetype that has gradually declined in popularity since the launch of Rw/oR, but is bound to now recover some of that lost appeal.
The overall Corp win rate was 33%.
Final Standings
Jai (TAI Breakers) - Asa [2-0] / Arissana [3-0]
Augustus Caesar (TAI Breakers) - AgInfusion [2-2] / Arissana [3-0]
Bridgeman - RH [1-1] / Lat [2-1]
ManintheMoon (Muntal Bost) - PD [2-0] / Ayla [1-2]
DeeR (Snare Bears, QtM) - RH [0-2] / Hoshiko [3-0]
Wenjong - Issuaq [0-2] / Lat [3-0]
Amarum - Ob [0-2] / Arissana [2-0]
xiaat (TAI Breakers) - PD [1-1] / Arissana [1-1]
Styx (QtM) - Sports [1-1] / Esâ [0-1]
Kikai (EA Sports) - Sports [0-2] / Steve [1-0]
Santa (Muntal Bost) - Thule [1-1] / Ayla [0-1]
testrunning (NWE) - Ob [0-2] / Esâ [1-0]
jan tuno (QtM) - Ob [0-2] / Esâ [0-0]
Rielle (QtM) - Sports [0-1] / Kit [0-1]
ryanbantwins - PD [0-1] / Sable [0-1]
Sokka (The Future Perfect) - AgInfusion [0-0] / Lat [0-2]
Lisan al jaib!!!
scribbles in notebook...