CBI Player Profiles

An introduction to the Circuit Breaker hopefuls

Circuit Breaker Invitational Top Cut
26th January 2025
(25th) 23:30 PST / 07:30 UTC / 15:30 AWST
Online
16 Players
Double Elimination

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The Circuit Breaker Invitational is an exclusive tournament, with invitations awarded throughout the year to the winners of NSG sanctioned events—AMTs, circuit openers, nationals, continentals, and the world championship. It is an annual celebration of the end of the netrunner season, and it is, by its very nature, the toughest tournament environment that you could ever hope to play in.

This year, players divided themselves into three regionalised shark pits pods, and after 7-8 brutal rounds of swiss, the top 5 players from each of APAC, the Americas and EMEA will join 2024’s Circuit Breaker to compete for the title of Circuit Breaker 2025. With the same decklists still locked in, these 16 hopefuls will be spending the week anxiously testing their matchups.

So who are they? And what are they up against? And who will be our 2025 Circuit Breaker?

Thanks to Kikai, Jai, Xiaat, Alex and Aashbo for helping with the research.

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APAC Pod

1. Amarum (he/him)

4th @ APAC Continentals 2024
7th @ Intercontinentals 2024

If you look at Amarum’s tournament history you will see a lot of Arissana, which is hardly surprising for the mind behind World Tree Ari, almost certainly the strongest deck of 2024. But for this tournament, Amarum has taken the leap to Anarch. Going into CBI, The King’s “Nu Mulch” was tipped to perform well and clearly it has, especially in the hands of someone used to making most of their decisions mid-run.

Our Russian representative is obviously still keen to shuffle lots of (digital) cardboard. After a brief flirtation with Asa, he has returned to Ob—an ID that he both has a healthy set of reps piloting, and which has led him to a sterling Swiss result at the top of the APAC pod.

Runner Deck: Nu Mulch
Corp Deck: Facet Ob

2. abstracted (he/him)

13th @ APAC Continentals 2024
6th @ North Australian Nationals 2024

abstracted’s tournament results seem ever the more impressive when you realise that he only started playing Netrunner competitively in 2024, making him easily the greenest Netrunner player in this cut.

It seems that he owes some of that success to keeping things simple, and playing good to honest regular netrunner. Boring Lat appears to have weathered the banning of Trick Shot, but the Luminal ban has shifted abstracted away from HB and into the loving arms of glacier AgInfusion.

Sokka would approve.

Runner Deck: Boring Lat
Corp Deck: AgInfusion

3. Styx (he/they)

1st @ East Australian Nationals 2023
3rd @ South Australian Nationals 2024
3rd @ APAC Continental Championships 2024

Adelaide local Styx is something of an enigma, but one thing cannot be ignored: he loves Anarch, and continued to rock a wide variety of orange decks (Hoshiko, Esâ, Loup and Freedom) throughout the Shaper heavy meta of 2024.

QtM players have a reputation for piloting meta breaking decks, and Styx has played a lot of Core Damage Sports over the last year. We’ll have to wait until the Top Cut to find out if these decks have any hidden secrets.

Team: QtM
Runner Deck: Reg Hosh
Corp Deck: Asa Group

4. Toron (he/him)

11th @ APAC Continental Championships 2024

Toron may be most commonly known for his appearances sniping games on the Metropole Grid with a variety of decks ranging from top tier to top jank. This being Toron’s second cut at a major event makes him one of the underdogs to root for (especially if you’re a fan of Salvo Testing).

Runner Deck: Reg Hoshiko
Corp Deck: Core Damage PD

5. Diogene (he/him)

6th @ Canadian Nationals 2023
8th @ NANPC Montreal 2024

If you look up Diogene on NRDB you’ll get a lot of decks, you’ll also get a picture of a Montreal local with a habit of brewing some very off-the-wall decks. His CBI decks are no exception.

A PE playing three Punitive Counterstrike will definitely have caught players out during Swiss—we will have to wait and see how it bears out in open decklists.

Team: Dép Dive
Runner Deck: Spark Kit
Corp Deck: Punitive PE

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Americas Pod

1. Aruzan (he/him)

Netrunner World Champion 2024

To those of us not on the West Coast, Aruzan’s first place finish at the most competitive Netrunner event of 2024 seemed to come out of nowhere. Honing his play on the mean streets of the Vancouver meta, those around him could have told you he was capable of great things but without a Standard tournament win under his belt he wasn’t on the radar for most of the wider community.

But he sure is now. Aruzan’s decklist choices make it clear how unphased he has been by the recent banlist—he’s still rocking 5 cards over minimum deck size in Arissana, and he’s still Tag-N-Bagging Runners out of NBN, and he went undefeated in the largest Swiss pod of the tournament.

Team: House Hippos
Runner Deck: Worlds Winning Arissana (but without Trick Shot)
Corp Deck: Worlds Winning Kill R+ (but in NEH)

2. dranked (it/its)

2nd @ September AMT 2024
3rd @ NANPC Philadelphia 2024

The bogeyman of New England Netrunner has played in more tournaments in the last few years than many of the other players here combined, but is probably better known for its reputation as a deckbuilder.

Brewing sickening corps is dranked’s forte, and its current Outfit list is no exception. Its sporting enough cards to trash the runner’s rig that you half expect it to pull out a shredder and just drop its opponent’s deck into it. Outfit was an excellent choice into a field of Anarchs, who are not well able to effectively make use of the bad publicity, but with almost half of the top cut on Shaper we will see if this strategy continues to pay off.

Team: S.C.R.U.B.S
Runner Deck: Deep Dive Sable
Corp Deck: Rigshooter / Fast Advance Outfit

3. Sebastiank (he/him)

14th @ Worlds 2024
9th @ Americas Continental Championship 2024
1st @ September AMT 2024
1st @ Off The Grid 2024

There are a lot of decks in this cut that have been known to induce a groan but maybe none more so than Venti Ob. 74 cards of pure nonsense that has remained a constant meta pick for very good players throughout all of the season.

SebK has not only piloted this giant pile of upgrades into the top cut but he is also its original architect. In fact, he’s been brewing the most disgusting corp decks since before he was in Unband—you can thank him for Loki Ag—but it’s hard not to root for someone who won an AMT with Az.

SebK cooks—that’s who he is, and that’s what he does—and with such an impressive resume, he may be one of the most slept-on players of 2024.

Team: TAI-Breakers
Runner Deck: Diversion of Funds Arissana
Corp Deck: Venti Ob

4. benvelopment/bblum (they/them)

1st @ NANPC Philiadelphia 2024
5th @ World Championships 2024

Weyland has done exceptionally well at the CBI—there are six Ob players in the Top Cut—but do not confuse bblum for a fair weather Ob player. They have stuck with Ob through thick and thin, when the win rates were up (2023) and when the win rates were down (2024). Their passion for the ID is so strong that they changed their handle to a Weyland pun—something that not even J0N4LD, our other infamous big-boat enthusiast, has considered doing.

At this point benvelopment is Ob.

Their runner deck is a local brew, with a spicy 1x mechanocytes—which maybe tells you everything you need to know about dangerous the Pittsburgh meta is.

Team: Steel City Grid
Runner Deck: Inversificator Kit
Corp Deck: Circle of Life Ob

5. davz131 (he/him)

1st @ French Nationals 2024
1st @ Belgian Nationals 2024
7th @ UK Nationals 2024
7th @ New Years Showdown 2025

Quite possibly the biggest rising star in European netrunner, Davz’s choice to play in the Americas pod was because “North Americans don’t know how to play against EAzmari” and that appears to have paid off.

Having put down the Esâ that made him so formidable throughout 2024, he’s instead picked up The King’s “Nu Mulch”—all 49 glorious cards of it. Whatever deck he has in his hands, and however many cards are in it, playing against Davz still feels like getting punched in the head… repeatedly.

Team: EA Sports
Runner Deck: Nu Mulch
Corp Deck: EAzmari

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EMEA Pod

1. J0N4LD (he/him)

3rd @ UK Nationals 2024
10th @ EMEA Continentals 2024

J0N4LD’s incredible performance at UK Nats was attributed to him getting to play his comfort picks: Ob and Arissana—arguably the two most powerful, but complex, IDs in the format. Nothing about the latest banlist has changed his preferences. Take one look at the the amount of Weyland and Shaper in this cut and you will quickly realise that this really is J0N4LD’s world—we're just living in it.

J0N4LD is on an upward trajectory, but is yet to land a first place finish. Could this be his moment?

Team: TAI-Breakers
Runner Deck: Aesop’s Arissana
Corp Deck: MCAAP Ob

2. The King (he/him)

4th @ World Championships 2024
1st @ February and March AMTs 2024

Fan favourite and pilot of unspeakably gross decks, The King shocked audiences at UK Nats 2024 by resurrecting Mulch—a deck archetype that everyone thought had gone away with the banning of Knobkerie. It is hard to tell if we should be more in awe of his deck building prowess or his play at the table.

Since the disbanding of Unband there’s been an open question “who is now the strongest testing team in the world?” TAI-Breakers could well be about to give us that answer…

Team: TAI-Breakers
Runner Deck: Nu Mulch
Corp Deck: Reg Asa

3. pouchoflavender (she/they)

???

The Surveyor has no records of pouchoflavender’s previous performances nor any leads as to if could be a smurf of another prominent player.

By far and away the most elusive player in the top cut, who knows what she’s capable of.

Team: ESA
Runner Deck: Esâ
Corp Deck: Facet Ob

4. Bridgeman (he/him)

3rd @ ICC 2024
6th @ EMEA Continentals 2024
Top Cut @ Worlds 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023

Since his “retirement” from competitive Netrunner, Bridgeman has become a force for providing unexpected and successful ideas—such as the original Bankhar Steve and also Aesop’s Lat. From what we've seen of his corp he’s done it again, with a scoring BtL list that blends ideas from Facet Ob, Glacier BtL, and Jemison (?!?). Can you imagine what it must have been like to face this concoction in Swiss.

He may just be here for the love of the game, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous.

Runner Deck: Aesops Lat
Corp Deck: Eminent Domain BtL

5. Kikai (he/him)

1st @ East Anglia Regionals 2024
4th @ EMEA Continentals 2024

As well as his stats focused work as editor of The Surveyor, Kikai is best known for playing decidedly FUN decks incredibly well, as anyone who played as (or against) Fastbreak R+ will attest!

Kikai may have been playing competitive Netrunner longer than anyone else in this cut, but it's his achievements in 2024 that tell you why he's here.

When asked how he felt about his last minute switch to the Aniccam Crew Hosh that performed well at the New Year's Showdown, he said “It’s a good deck, and it solves a lot of the problems with Patchwork Crew Hosh in a very elegant way, but if I had known that half of the top cut would be Weyland then I probably would have kept playing Steve.”

Team: EA Sports
Runner Deck: Aniccam Crew Hosh
Corp Deck: EAzmari

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The Circuit Breaker

jan tuno (it/its)

1st @ EMEA Continentals 2024
1st @ Circuit Breaker Invitational 2024
1st @ Midlands Regional 2024
6th @ World Championships 2024
Fite Club Champion 2024

The reigning circuit breaker may be the closest thing that Netrunner has to a rockstar.

Known for its bold and aggressive decks, the figurehead of a competitive Netrunner family, nemesis to Augustus Caesar and who can forget the one time it made out with its opponent on the table during the finals of a regionals.

It seems that the 24.12 banlist has ushered in the exact conditions needed for a repeat performance with its fearsome Esâ and Ob.

Team: QtM
Runner Deck: Esâ
Corp Deck: Facet Ob

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Tune in on Sunday 26th January, from 07:30 UTC (23:30 PST, 15:30 AWST), on the official Null Signal twitch channel to watch these 16 contenders battle it out in a double elimination format.