Even more murder at a packed and stacked Bristol Regionals
Ollie sleeves EAzmari and Crew Hoshiko for the first time--wins tournament undefeated.
South West Regionals 2024 (Bristol)
27th July 2024
Bristol, UK
50 Players
7 rounds SSS, Cut to top-8 (single elim)
Top Cut decklists are available here.
Regionals level events provide a middle ground between “super casual, but small scale” circuit openers and the “well attended, but hyper competitive” nationals and continental level events. The result is a “competitive but chill” tournament that has forever been much beloved by the UK netrunner scene. It came as no surprise when tickets quickly sold out for this event—fortunately, this is just the first in a series of six UK Regionals that are happening over the next twelve weeks.
In what has become a familiar trend, faction preference at the event skewed towards HB (38%) and Shaper (44%), although not as severely as in other recent tournaments—other factions were all in reasonable attendance. There was a fairly normal ID spread. PD (9 players) and Kit (8 players) were the most popular choices, but all the usual names were reasonably well represented, and the field was refreshingly diverse.
EAzmari was the standout deck of the tournament, with a 72% [13/18] win rate, and 3 of the 5 Azmari players making the top cut (against a roughly 1/6 baseline). It was an easy choice of deck for The Process testing team, who were so impressed by the ability to assemble the combo by turn-4 that they even took to slotting Caldera as tech in Ashnikko. It’s difficult to think of a more compelling endorsement than that, and speculation about the need for an emergency Reeducation ban abounds.
The rest of the Corp Top Cut was mostly a broad mix of similarly lethal archetypes—BtL, Outfit, PE, RH all had their own kill strategies. Together with Azmari, and further developing a trend from East Canadian Nats, this means that 7 of the 8 corps in the Top Cut had murder in mind.
On the runner side, Hoshiko (2/6) and Steve (2/6) both converted well. This will come as a very mild, but not unwelcome, surprise to those that have been charting Hoshiko’s decline, as well as to those that have been despairing at the inconsistent performance of Criminal throughout the season. The untold protagonist and master grifter were joined by a cast of other Runners that (for the most part) represent the shape of the current meta (Esâ, Arissana, Lat, Padma).
Faction win rates echoed other recent tournaments, with HB the lowest performing Corp faction (50% [31/62] win rate, and no Top Cut placements) and Shaper only managing to win 45% [35/78] of their games. NBN (75% [24/32] ) and Jinteki (66% [23/35]) continue to perform exceptionally well, with RH (83% [10/12]), R+ (79% [11/14]) and Azmari (72% [13/18]) all giving stellar performances.
Hoshiko rallied at a 50% [11/22] win rate, while Steve is showing an upwards trend in both popularity and success (6 players, 52% win rate [12/23]). It was a good day for Arissana (4 players, 67% win rate [8/13]), but the highest performing runner of the day was Akiko (2 players, 86% win rate [6/7]) which narrowly missed out on the Top Cut by SoS.
What we see from the Bristol Regionals results closely mirrors what we saw at East Canadian Nats last weekend. Runners have found a way to counter the rushier strategies of HB, but, in doing so, have opened themselves up to the threat of being flatlined. Corp players have recognised this, and are capitalising on it in multiple different ways.
The net result is that Corp win rates at the tournament were at 57% [97-72-6] in swiss, and 71% [5-2] in the Top Cut.
Final Standings
Ollie (EA Sports) - Azmari [4-0-2] / Hoshiko [4-0-0]
not_yeti (EA Sports) - RH [4-0-0] / Steve [3-2-1]
AAshbo (EA Sports) - BtL [3-1-0] / Steve [4-1-0]
J0N4LD (TAI Breakers) - Ob [4-1-1] / Arissana [2-0-1]
Nemamiah (The Process) - Azmari [3-1-0] / Lat [2-1-1]
Hemraa - PE [4-0-0] / Padma [1-3-0]
Johno (The Process) - Azmari [3-0-0] / Hoshiko [2-3-0]
Lucaesia (QEH) - Outfit [3-0-0] / Esâ [2-3-0]
Raw data analysis is available here
24.05 meta analysis is available here
No longer does civility rule the continent
Anarchy reigns supreme