Ob cleans up at Reading District Championship

Weyland dominance opens the way for a surprise Steve win

Reading District / UK South-East Regionals
8th March 2025
EMEA / UK
43 Players
7 rounds SSS, Single Elim Cut to Top-8

You can watch the Swiss and Top Cut streams on KakuRainbow’s youtube channel

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Another sold-out event, and the third in a series of eight UK district championships. Reading and Oxford (aka ReadOx) are the ancestral home of competitive netrunner in the UK, and have a long history of selling out similar events, and even overspilling into emergency venues. No surprise, then, to see a large number of sharks gather at the Reading District Championship to compete for a megacity bye, for glory!, and for a wooly mammoth playmat.

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Ob favoured in Hoshiko and Lat matchups

It was another excellent day for Weyland players. Ob did fantastically well (61% win rate, 2.44x conversion) and propelled a number players immediately and directly to the top of Swiss. Eminent + Archer (aka Facet) was the flavour of choice for J0N4LD, MrVellis and VinegaryMink, while Goeshi preferred a more glacier build, and Cornelius made it into the Top Cut with a pure fast-advance variant.

HB (51% win rate) and Jinteki (52% win rate) each managed to send one player into the Top Cut—DullBulb on Amani Sports and Fi on Loud PE. NBN (40% win rate), meanwhile, did not. Azmari (54% win rate) performed reasonably okay, but NEH (33%) did unusually poorly. Typically an under-represented dark horse, on this occasion the beanstalk attached broadcast center was able to find some wins Lat, but not against Hoshiko.

While Ob was the clear—and only—high performer at this tournament, it is worth saying that the super massive container ship’s performance was not entirely consistent. Similar to PE, it was just as likely to be found at the bottom tables as it was at the top.

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Disruption essential to all top Runners

The ID make up of this tournament is reminiscent of larger events from before the release of Trick Shot—with Anarch taking up half of the field, and the other half split between Shaper and Criminal. Hoshiko, Lat, and—to a lesser degree—Sable were the preferred ID options. Some may consider this a tad bland, but there continue to be a number of popular flavours for each of these IDs, and the decks that made the Top Cut were reasonably spicy.

In particular, there was a curious amount of Hermes to be found—and not at all where you might expect to find it. Hemraa splashed the irritating iconic Criminal console into Freedom for maximum disruption, while Fi splashed it into Lat to force hurrying Corps to slow down and play at a pace more suited to the general Shaper game plan.

Worth noting that, while Mulch was still reasonably popular, all three of the Hoshiko in the Top Cut were instead playing Arruaceiras Crew—a breaking solution that removes rezzed ICE from the board, setting the Corp back by several turns. It is also worth noting that although Hoshiko had no trouble at all in beating HB (winning 6 of 7 games) and NBN (7 / 8), and only minimal trouble beating Jinteki (5 / 8), our favourite magical girl really struggled into Weyland—winning just 3 of 14 games. In fact, this matchup, as well as a favoured Lat matchup, are the primary reasons why Ob did so well at this event.

With easy access to Emergency Shutdown and Diversion of Funds, Steve (67% win rate, 2.69x conversion) is also an ID that threatens to disrupt the Corp board state. Both Steve players did very well, with DullBulb winning the event, and Meathir coming in 12th. If you remember, we also saw Steve find unusual success at the recent London District Championship. While this is almost certainly a local meta phenomenon, it could also be a compelling response to the growing success and popularity of Weyland—against which Steve tends to perform particularly well.

The overall Corp win rate was 53%, increasing to 57% in the Top Cut.

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Player Interview: DullBulb

Reading District Champion 2025

DullBulb played his first ever game of netrunner using the original FFG core set at the very end of 2023. He was introduced to the NSG card pool in early 2024 by HalfHusky, who posted on the (moribund) Netrunner Wellington Facebook page while they were visiting New Zealand. Since then, DullBulb has relocated to London, and is taking the UK competitive scene by storm.

First Tournament: London District 2025

I asked him about his deck choices, and the secret to his success.

Netrunner is absolutely everything I love about games, and when I think something is good I like to be good at it. I have a generally decent grasp of card game strategy from playing HearthStone, but Netrunner is on another level. I think of a Netrunner game as a political interaction. There is calculation and tactics, but the more important thing is that there is a real person across the table. Netrunner is a hard game to math out and solve, so people follow their instincts and their internal principals when playing. Where they like to run, if they're happy to face check, if they're bold enough to bin an agenda, these are all things that are communicated through gameplay and body language. It's not really about drawing good hands and having good matchups—although that helps—it's about playing lines that challenge your opponents expectations and using their own habits against them.

Deck Choices: Amani Sports and Bankhar Steve

I like being good at the game more than I like winning, so these decks are both instances of me finding what I like and then grinding it until I'm happy with my own level of competence. That's why there are zero card changes between London and Reading districts—because I want to be as good as possible with exactly these decks.

This Sportsmetal deck was decklist of the week a while ago, and I enjoyed how fast it could play and how varied each game would play out. More iced servers and being able to feed the Runner agendas means more complex ways to interact with and exploit the Runner's habits. The list was kinda bad originally, and the luminal ban almost killed it, but I think this exact suite of cards is pretty much perfect and I'd be surprised if I found a decent change before rotation. I love that it puts tempo first and foremost, and the amount of actions it can take can present an enormous number of threats that force the runner to interact with every part of the game—unlike pure asset spam, which I don't like.

The Steve deck is just standard Bankhar Steve, but with a boomerang swapped for an Emergency Shutdown, because I think e-shutdown is really good against what I expect to lose to—Archers and Anansis. I changed the Paragons to Pennyshavers to be better into assets… and also to save me from having to proxy more FFG cards. I love it because it's high autonomy and has many cool choices that can punish Corps—so long as you stay one step ahead of them.

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Final Standings

1. DullBulb - Sports [5-0-0] (Amani) / Steve [4-1-1] (Bankhar)

2. Hemraa - Outfit [3-1-0] (Punitive) / Freedom [4-2-0] (Hermes)

3. J0N4LD (TAI Breakers) - Ob [4-0-1] (Eminent) / Arissana [3-1-0]

4. MrVellis (SCRUBS) - Ob [3-0-0] (Eminent) / Hoshiko [4-1-1] (Aniccam + Crew)

5. VinegaryMink (The Process) - Ob [2-3-0] (Eminent) / Hoshiko [3-0-0] (Aniccam + Crew)

6. Goeshi - Ob [2-2-0] (Surveyor) / Freedom [2-1-0] (God of War)

7. Fi (QtM) - PE [3-2-0] (Loud) / Lat [2-1-0] (Pawnshop + Hermes)

8. Cornelius (EA Sports) - Ob [3-1-0] (Fast Advance) / Hoshiko [2-2-0] (Aniccam + Crew)

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The UK district championship season continues in Nottingham on Saturday 15th March!

Limited tickets remain, so get yours now!