Runners find their footing at West Canada Nats

Corporations now barely ahead, as Shaper win rates continue to rise...

West Canadian Nationals 2024
15th June 2024
Calgary, Canada
25 Players
7 rounds SSS, Cut to top-4

Last weekend, while players from all along the West Coast were pulling an all-nighter to play in the online APAC Continentals, netrunners from across Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver were gathering at The Worlds Largest Game Store to compete for the title of National Champion of Western Canada. Including three-time national champion, and two-time world champion, Sokka.

Faction diversity was well balanced on both sides, with the now usual exception of NBN, which was only represented by a few committed Pravdivost players (3)—none of whom made it into the Top Cut (Prav had a 30% win rate). The most popular IDs were Sable (4 players, 57% win rate), Nuvem SA (4 players, 46% win rate) and Hoshiko (4 players, 16% win rate). None of which made it into the Top Cut either.

Both of the tournament’s Esâ players did make it into the Top Cut, and with very impressive swiss results (4-0-0 and 2-0-1). However, the quest for an optimal decklist continues. GhostMeat described the idea of building a 45 card Esâ deck as “impossible … you’re just throwing so much of your deck in the garbage. 50 feels fine.” Not everyone will be satisfied with this conclusion, but if it is possible to whittle this archetype down to a regulation size then no one has managed it yet—or, if they have, they are keeping very quiet about it.

As well as our fearsome Eco-Insurrectionists, PE, AgInfusion, RH and PD faced off against Lat and Kit. PD and Kit both underperformed, but the rest of these identities demonstrated very strong win rates. In a tournament of this size, though, that is probably as indicative of player skill as it is of anything else.

Overall Runner win rate was 49%, increasing to 57% in the cut. These results were buoyed by Shaper (64%) but—despite Esâ’s strong performance—dragged down by Anarch (32%). Criminal managed a middling 49%. On the Corp side, Jinteki was the clear frontrunner at 62%, with HB (42%) and NBN (30%) both underperforming. Weyland players won a perfectly respectable 50% of their games.

These are the highest Runner win rates that we’ve seen since the early days of the 24.05 banlist. Whether this is an expected consequence of runner lists improving with each tournament iteration, or whether this is a sign of stagnation in the Corp meta, we will just have to wait and see.

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Final Standings

1. Sokka (The Future Perfect) - AgInfusion [3-2-0] / Lat [7-0-0]

2. Ming - PD [2-3-0] / Esâ [5-1-0]

3. GhostMeat (Snare Bears, House Hippos) - PE [4-1-0] / Esâ [3-1-1]

4. Scottish Dave - RH [3-1-0] / Kit [2-3-0]