Congratulations to Man in the Moon, our 2023 Netrunner Intercontinental Champion, as well as to all twelve participants on qualifying for this prestigious invitational tournament! Man in the Moon defeated American Continental Champion rongydoge in a seven turn flurry of meat damage. Man in the Moon failed to kill on turn four when Angelique’s bullet bounced off of rongydoge’s Steelskin Scarring, but a Superheavy combo of trashing Marilyn Campaign and using Ob to find Reconstruction Contract, playing End of the Line to deal damage and get a counter on that very Contract, then using that counter to score an Azef that was installed way back on turn five sealed the deal! We’re excited to see what card they choose to represent themselves at next year’s championship, and it’ll be worth keeping an eye out for them at any tournament you’re intending on going to!
The past five weeks has seen four of our biggest tournaments of the year take place both online and in-person in Seattle, USA. It has been a whirlwind of new decks, putting The Automata Initiative through a gauntlet. Man in the Moon managed to leverage the set and bend this brand new meta to their will to take home the title of Intercontinental Champion!
Speaking about his deck selection going into this tournament, Man in the Moon commented “I’d been messing around with Ob for a while, messing around with the new tools” and specifically called out “There’s a lot of really cool stuff and I think Oppo fits better than Hard-Hitting News to some extent.” he got the idea for the Ob deck from a friend at his local meetup, claiming they had a janky deck, to which Man in the Moon responded “This is a lot less janky than you might think!” He then teamed up with 2020 World Champion Limes for a few games to finish off the final piece you see below.
After a series of extremely large Hoshiko decks have worked their way into the meta, Man in the Moon had the opposite problem. “I had one extra slot […] I can’t play a 44 card Hoshiko list. They don’t let that, they don’t allow that.” before settling on En Passant. “I had NRDB open, it was pretty late, and I had to get up at 4:30 […] Wait En Passant’s kind of fun!”
Between the eleven players, we saw eight different Corp IDs, and just three Runner. Eight players played Hoshiko. Please see below for all competitors’ decklists, but remember to also keep an eye on NetrunnerDB for the players’ own write-ups of their lists!
This has been an exceptional series of events! Our thanks go to the Organized Play team for running the online events, and a huge congratulations to Eric and Sam for a very successful in-person American Continental Championship! We look forward to seeing how this format shapes up during the coming Circuit Opener and National Championship events, and at the final event of our 2023 international Events season, the World Championships in Barcelona on the 13th-15th of October.
