Last fall, I wrote a post about wanting to get better at Netrunner and possible techniques for doing that. I’ve tried some of those ideas, I haven’t tried other of those ideas; I’m still pretty bad at Netrunner, still not managing to get back to where I’m winning half of my games in tournaments.

The main thing that I have tried is playing a wider range of decks: I tried out a Prepaid Kate deck and an NEH Fast Advance deck for a while, and more recently I’ve been trying a Whizzard Wyldeside deck and an ETF deck. And I’ve been keeping them around even after I’ve tried them for a while, and my coworkers have also been trying multiple decks, too. (And there are some decks we’ve been building ourselves, too: I worked on a Sunny deck for a few months, and a Spark deck that was in part informed by the NEH deck.)

I would like to think that I’ve learned something from that; certainly I’ve enjoyed having more decks around. But, like I said, I’m not actually doing well in tournaments. Though at least I’m starting to learn more about my weaknesses: on the corp side, I’m having a hard time getting the timing right, figuring out when to go for the score and when to hold back and make some money. And, on the runner side, I’m still too conservative, though there at least the decks are getting me trying out stuff that I wouldn’t have tried out before.

 

Given all that, I think there are two clear next steps if I want to work on getting better: 1) play more, including playing a lot of people online; 2) go over games, ideally with experts, so I can figure out when I’m making poor choices at the table. But, of course, both of those take time; and, honestly, I don’t think that’s where I want to spend my time right now.

Which doesn’t mean that I don’t want to spend time on Netrunner: I like it a lot! It’s more just that the current amount of time that I’m spending feels like the right amount to me, and in particular I don’t want it to take up more more of my weekend / evening times. That means that I’m not going to get better as much as I could otherwise, and in particular that I won’t catch up with more serious tournament players; I’m okay with that.

And one thing I really do like about netdecking is that it breaks me out of the rut of “I want to try out a new deck, but that means that I have to find time to build one.” Like this weekend, I wanted to build a Palana deck; I didn’t really have the energy / time to do so, however, but I had enough energy to browse a few decks and assemble one. And it’s been super fun playing that deck this week, I might even take it to regionals. So really it’s about acknowledging how much energy I have for what, and using that awareness to figure out how I’ll enjoy my time the most.

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