So, I had just busted out of the Warhammer 40,000: Conquest main event in 9-16th place.  I was disheartened but I had to think about whether I wanted to enter the Android: Netrunner event, which was halfway through the first round.  I had been looking forward to playing in the event, but it had been a long couple days and even though my time at the Top 16 table had been brief, it had left me emotionally drained.  After walking around for 15 minutes to try to let off some steam, I realized that I may never have the opportunity again, so I went and handed in my decklist.  I’m going to talk a little bit about my experiences in the Netrunner main event, but if you want to jump straight to the Conquest Wrap-up event, click here.

Netrunner Main Event

So, with my participation in the Conquest Top 16, I had missed the first round of the Netrunner event and had been awarded an automatic loss.  No problem.  I had no illusions that I would place in the Netrunner event.  In my first game I make a few mistakes but manage to sweep opponent.  In the third round I’m starting to find my rhythm and tally two more wins.

Walking to the tournament HQ to hand in slip, I think to myself, “Boy, that Assassin is doing work, I’m glad I didn’t take it out of my deck.”  Suddenly I realize that Assassin is not on the decklist I copied down from the web when I wrote out my list that morning before the Conquest event. I had reversed a few tweaks that I had tried and what I had online no longer matched the deck I had built.  The only delta is that I had an Assassin and an Architect in place of a 2nd Tollbooth and an Archer.  I knew that it was enough of an infraction to be awarded a loss in both matches and I felt terrible about my mistake.  I went to the judges and explained my error.  I knew that I hadn’t cheated, despite the error in the list, so I was happy when the judge was merciful and updated my decklist to match what I was playing.  Of course, that kind of subjective ruling can be problematic in competitive play, but I am grateful for their call.

Starting the fourth round, I knew that I was starting to make my way out of the loser’s bracket and would start to be facing better opponents and likely decks I didn’t have a ton of experience playing.  I only won my runner game that round because my opponent didn’t notice that I could no longer bring a clot out on the board after a hail mary Medium seige on R&D.  I was able to top deck the final agenda on the subsequent round.  I won my corp game as well and finished the morning session 6-2.  Going undefeated in the morning session was a great way to push the disappointing results from earlier out of my head, at least for a time.

After lunch, I started to face some stiffer competition.  I got swept in round 5 by a talented player from Ottawa.  I think I could have managed a split if I had been a bit more on my game, but I was definitely outclassed in general. In round 6, I faced the Italian national champion and despite a few language related misunderstandings, I felt my two losses were well deserved.

In round 7, I got back on the winning side of the ledger.  My second win went to time when it probably shouldn’t have, but I felt like a poor sport asking my opponent to speed up his play or even call a judge over.  Given how often my opponent was checking the clock, it’s hard not to feel like the stall was at least partially intentional, given the game was essentially unwinnable for him at the end.  I’m 8-6 at this point and going into my last round I am hoping to come out with a winning record.

In round 8, I lost the first game.  I just couldn’t get my Noise engine going.  My last game was going to be the difference between a winning and losing record. I managed to get the Astro train going and pulled it out to go 9-7 on the day. That’s a better record than I could realistically have hoped for.

I should also congratulate Dien Tran for his impressive run to the Top 12 of the Netrunner event.  Dien is one of the top Toronto players and with a nearly 270 player field, making it to day 2 is an impressive feat.  We’re all very proud of Dien for the accomplishment.

Conquest Wrap-up

The stress of the main event was over and now I could just play for fun.  That meant no more Kith.  It was time to pull out my Coteaz deck.

My first game was against the Australian Netrunner national champion and even though Conquest was not his primary game, he was still good enough to beat me.  My second game was against the German Conquest nationals runner-up and despite having a couple tricks up my sleeve, I went down in defeat again.

I managed to bounce back in my next game with some brutal Preemptive Barrage shenanigans to bloody my opponent’s warlord and push through to a definitive victory.

My next match was against Eric Taylor from the Conqast podcast.  Despite getting all of the Coteaz combo pieces out, it still came down to a crazy battle at the last planet that was won when I used Staging Ground to bring in a Void Pirate with my last resource and used Catachan Outpost to buff it up for the killing blow.  I’m grateful to Eric for his patience in letting me work my way through the final combat math – and reminding me that when Coteaz got bloodied, I hadn’t lost the game yet.

I managed to win my last game pretty handily and was able to turn my day around to finish 3-2.

With my two initial losses, my strength of schedule was not great and I finished 17/38.  There were surprise prizes for the top 16, so I ended up on the bubble.  Thankfully for me, a couple of the players in the top 16 had already left, so Brad was kind enough to give me one of the alt art Possessed that were being handed out as prizes.

I went back to the hotel to collect my other games, but some of the remaining players wanted to do another Netrunner draft.  The early sets were heavily discounted at the Event Center and FFG was still providing prize support.  We were able to get our prize support to go and enjoyed watching the Netrunner finals in the hotel boardroom before getting down to a draft.  I’ve shouted out the Conquest community already, but I have to give props to the Netrunner crew that went down.  I won’t name all dozen players that went down from Toronto, but I had a great time hanging with all of them.  With more than half of our group finishing in the top 100 or so in the main event, I think we had a solid showing.

And that’s it for my World’s 2015 experience.  Thanks for reading.

While Travis is back from the Fantasy Flight Games World Championships in Minnesota, where he played in the Star Wars: Armada, Warhammer 40,000: Conquest and Android: Netunner events, he still wants to share his last few updates here on The Tactical Squad blog.