The French Nationals 2000

by Jerome Christen
translated by Nicolas Rudaz, edited by Jens Kreutzer

This article is an abridged version of the online article by Jerome Christen that originally appeared on the Gameimpact.com website (which has pictures).

The French Netrunner nationals took place in Paris on November 25 and 26, 2000. What could have been a rainy, uneventful autumn weekend soon took a much more nervous pace, with its fair share of plot twists. A testimony of Netrunner's enduring popularity was evidenced by the two dozen players that showed up for the tournament. Some famous active players were missing, however, most noticeably the Black Ops team, who were busy finishing the next issue of their magazine.

The main event was divided into three parts: a sealed-deck tournament using one Proteus booster and two Classic boosters, then a competition using the 1/15 format, which is ever so popular in France, and finally a Restricted tournament. The sealed-deck portion of the tournament occupied the whole of Saturday until 8:00 P.M. and offered a bumpy ride to everyone, gameplay-wise. Sealed deck favors those players with a good deal of practice under their belts, along with a solid knowledge of the cards and their combinations, a reliable memory and a splash of luck. After this explanation, my last-place showing still puzzles me.

Sunday morning saw the players compete in the 1/15 tournament. A good part of the night had been spent tuning decks, and the neighboring drugstore was fresh out of Lucidrine(tm), so the players had to rely on quite a few cups of coffee to focus their minds. The 1/15 rules allow every Netrunner card in a deck but place a limit on the number of copies of a given card: One copy is allowed for every 15 cards in the deck. Practically, this means that every deck may contain up to three copies of a given card, since almost all the players stick to the 45-card lower limit. A remarkable exception was Frederic Garnier's monumental 120-card (8 x 15) deck. It was a nasty killer Corp, but according to its creator's own words, "it invariably loses one agenda in its first turn". Since I've been able to steal the one and only Political Overthrow from his full HQ in my first turn, I can't say I disagree with him.

Some players were not able to attend on Sunday, but newcomers arrived to fill the gaps. Sleep hours had been scarce, but the competition had to go on, and everyone wanted to improve the scores of the day before. Mind you, at least for me, that wasn't an overwhelming task. At the end of the 1/15 tournament, the Top 3 players for the 2000 champion title were Florent Jeudon, Yannick Mescam, and Gabriel Burkhard. Several competitors were very close, and the last round (Restricted constructed) promised to offer a tight race.

The most commonly used Runner stack was based on the Priority Wreck/Synchronized Attack on HQ combo. Some TagMe stacks were also spotted. Rent-I-Con was by far the most popular icebreaker, and the Runners seemed to favor the use of preps to meet their financial needs. On the Corp side, Corporate War and City Surveillance infested the decks, but a handful of wall decks and URL decks also made an appearance. A notable event was the catastrophic performance of Yannick Mescam, who desperately saw his place in the Top 3 slip from his grasp. Playing Edited Shipping Manifests on a broke Corp doesn't help boost the finances of the Runner, and judging from the cries I've heard during the round, it happened more than once. Maybe the pressure had grown too high.

Finally, around 7:30 P.M., the anxiously-awaited final rankings were proclaimed:

1. Florent Jeudon
2. Olivier Flament
3. Gabriel Burkhard

Congratulations to the new French champion! You can find more info on Netrunner France at: www.multimania.com/netrunnerfrance.