Blitz Running PPvP Kate

Really really like your kate ppvp builds, they are very refined and fun to pilot :) one question - would you consider day job a sensible splash?

I tried and it sucked. Losing a whole turn doing nothing but getting creds is something you really don't want at all.

@Calimsha Ah ok, yeah i was worried about the tempo hit, at least with Lucky Find you only lose a half turn. Thanks!

Lucky find I'd great because you can go from 0 creds with 3 voicepads on board to running with 18 creds. You can't do this with day job.

I can see that you shaved 1 Carapace and 1 Stimhack for Atman and Shard. Why did you returned Atman back, it is rather expensive and slows us? Also, no fear for SE decks?

Atman is there to not autolose to changeling, susanoo no mikoto or a lone mother goddess. It's not a good solution but it's great against certain hoser. Also its a good addition against next+grail build since it can be set at 1 if the Corp start to stack barrier in their server. Utopia Shard is the sea/double scorch solution. If the Corp play SEA source, use your utopia to force him to discard 2 cards randomly. Most of the good Corp player won't do that kind of play to avoid burning all their cred and still being unable to kill you.

I've tried both SOT and SMC as card 46, but now I'm just playing 45 straight up. Having 1x SOT has only been a problem once.

1x SoT forces you to be really conservative on how you want to use it. You probably won't use an early SoT to play indexing/legwork or scavenge, pitch your multi access card when you use QT and it will probably makes you think twice on using a stimhack when you got a levy in hand. Globally having 45 cards and a single SoT tend to force you to play slower and miss a couple of run opportunity. At least that's what I observed.

I think being able to comfortably spare an SOT for a Scavenge is the biggest upside, but I see almost no NEH in my meta and piles of Blur Sun, so I prefer the slightly increased consistency in longer games.

How much having one less card really improve your consistency ? I mean this deck will draw his entire stack twice, in a long game. You're not winning with your 15-20 first cards like in criminal. So how important the decrease of consistency will hit you ? It's mostly a psychological limitation than anything else ;)

In the first pass through the deck, it ranges from 0.25% and 0.57%, depending on whether the card you want is 1x/2x/3x and how deep you're willing to dig (starting hand, top 10) to draw it. The picture after the Levy is a little bit worse (0.32% to 0.79% assuming 9 installed cards when you Levy.

Which I suppose kind of makes your point about psychological limitations. ;) Perhaps I'll go back to the second SOT for this weekend's SC.

no plascretes makes me very nervous

Utopia Shard > Plascrete, as long as you have the courage to play the odds and pop it after the SEA Source or Posted Bounty tag. It has the very large benefit of never being dead.

You sir are my hero. I thought real hard for ways to modify the build and make the deck my won, and I could not find any, so I brought it to my local store champ, and undefeated it went, netting me the first place.

@Calimsha thoughts on what you would cut if you had to go to 45? My thinking is either Indexing or Scavenge.

I'd never cut a Scavenge from this list. You might be able to get away with one Indexing or one Maker's, but both of those win games.

I just went 4-2 with this list at a Store Champ today, losing only to NEH. One loss was a slow start (zero programs in the top 15 cards), the other was an inability to find a Legwork or hit the agendas I knew were in HQ. I don't think I'm going to change anything.

One change I made actually was swap an indexing for a 3rd Maker's Eye... With so many taxing corps, and with weyland being prevalent (atlas counter or boot camp completely nullify your indexing), indexing lost its shiny. @Crunchums I agree with Ajar don't cut scavenge! it is essential in your deck with CC and Lady! Maybe cut the indexing, but I like to have multiaccess when I need it, in case NEH makes a come-back.

makers eye is higher variance than indexing and indexing can set you up for the next couple of turns against glacier. I mean even if you hit an agenda with indexing you're not forced to steal the agenda right now. You can either put in deeper in the r&d or just give it to the Corp and try to snatch it either in the remote or in HQ.

@Calimsha I am sure we are just repeating the century old debate Maker's Eye vs. Indexing. What you say is all true (and I am well aware of those tactics) but the variance argument is a double edged sword: if you bury the agenda in RnD because you can't get in twice, a good corp will know, and they will try to mess-up your plans (reinforcing RnD, over drawing etc) and if the agenda ends-up in their hand or remote, there is no guarantee you can steal it (depending on board state), that's variance for sure. Maker's eye on the other hand, it's 3 sure cards.

I see so many people having great success with these PPVP decks. I am so nervous to rely on Deus X and Sharpshooter to deal with high strength sentries... What happens when you run out of recursion for them? Reset Atman to high strength for whichever server you need to pound?

Use Levy. Or Atman, yeah.

Cutting Indexing will hurt the PE matchup a bit. If your Meta doesn't play it or you feel that you don't really need it, you certainly can go down to 45 cards with the third Maker's Eye. A tiny bit more consistency, but one less R&D pressure card overall. Your call.

@Calimsha Have you tried to play with Imp instead of Stimhack and Parasite? A lot of players tried to include Imp into Kate decks and it's good, but do you think it's worth the trade here?

I have found the fun in this game again running this built! Thank you so much. Man, Utopia shard is a bomb. What is your game plan against Blue Sun? Mine was early pressure and then stabilize to dodge Sea Source, install Utopia to run with immunity and some credits.

Put some early pressure and try to snatch at least one agenda during the setup phase (it's not hard to pull it off), try to install your utopia for "free" and after that, win the econ race by blowing their OAI Curtain/Orion and lock the remote by always having enough creds to take any agenda they will install in there. The Blue Sun matchup is really easy if you understand how to play against it. The thing is, you don't need to run every turn for a single access. If you run, you should try to grab an agenda either with Indexing, TME, Legwork or a remote run.

I swapped out one Makers Eye for RDI out of fear of Crisium spam, but regretted it. The surprise of ME is so much better.

Got fourth place with this deck at a store championship this weekend. Thanks for the play mat ;)

Had I not made a very poorly chosen run on a Mushin'ed Junebug, I would have gone 4-0 with this as well at an SC. Along with swapping out TME for R&D I also swapped a legwork for IHW.

Legwork for IHW is ... Well, dumb. If you REALLY want a scorch protection, you can still fill-in a Plascrete. IHW would be most of the time a bad Diesel costing 2 influence and you already have enough cards draw in this deck.

There was a lot of Power Shutdown and Crisium Grid going on. ;). I wouldn't recommend it generally.

I like this deck a lot. Very well constructed.

I've also subbed an Indexing for a third The Maker's Eye. Not sure if I might change it back once I get more practice in with the deck... I bugger up the math and can't get back in enough times to make Indexing work :(

Comet for Astrolabe once it's released? Or do you think the tempo is high enough that the card draws are better?

The cost of Comet is a bit too high for my taste for this deck ;) As you can see, most of the cards in this deck cost 3 or less (except Gamble that most of the time cost 3 or 4, Utopia Shard who is almost never played at full cost and Lady who cost either 5-6 with SMC, 3-4 with Clone Chip or 0 with Scavenge) so adding 2 more 4 creds card who doesn't really improve the gameplan (you don't want to play more than 1/2 events per turn)

I've tried a similar deck using Femme Fatale instead of Mimic, obviously it's incredibly expensive. Out of curiosity, how do you deal with those stronger Sentry's that are out of Mimic's range?

Simple things like Data Raven for example or a more specific scenario, I was playing against a Blue Sun: Powering the Future deck that had a Taurus into an Orion that gave me all kinds of grief as I was unable to parasite them with out Blue sun Pulling them back. (Perhaps's the issue is more my ability than the deck!)

*edit - Nebula, not Orion

My experience would be using Sharpshooter for anything with the destroyer subtype, or Atman if it doesn't.

High strength sentries are problematic for every deck.

Atman/deusX/Sharpshooter should normally take care of high strength sentry ;) In case of Taurus + Nebula, str 5 atman make this combo really sad =)

Thanks! Seems like I just need to learn how to pilot the deck more than anything.

@Calimsha - so what's your stance on switching Parasite/Stimhack into Imp? How often Parasite can be used here? It sort of competes for Clone Chips / Scavenges with Lady/Atman, etc. It sure can bring down some high Sentries to Mimic level and is useful against early FA Quandary, but other than that?

I don't like it but I can easily understand the swap in an environnement with a lot of killing blue sun and without a lot of RP. I think Parasite / Stimhack offer more flexibility than Imp but it's also probably harder to play. I can understand why people prefer to play imp over those two cards but it doesn't really suit my playstyle =).

Thanks for the answer. Digging deeper :) What exactly do you need Stimhack here for? I've noticed that this deck makes quite a lot of money and when running, because of CyCy and Lady, it spends very little on breaking subs. Is it mostly for tutoring Atman? What is the most usual target for Parasite? Only high str sentry? Jinteki low-str sentries?

@rattkin Quandary, Pop-up Window, Ice Wall, basically any low-str ice which taxes you. Quandary on the remote might be quite unpleasant, if it protects Sundew, for instance.

Good points, thanks.

Came second in my local SC with this list, wanted to say thanks! Have been searching for a runner that is both comfortable to me and competitive and this is the first list that has fit the bill. It piloted like a dream for me, going 6-2 on the day with the losses due to major mistakes on my part rather than a failure of the deck. Haven't had this much fun playing runner in months :)

Are you going to include Clot now?

Yeah I'm gonna sub a legwork for a Clot and that's it

Do you think this deck could be at all competitive without PPvP? I'd rather avoid getting Second Thoughts since most of the other cards in the pack are bad, but if it's totally necessary I'll get it.

I'm not @Calimsha, but I'll say that the entire point of the deck is getting event economy cheap by the use of the Prepaids, so it's probably not worth building without them. ;)

Plus, Second Thoughts has Restructure, Swordsman, Elizabeth Mills and Shipment from San San, each of which go in a lot of corp decks now. Runner side is pretty weak though.

@Wookieeis right. The econ engine is too brittle without the PPVP ;)