Valentine's Date with Kate - Leisure Games London, 1st place

beyoken 6110

Went with what probably is the strongest Runner archetype in the current meta, and indeed Kate held her own, going 6-2 during the tournament. As an all-rounder Kate subdued both fast advance Atlastrains and glacier builds with relative ease, but met her fiery demise against this monstrosity of a Corp that eventually claimed runner's up.

Virtually identical to Calimsha Prepaid Kate, adjusted for what I expected to be a Weyland-heavy meta. The playing field certainly delivered: of the 8 Runner games, 6 were against Weylands. Changes:

  • +1 Plascrete - time to bust out that alt-art!

  • Indexing --> R&D Interface: Atlas tokens completely neuter Indexing, as do glacier Weyland builds. This was certainly the right call; with R&D Interface installed I gave myself good chances of winning in close-shave games (both players on match point) by simply amassing resources to run R&D.

  • Biggest change: Legwork + Utopia Shard --> Imp. Actively encourages me to run instead of building rigs, was a workhorse destroying Tricks of Light and flatline components whenever I drew into Imp.

Lengthy analysis/tourney report over at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT86r3d6Q-g

16 comments
16 Feb 2015 king_mob

This build looks awesome. Congrats on your win!

16 Feb 2015 Argamas

Congrats! Great to see you taking it home. Love your videos!

16 Feb 2015 Swiftie

I was @bewntround 6 opponent and lost to him in the first round of double elimination. Imp was a massive problem for me to deal with like he said trashing my Trick of Lights that i needed to fast advance my Project Atlass. Imp was a great addition!

Will watch the youtube report after work (I hope you were nice about my less than steller corp deck that I took, utter jank!)

16 Feb 2015 beyoken

@Dave4026 Oh no, on the contrary I genuinely feel guilty for being your thorn in the neck - I know I'd be bummed out if some guy sweeps me in Swiss and then immediately sends me down to the lower bracket!

Titan deck aside, that moment when you Stimhacked last click into my NAPD is still fresh in my mind. Epic games we had!

16 Feb 2015 Swiftie

@bewnt I very much enjoyed all three games and they felt close getting to 6 agenda points in the last two. Well done on the win again. I'm glad I did not have to play against James Blue Sun deck. Given the amount of Wayland at the last couple of events I uped the Plascrete Carapace to two copies.

16 Feb 2015 saltytacopanda

god damn atman

16 Feb 2015 Calimsha

Yeah the decklist is pretty flexible. My build was tuned to beat NEH and still be strong against the rest of the field. If I expect a meta with a lot of Weyland and not so much NEH, I would probably made the same kind of changes :)

Grats for your victory !

16 Feb 2015 beyoken

@Calimsha Hey you might remember me in some of our OCTGN games as beyoken. Thanks for the games and the post-game chats we had, really helped me with shaping deck strategies!

19 Feb 2015 kriss06

I'm playing whith Calimsha's version for a while and i dropped cypher for Zu13 cause 'im not very confident with multi access ! (and lot of plays with my group ended because of cypher locked in a wrong remote) I'd like to add imp too, for same reasons, but i just don't understand parasite in blue sun meta !! Don't you need datasucker for atman and mimic ? makers eye x2 sounds good with imp and R&D interface :) it's true sometime it's a pain to go R&D after indexing

I'm thinking about remove 1 lucky for 1 dayjob to save 1 influ because there is stimhack for rush access and dayjob means lucky + click 1 credit + click 1 credit, so it could be acceptable. The 1 influ saved will be for Utopia shard because is so good to prepare legwork or remove dead piece from atlas or to prevent stupid infinite loop. In worst case it trash 2 options for the corpo !!

Congrate for your win and thanks for the share

19 Feb 2015 Calimsha

I'm gonna answer here something I've already said a tons of time but Day Job instead of lucky find isnt worth it at all. When you have a full turn you want to improve your board state by drawing, not using it on a poor man magnum opus and waste your entire turn. In best case scenario day job will let you cash 2.5 creds per click and it will waste you one recurring cred from the third ppvp. Compared to 3/5 cred a click LF/laundry/gamble will net you in worst case scenario (no ppvp on board), it's just a terrible economic engine. Also one 9 the strength of this deck is toffer be able to go from 0 cress to 18 in a single turn and mess up the Corp plan on their remote scoring. Day Job close you out this kind of play.

Don't take the bait, it's a terrible card to have in this archetype.

19 Feb 2015 kriss06

It's something i had in head, but when you don't have many option to save influ i tought only 1 day job won't be so bad when you just need to rest a little to build economy. It's true a whole turn without action could be bad too... thanks for the warning :)

20 Feb 2015 beyoken

@kriss06 This deck is meant to be a toolbox that has a solution no matter what corp you're facing, be it Blue Sun or NEH or Jinteki: RP or PE or whatever. Parasite is absolutely essential for Jinteki and Grail matchups. Obviously you don't play Parasites against Blue Sun, even if you draw them!

Cyber-Cypher saves SO MUCH more money than Zu, or even Gordian. If you're having trouble with being locked out of servers, try improving your gameplay decisions rather than changing the deck - trust me, Cyber Cypher works so well against the high STR code gate meta (Lotus Field, Tollbooth, Merlin, Wormhole.....)

Datasucker belongs in a different deck. All my essential breakers are STR 3 or more and most of them can be pumped with cash.

20 Feb 2015 kriss06

Thx for reply, i agree i'm not enough skilled to play cypher and because i played maybe to many blue sun (lot of code gate..), i thought 1 breaker on board is more easy to pilot then cypher + scavenge /clone ship.

Whith imp on the board i assumed you want to use scavenge for it and not for a breaker.

Datasucker can save money too and can reach sentry FOR 4 with mimic. i know i don't have lot of experience : i don't play very often in fact and my meta is small. I usually play against non "winning" archetype so i'm in trouble with uncommun ice. I don't doubt about you so i'll let another chance to parasite ^^

4 Mar 2015 Cryoclasm

Did you consider D4v1d for inclusion? It proves to be quite useful in meta full of space ice.

30 Apr 2015 TheAntsAreBack

Hi, Looking at the youtube vid you posted explaining the deck, at 2:10 you say you "have five cards for (........), which is a very important part of Shaper (SMC and Clone Chip)." But I just cant make out what you say there. How is it that you describe those cards? Cheers for any clarification.

10 May 2015 beyoken

@PaleKing Apologies for the late reply! I believe you're referring to "on the run tutoring" - yup, it's a key trait of Shaper!