The inspiration for this deck was Jamieson from Bad Publicity's tournament winning Kate deck. I ended up changing most of the cards.

The deck is undefeated in tournament play thus far. What makes it so strong is how hard you can hit in a single turn before the corporation has a chance to react. It is able to consistently fire off explosive turns that surprise the corporation. For example: Femme Fatale with Indexing or Test Run into Account Siphon. These early turns then build into an incredibly strong rig and economy. I’ll go over how I pilot the deck in each phase and then comment on card selection, particularly in comparison to Jamieson’s deck. Some of this might be a bit general but hopefully it’s helpful to new runners.

Phase 1

Early on the corporation does not usually have the resources to defend R&D, HQ and a remote. You have two of the best cards to exploit this, Account Siphon and Indexing. Face check their ice, you want to know which breaker to grab but mainly you’re trying keep their cash low. I'll usually hit HQ first which might open up R&D for an Indexing and to find out what the HQ ice is for Account Siphon. A 'blind' Account Siphon can also be a great move just to force the corporation to react; you don’t have to actually drain them. Here are a couple early turns in games during the Chronos Protocol where my opponents were ready with good responses.

NBN

• Sure Gamble.
• Blind Account Siphon into an unrezzed Caduceus. The perfect counter? I let him take the credits but he’s forced to add 7 to the trace, leaving him with 1 credit
• Indexing past R&D Ice he can’t afford to rez.
• Score.

HB

• Modded Femme Fatale targetting rezzed HQ Ice.
• Account Siphon, he rezzes Eve Campaign on a remote. I siphon the two remaining credits since I'm not worried about tag punishment from HB.
• Draw.
• Run Eve and trash it, leaving the corporation with no credits and no income.

In this early phase it is crucial that you get an early Magnum Opus. Mulligan for it and treat your pre-magnum credits as solid gold, only to be spent for extreme value. This isn't actually too bad as a good half the deck costs nothing to play. Don’t be afraid to Test Run for Magnum Opus. You also want to draw quite a bit in the early game. There are a few combos in the deck but each card works on its own so you don’t need to dig. Just keeping your hand full will allow efficient plays.

Phase 2

The Corp's strongest phase, when the runner may be lacking the correct icebreakers, is often skipped entirely thanks to Test Run and Femme Fatale. Femme is usually the first breaker I’ll try to get out no matter what ice they have rezzed. Without it the rest of your rig is vulnerable to sentry program destruction and Femme works just fine to get past early defences. Magnum Opus with Femme is a great rig for a long time. You can retarget the Femme with Scavenge if they replace the ice with something new, let them pay to rez it first, try to add value to the surprise with an Indexing or Account Siphon. Same Old Thing shines in phase 2. If you have Account Siphon or Indexing in your archives the corporation can’t afford not to respond to a hole you’ve poked in their central defence. It will also let you get out your second Test Run/Scavenge more consistently and complete your rig transitioning to phase 3. You want to continue to play in quite an explosive fashion. Have a plan and spend a few turns setting up for it. You want the credits to play the breaker, run twice and be able to trash. Here’s what phase 2 might look like.

• Draw a card, take 6 credits.
• Draw a card, Same Old Thing, take 4 credits.
• Modded-Morning Star, Same Old Thing-Indexing, Score.

Phase 3

Arguably the strongest rig in the game backed by the best economy in the game, Magnum Opus. Most decks won’t be capable of creating an ice tower that costs more than 8 to break. To add to that your R&D runs are more efficient, think of R&D Interface as making it half price to check each card in R&D. Indexing is even better and will be your Same Old Thing target for phase 3. Dinosaurus and Personal Touch are solid cards at this point for improving your rig even further. Lean on your Magnum Opus to shut down the corporation’s phase 3 plan of creating a scoring window with Ash, SanSan, taxing or SEA Source/Scorched. You’ll need more credits than you think. If the corporation still believes they have a scoring window you can Stimhack to close it in a hurry.

NBN Fast Advance and Weyland are usually trying to hold the runner off while they execute their game plan. But this deck has such strong threats that they’re forced to react to the runner game plan instead; you take the initiative from them. I’ve actually never had to put out my full rig in a tournament game, winning a quite a few with just Femme Fatale. Only decks with extremely good defence like Red Coats can extend a game. The strong rig and economy makes for a comfortable phase 3.

Deck Design

Jamieson’s tournament winning deck has many interesting cards like Eureka, Motivation, Woman in the Red Dress and All Nighter. But that wasn’t exactly why it piqued my interest. There’s no doubt it is a good deck but there seemed to be quite a few changes I could make to improve consistency. I set out to make a leaner version that maintained the powerful core.

Chaos Theory About the only installs Jamieson was running were 3 Akamatsu Memchip and 3 The Personal Touch. Kate wasn’t getting much mileage from her cheap install ability since the breakers would often be put out by events. With Chaos Theory you start the game with a Memchip installed and shave 5 cards off a deck with combos. However, you could make a strong case for Kate’s link depending on the meta.

Account Siphon Not too much I need to say about it. Chaos Theory helps these 4 influence cards show up more often and Same Old Thing gets more use out of it. There is some surprise factor to running it out of faction but honestly I expect every runner to have it. This card didn’t really shine at first when running resources (Jamieson has 18), having to remove the tags negates much of the economic advantage and makes it tricky to play when you have to save two clicks for tags (a good reason for All Nighter in Jamieson’s deck). Magnum Opus changes that; you can maintain your momentum if you choose and keep up the pressure if they have no other tag punishment.

Diesel Swapping Quality Time for Diesel is one of the first changes I made. Diesel is an efficient card on its own. Quality Time is solid too but you need to have a reason that it’s better than just drawing cards with clicks as it’s not particularly efficient. There’s also a diminishing value to each card you draw as you may have to discard or may not have wanted to dedicate that many credits/clicks to drawing/playing cards.

Indexing I think people are starting to realize just how strong this is. It’s on Account Siphon’s level. I’ve heard several criminal players that bring in one copy say it’s one of the best cards in their deck. It stays relevant all game. I think one of the great benefits to Shaper right now is playing three copies of Indexing influence free. It’s very important to keep track of how many cards they draw after you use it. You can’t use a notepad but there are any number of tricks you can use with your fingers, feet… virus tokens. I’m often counting down for the next Indexing.

Levy AR Lab Access The general consensus is you should have this in Chaos Theory so that you don’t run out of cards, particularly against Jinteki. With Same Old Thing one should be sufficient. If you can manage to draw four cards off it you’re doing well but often I’ll just not play it. Depending on your meta you might not need it at all.

Modded I think this would be quite a prevalent card at 1 influence cost. It doesn't work with SMC or cheap programs/hardware but otherwise it's three credits without spending an extra click. I’m always happy to see it, especially with Quality Time. I'll often just modded out a breaker rather than waiting to draw Salvage. For me it replaces Jamieson’s Eureka + Motivation/Test Run combo. Let’s compare it on Morning Star:

• Test Run (3credits), Eureka (3credits, click)
• Modded Morning Star (5 credits)

Modded is much leaner, working on its own and in one turn. Without Eureka the Motivation comes out as well. Jamieson mentions it was mainly in there in preparation for Oracle May. When she comes out I think it may swing back that way. Without Eureka or the fear of Account Siphon tags I don’t think All Nighter is as helpful. I think I managed to conserve the explosive turns of the deck while trimming it down.

Quality Time When I switched to a Magnum Opus economy these came back in to help dig for it. As long as you prepare by running down your hand and making sure you’ll have 5 credits left to play cards this can be quite good, particularly with Modded.

Scavenge Part of the Test Run combo but I actually play it alone just as often. Here are couple examples from Chronos Protocol games:

• They replaced their codegates with barriers after Torch came. I scavenged the Torch to play Morning Star for free from my hand.

• My opponent did a great job creating a scoring window and went for it. My rig was two Femmes that had opened R&D for me, I scavenged both of them to retarget onto Remote ice then used Stimhack to score the final agenda through an Ash.

• I had an early Morning Star to deal with Eli 1.0 who is now joined by Heimdall 1.0 in phase 3. I bring out a Dinosaurus then Scavenge the Morning Star onto it.

Stimhack There is one spare influence after replacing Garrotte with two Femme Fatales. Stimhack beat out the other contenders and certainly pulled its weight against taxing decks. There’s nothing better for running into Ash.

Sure Gamble Staple although you could almost do without it if you could guarantee early Magnum Opus.

Test Run Just like Scavenge it can also be used on its own. It does work as a great economy combo card, Special Order and Inside Job. One NBN opponent in the Chronos Protocol had a solid Hedge Fund, ice HQ, ice R&D start. But he was powerless to stop this:

• Run HQ, Wraparound
• Test Run-Morning Star
• Account Siphon
• Draw a card

On his turn he replaced the Wraparound! You can’t blame him, at any point I could have played that Morning Star and Account Siphoned again. In the end I never had to play my Morning Star, Femme Fatale with The Personal Touch chugged through the rest of his ice. Test Run created the threat of a barrier breaker which was just as good for me.

Dinosaurus Jamieson raises the good point that unlike other consoles you need to get Dinosaurus down before the breakers. Even if you draw it in the right order it’s a tempo hit to pay for such an expensive console first. Then I saw how good it was with Femme Fatale. Since Femme can also be your early barrier breaker you can often wait for Dinosaurus to play your Morning Star. In most matchups Morning Star doesn’t need more strength and I’ll just put it on Dinosaurus for +2MU in the final rig. Dinosaurus was so good with Femme Fatale that I kicked it up to 2 copies.

Plascrete Carapace Scorched Earth and Punitive Counterstrike are sneaking into a lot of decks these days. Play out your Plascretes if you smell something, especially while playing tagme. Magnum Opus is actually your best defence against Weyland’s SEA Source/Scorched Earth. You’ve got the corp economy outgunned and they simply won’t be able to land a tag. With Honour and Profit I’m strongly considering switching these to Public Sympathy.

R&D Interface Now you might think this doesn’t belong in a deck with Indexing but there are still solid opportunities for it. If they give you the opening early game for some solid accesses, go for it. Midgame it might make sense to play it after an Indexing or a few turns later, depending what you see and can afford. I might put a second Agenda or something I want to trash as the 5th card down then run a turn earlier than they expect. Often you’ll just wait for lategame to play the R&D Interface. Like I said earlier it effectively costs you half as much to check each card in R&D with an interface making it an important part of a final rig.

• Test Run-Femme Fatale
• Indexing
• Modded-R&D Interface
• Run R&D, score score

The Personal Touch One of only a couple cards that isn’t always a solid draw. Jamieson runs 3 copies and I think he’s onto something. It can make the best rig even better, often paying for itself in a single run. It wouldn’t often be worth it on standard breakers like Corroder and Gordian Blade but it overcomes Morning Star’s fixed breaker limitation and Femme Fatale needs 2 credits for +1 strength. In a meta full of Viktor 2.0 and Tollboth I’ll even put it on Torch to shave a couple credits off repeated R&D runs.

Same Old Thing It does more in this deck than it would in any other deck. Criminal may have more events but Account Siphon/Indexing/Test Run/Scavenge are the events that are worth paying an extra two clicks for. This should be a 3 of, likely cutting 1 The Personal Touch. The threat Same Old Thing provides is enough to force them to commit more resources to central defence. If I’m tagged I’m usually still happy for the corp to spend two credits trashing it. Most of the other 15 Resources in Jamieson’s deck were replaced with Magnum Opus as part of making the deck leaner.

Femme Fatale I’d have to say this is the MVP of the deck. It really takes Test Run to the next level, I’d always have at least one Femme in any deck using it. It replaces Garrotte in Jamieson’s deck, they’re very similar but Femme’s bypass ability is a breaker in itself and this deck lessens the weaknesses. Garrotte only costs 7 instead of 9 but you’ll often be playing it for free with Test Run. Garrotte is 2 MU, potentially difficult to play with Magnum Opus. They’re both 2 strength, both 1 credit to break but Femme costs an additional credit for +1strength. Femme is the more traditional card but I think I’m still harnessing some of Jamieson’s super rig concept. With Dinosaurus and Personal Touch Femme Fatale becomes a fantastic sentry breaker. It’s also only 1 influence instead of 3…two Femmes!

Morning Star Eli 1.0’s popularity alone makes this a viable choice. The fixed strength of Morning Star is not a problem with Dinosaurus and Femme helping it out when needed although a surprise Corporate Troubleshooter did ruin what would have been a great Wall of Thorns break. Still, I’m close to swapping it for two Corroders. I think it comes down to a meta call, Morning Star is great and often 0 cost but you could run SMC with Corroder to search out Magnum Opus. I’ll re-evaluate after the Honour and Profit meta emerges but right now Morning Star is smashing through barriers like it was Yog.

Torch Solid, in faction and boy are there a lot of 4+ strength codegates going around these days. FFG has been trying to move the meta away from Yog.0 for quite a while which has carved a niche for Torch. But I may have to look for a more efficient choice if Quandary takes off.

Magnum Opus Hmm I suppose I already called Femme the MVP. Magnum Opus is such good economy it opens up new gameplay, traces just stop working on you or bankrupt the corp. Ash, SEA Source, Punitive Counterstrike, NAPD Contract, asset economy, Sansan, taxing… MO don’t care. It lets you adjust the amount of economy in your deck on the fly to respond to the corporation’s deck. You can then sit on a cushion of 10 credits, always dangerous and ready to play a breaker in an explosive turn. As well as a degree of resistance to any work compression the corporation attempts. Against taxing decks you can spend the first few turns just grinding out an advantage, going into the midgame with them at less credits than they need for their gameplan. I had a couple games against the extremely taxing Red Coat deck during the Chronos Protocol. The early turns looked something like this.

• Take 6 credits, trash PAD Campaign.
• Take 6 credits, run Eve Campaign. He’s forced to boost Caduceus trace by 6 to keep me from getting through with 5 credits left.
• Take 6 credits, run Eve Campaign and trash.

MO is the only economy card you’ll need allowing you to free up slots in your deck (at the risk of not drawing it). It allows me to have very little filler in the deck. Try some sample draws, they’re deadly. If you want to know how good Magnum Opus is, check out corp deck write ups. From what I’ve seen the majority of them list Magnum Opus decks as one of their worst matchups.

Hope this was worth your read. I’ll be checking in and happy to answer any questions.