Peace in Our StealthPunk (2nd @ Polish Nationals)

With the ban of PAD Tap and Rezeki we entered an era where every self-respecting runner (and shaper in particular) needs to answer an essential question – “How the heck do I get money?!”

Some may say, "Sell your junk and also your mom's"

Some may say, "Find some job"

Some may say, "Let's cook!"

Some may even say, “This is fine" and pretend nothing really happened.

Myself, I don’t stop believing in the event economy, and I don’t stop believing in Smoke.

This list got me to the second place in Polish National Championship last weekend, and I would not change a single card in it.

People keep asking me if 3x Peace in Our Time is not too much, to which I keep replying that it is not a card to play on sight, but rather one to get early and not be afraid of getting punished as soon as you leave home to trash that Urban Renewal. If you and the corp are both on 10 credits, you are in danger. But if you are both on 20, you are going to be fine. Just watch out for Taka who has this nasty habit of forcing you to wage war when you would much rather declare peace.

As the write-ups for all previous iterations of StealthPunk are readily available, I will not bore you to death with notes on cards that made it to the list, and instead focus on the ones that did not:

Paperclip – not good enough in the current meta. Cleaver is one influence and one credit cheaper, breaks IP Block and Eli 1.0 just as efficiently as Clippy would, and Border Control, Endless EULA and Hagen for half the Paperclip money. I did not really expect to face any other barriers during the event, and I don’t think I did, other than… Envelopment that costs 5 to fully break with Clippy and 7 with Cleaver, but if someone plays Envelopment they also play Border Controls, which are just perfect for farming Takobi counters. Also, if you encounter Envelopment with an SMC on the board, the go-to breaker is actually Penrose.

The Twinning – this card seems to naturally fit in Smoke, so not slotting it was a very tough call. The influence is tight, though, and I desperately need Find the Truth to help me Mad Dash and win off one fewer agendas than the corp would like me to. Also, PE is this list’s worst matchup, and in this one seeing the top card of RnD gives you invaluable information, while accessing multiple cards usually kills you.

Deep Dive – again, the PE matchup. I cannot realistically expect this card to survive three consecutive runs, and even if it does, I probably lost enough HP in the process that next turn I just die. Also, people are afraid of Stargate and place Crisium on RnD, and I don’t have Pinhole Threading to deal with it.

Pinhole Threading – do you know the story about a fish, a fishing rod and feeding a person? Getting into servers for little to no money is the fishing rod. Pinhole Threading is the fish.

Daily Casts – we are already super vulnerable to Drago Ivanov and The All-Seeing I, this card makes it even worse. Also, I need my money cards to also get me the Aniccam draw.

Telework Contract – see above.

Clot – I did not expect Sportsmetal to be super popular, and I also don’t like this card very much.

Endurance does offer us insanely efficient breaking, but in Smoke we already have that. Also, this new Aniccam promo is just too pretty to sit in the box.

Lastly, big Congratulations to Matuszczak for winning the event, and huge kudos to Bookkeeper the badass TO. Rock on!