Kate Don't Need No Prepaid! (2nd, Santa Clara, CA Regionals)

Intro

This is the latest version of my "Supplikate" deck. I played it to 2nd place out of 89 total in the Santa Clara, CA regionals on May 30th. I've been working on this deck for several months, playing and tweaking (sometimes in big ways) the entire time. It's definitely not the standard PPVP Kate deck, so I'll give a brief rundown of the deck. It's really not too complicated so I don't think it'll take much.

The basic idea is to use the supplier and all the resources to create a very strong supply of cards and credits. Over the course of the game the econ package compares very favorably with prepaid in terms of both credits per card, per influence, and per click. As games go on your econ doesn't stop, and it creates a very strong sense of inevitability for the corp.

The Tournament

After three rounds I was 3-3 with one of the wins being timed (had the last agenda on the board advanced, but I didn't have the half-turn to score it). We were estimating you could only lose 3 or 4 to make the cut, so I knew I was in a rough spot (almost certainly already out of it with 4 rounds to go). I proceeded to win 7 or my next 8 games and squeek into the top 8 at 19 prestige.

Elims were insane. So many close games, so many tense moments. It was incredible, and I couldn't have asked for a better end than to be sitting in the grand finals with my friend Noah McKee.

Breakers and Programs

The breaker suite is extremely cheap to install, and many games I'll drop the entire thing (or most of it) in a single stimhack run with an smc and a clone chip or two. Datasucker is there to help out with 4 strength sentries until you get Atman@4 (if that's the best value for the game, and sometimes it's not), and also means that atman hits tollbooth with one counter as well as just being decent all-around. Zu is here over Gordian because it fits in so well with the Dyson/Data Folding combo.

Clot, Stimhack, and Feedback Filter

Clot is Clot. #SlotTheClot. Just do it.

Stimhack helps immensely both early and late game. I stole a ton of agendas sitting behind three ice servers because the corp thought I couldn't get in when starting my turn at 3 credits. Then I get 5 from resources and 9 from stimhack. The deck draws so many cards (the entire deck in many, many games) that often you'll have two in hand, and I've had a lot of games with two consecutive turns like this getting me 4 or 5 points.

The one semi oddball choice in the deck is the feedback filter. Up until the night before this was a quality time. I often found that I held on to the QT for several turns though, and PE was also one of my hardest matchups. With the release of Lockdown and all the HB stuff I thought FF was finally worth the slot.

My ideal gameplan is to draw and install my entire deck, and FF enables me to keep that same plan vs PE since I can just pay through any amount of net damage they can do. Once it's down I just run every remote, all the time, and hit R&D when there aren't any remotes. If it has a trash can, trash it.The only thing to worry about is to never draw last click or else you might get it (or a needed breaker) sniped.

Gamplan

Overall I think the deck is really straightforward. There are no tricks outside of stimhack, and you telegraph everything you're doing with the supplier. The econ package and stimhack just enable you to control remotes and eventually lock R&D with 4-card deep accesses. If it has a trash can on it, trash it. Your econ is better than the corps. In my third game during elims I was playing against butcher shop NEH, and I trashed ~40 credits worth of econ assets, including one or two unrezzed, unclicked marked accounts. Outside of psi games (which are so dumb and I hate them, even though I played RP in the tournament) if the game goes long enough you will almost certainly win.

Future

The only change I'm trying to figure out is how to slot in a femme. I can afford to simply pay through tollbooth usually, but being able to get through for 1 instead of 3 or 4 would made a difference in games where R&D has a caprice at the end. I think it'll either be cutting a stimhack or swapping corroder to snowball, but I'm not quite sure yet. It'll take some testing.