Demon Kate 2.0 - 1st Place MTG Deals SC (San Gabriel, CA)

Hey man i'm very new to Netrunner (played magic a bunch). Love the idea Around this deck. Kate caught My eye as well as HB when i starter with the coreset. Just wondering what the winning condition is? I see alot of harrasment but would you Care to explain :).

This deck looks like all kinds of fun! I've been playing a very standard Prepaid Kate deck recently and found the inclusion of an Imp did fantastic work for me, this just looks like it works better!

Out of curiosity, how do you judge setting the strength of Atman? is it for specific troublesome ice or do you dealt to a particular strength.

Also any tips for all the scorching that's about these days? Blue Sun: Powering the Future blowing up the house for example.

Since you're Test Running heavily, have you considered maybe a single Eureka!? Gets awesome value out of Femme and Torch, and seems to fit the motley, toolbox nature of that events list too :)

Anyway, have my like!

This does look cool. But I share @Mykoo44 questions about meat damage. How many of your seven games were against kill decks?

Cockator - good question, I didn't really explain :) this deck mostly specializes in gImping (see what I did there) the Corp's attempts at early setup, and seeks to ideally score from early pressure against scoring remotes and HQ accesses. By drawing their attention from RD, you can set up for and make surprise Indexing runs nearing late game for the win. If that doesn't pan out, and if you haven't already, hit their hand with Nerve Agent, tempting a purge while you continue working toward that endgame rig, at which point you'll have uncontested access to any server.

Mykoo - Atman doesn't see much use in my play style, but if there's an opportunity to Mod it out early, it's usually in the range of 2/3/4 strength, usually 4, not that often 2. Early parasites (SMC) with liberal cone chip use take care of 1-3str ice relatively quickly while pressuring the server hosting the parasite. With regards to handling kill decks, most rely either on reckless running (Jinteki) or assembling pieces in HQ (midseasoned, scorch, punitive, etc). Don't be afraid to sit back and set up your defenses in the former case, and leverage early Indexings to figure out what you're up against. Against Weyland/NBN combo type kill decks, focus on building up your snowball Econ while gImping theirs, or equally valid hitting HQ to gImp pending kill combos. While it's hard to midseason you if you're auead financially, it's equally hard to do so without the actual card B-)

lolpaca - that is actually an excellent suggestion and I'm totally going to do it. Maker's Eye was a last minute change before the tournament that definitely scored agendas but wasn't exactly crucial to my success. Given the deck's reliance on Test Run with Femme and spreading Same Old Thing use between recursion/run events and possibly having to save one for Levy AR, Eureka synergizes with Femme and Torch use very nicely. Thanks for the suggestion!

Oisin - definitely one deck (the single loss cited above), and I believe Timmy Wong (3rd place worlds player) had kill options in the Titan Transnational deck he brought to the tournament. Definitely saw a Punitive during an Indexing run, but I scored too quickly before he could get the kill threat going.

Jon Delasandry's Foundry deck - which I faced during Top 8 - also had unique kill options (Twins and Janice, lol). in addition to Snare. Again, Indexing is both a way to anticipate corp kill strays without actually hitting traps, plus it lets you figure out how soon you need to get the gImps going.

Besides that, my younger brothers who are atound my skill level plain Weyland, Tagstorm NBN, and Shell Game Jinteki. I'm quite practiced against kill decks B;-)

@pillowdemon Awesome! Thanks for sharing, I love the look of what you've built here and I can't wait to give it a try.

Any thoughts on cards up to O&C to include? Or is there really nothing since All That Remains that you thought belonged?

Myth - to be fair, I built the deck considering how to counter the pending O&C meta without actually considering what to include from it (the same is moreso true for my Corp deck which will be posted at a later time). Battling the new school with the oldschool.

I've been playing PPVP Kate for awhile and am intrigued by this version. I may give it a whirl soon. Awesome idea. No fear for Plascrete because you figure you can always beat the trace?

@slevin38 - yep. Make early high threat runs (Nerve Agent, even Indexing if you can stomach it) to force high-cost ETR ice rezzes, if they let you through, don't be afraid to click up 3 credits just to negate a potential SEA+Scorch combo. Otherwise, there aren't many ways to retaliate against an unsuccessful runner. I'm also very happy to sit back and ProCo up, installing Clone Chips for free and leaving out an SMC while snowballing econ if it becomes clear that they're just waiting for you to make a financially demanding run (perhaps leaving an unrezzed SanSan out in the open).

The game changes significantly, of course, against a kill-based NBN that manages to score out the first Astro. From there it's finding the rest of the Astros while managing your own credits in relation to theirs, which necessitates compressed running - having out that Nerve Agent with counters, Indexing after trashing or forcing the use of Jackson Howard, etc.

This deck feels like a blast from the past, from a time when NEH wasn't everywhere and nobody played Architect.

I've been playing something similar last year and felt forced to switch to a faster econ engine, more install/break efficient breaker (Mimic instead of Femme, double CyCy instead of Torch), faster MultiAccess (Legwork instead of Nerve Agent) and resilience to tag (no ProCon). Issue is, it's 2-3 (if not 4) turns too slow to reliably win against faster rush / FA deck in my opinion.

Guess there weren't a lot of NEH / Rush HB in your meta =)

@Dydra I've never seen someone so worked up by confusing "archetype" and "deck name" before. You need to drink less coffee or something.

@Calimsha - there actually weren't! I think only ~7 players out of 30 brought NBN decks, while the other 3 corp factions were nicely distributed among the rest of the players with some bias toward Weyland.

It might be worth mentioning that 4 NBN players made it into Top 8, and I was the only Shaper left after the cut. The 2nd placer was last year's SoCal regional champ who brought Foundry and Whizzard to this recent Store Championship.

I think these are very good signs for the game state, with underdog IDs seeing a rise in both popularity and performance with creative deck builders doing well in tournaments.

BGG has Kroen, r/Netrunner has ScreamBear. NRDB has @Dydra apparently.

I am a huge proponent of fun deck names, and I approve of this one! I also like the deck and shall try playing it! Thanks @pillowdemon :)

Ugh....how did you win with no Mimic, Torch instead of something much easier to get hold of like Gordian (I know, Test Run and Scavenge but...meh) and doing the whole Nerve Agent/Surge thing (very fun, but susceptible to purging) when you could just include Legworks and SOT them?

@peacelord2002 - I guess I'm a good pilot? Mind also that I went up against several corps using cosmic ICE, and Torch is probably the best matchup vs Wormhole (as well as other situational cards like Lotus Field and RSVP). Nerve Agent with Grimoire out becomes a sustained mega-Legwork that tempts the Corp to waste turns purging, which a single Legwork doesn't accomplish, and also pressure the corp into protecting HQ, making RD that much easier to wombo combo as the game goes on. Gotta see the big picture yo.

And mimic's slightly overrated if you ask me. Femme's just fine if you know how to use the other silver bullets in the deck.

@pillowdemon so I've finally decided to try Kate out and I'm planning to use this deck as a base (awesome deck btw). Have you given the cards from the last two packs any thought? Primarily Clot and possibly the new decoder. Thanks :)

Eh, and maybe Comet : P

@Laxen - glad you're giving Kate a try! She's great, btw :P

I played around with Traffic Jam and found it marginally more useful for my playstyle. Besides the influence savings, it doubles as an answer against Current Operations, further synergizing with PPvP economy and Same Old Thing.

The recent Breaker Bay release also gave Shapers access to London Library. Besides safeguarding those awkward moments you have Test Run and Femme in your grip, it serves as a way to preserve Lady counters. Can also be scavenged off (resetting Femme counters or cementing Torch) in a pinch.

I should continue stressing that this isn't a particularly "fast" or "explosive" PPvP Kate archetype - if players trying out this deck find themselves hungry for early burst econ or early agenda accesses out of RD, two strats that are very important against FA-focused corps, Calimsha's builds are definitely more suitable. Demon Kate's better at slowly dismantling the corp while keeping them in the early game as long as possible, so this build's favored matchups come against glaciery archetypes that fall back on damage combos as a secondary win condition. While I've had success against FA (particularly asset-focused econ FA), it takes a lot of experience with this deck and a pretty robust playstyle switch-up to feel comfortable against it.

I LOVE DEMON KATE!!! It's so fun. IMP EVERYTHING!