Sifrsite Kate [Cache Refresh] [SOCR2]

I piloted this deck in the second Stimhack Cache Refresh tournament. It went 4-2.

Pretty simple concept. Şifr is nasty, Parasite is nasty, Clone Chip is nasty, and having all three means you can trash a piece of ice a turn with pretty minimal setup, at a discount if you're doing it out of Kate. Sure it's not going to help you against Architect but this is Cache Refresh, and they're not legal so it's not much of an issue.

Shaper has a pretty decent full breaker suite right now, even with CR restrictions. Na'Not'K is the shiny new piece of the puzzle, bringing Crim-quality killer tech to a green rig and opening up the influence you need for that second Parasite, just in case the Corp slots and Ark Lockdown. Gordian Blade has always been great. Inversificator is good too and I thought about taking one of each in early iterations of this deck, but there are so many good code gates in a Flashpoint meta that the for-the-run strength boost is worth more than you'd think and the 2 credit price difference is nice when you're trying to set up fast against fast-moving corps. It'd be pretty easy to swap them out though, and it might make a difference. Inti is cheap (nice!) but expensive (boo) unless you Sifr the ice (yay) or put a Dedicated Processor on the smiley face which is what you're going for with your late game rig.

LLDS Memory Diamond is a tough sell. It's four credits, which is a lot compared to the cheaper Akametsu Mem Chip, but if you don't see Sifr early you're going to want to get some MU down pretty fast since you're on a Magnum Opus econ scheme. The extra hand size mitigates the already negligible downside to Sifr'ing everything on the board and the extra link can come in hand against NBN. If you knew you weren't fighting a damage deck, though, and you knew you weren't going against someone that was firing traces, this could easily be cut for the smaller chip.

Dummy Box is great, especially since you're running the one copy of Şifr. One Hunter Seeker strike can shut down your ice trashing shenanigans pretty hard.

In games this sets up faster than you'd think, especially if you can get Beth and Opus out early. If you can get an early game Sifr you can start making high-impact runs almost right away, otherwise you're going to be digging for it while you install other pieces and hoping the corp doesn't run away with the game while you're hunting. Shaper problems. You can run without Sifr though, especially if you can get your breaker suite out good and early. You're going to mulligan for Opus basically, again shaper problems.

Let's talk about performance.

Round 1

Versus @barbrarian playing SYNC: Everything, Everywhere

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Gave up a couple early agendas to building state but once Parasite and Şifr showed up things got ugly for the corp. Ended up winning on a savage series of Equivocation runs against R&D while the corp desperately tries to get ice to stick on there. Took awhile to find a Magnum Opus but managed to keep myself afloat while I was getting there. Got lucky and ended up getting HHN trace’d low enough I could beat it. Had all my breakers in hand but didn’t have to install any.

This was the first iteration of the deck and had a one-of Aesop's Pawnshop I never used, Akametsu Mem Chip instead of the LLDS, and Sacrificial Construct instead of Dummy Box.

Round 2

Versus @ino209 playing Weyland Consortium: Builder of Nations

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I got wrecked by this deck last night, or something similar. It scores Hostile Takeover and Government Takeover to win the game. Advances a bunch of ice then Biotic Labor/Red Planet Couriers into victory. @ino209 wasn't doing that it turned out but it's what I ran into before so it's what I was worried about. Kind of interesting counterpoint to my Tennin deck since so many of the moving pieces are similar but a different kind of savage, also didn’t see Anson Rose. Didn’t see much of anything. Watching the replay afterwards, I had a pretty good chance of winning. He could have tried to score out behind some ice but I wasn’t scare of his ice and I had a breaker suite out and some money. Trashed some ice with Sifr, broke some ice with Na’not’k. Running against ping damage decks like this is different, played with some of the lessons I learned from the teaching deck league running against that PE deck - sure gambles are more useful as hit points than they are as econ when you’re getting hit with net damage constantly and you have Magnum Opus in play. Ended up not running R&D at all which was pretty great. Mass Commercialization is a good card but it’s tough to keep rezzing ice on the econ from that card alone. The constellation ice gives a nice bonus to BoN, but the ability only firing once a turn makes it less dependable than the ping damage from a Kakugo. I think Kakugo could be an interesting splash into a BoN deck too but I haven’t seen anyone try it yet.

Only changes to the deck were adding one LLDS. I think this is when my love affair with that card started.

Round 3

Versus @GhostMeat playing SYNC: Everything, Everywhere

Got out to a savage start with equivocation but let myself drop too low and ended up getting HHN’d, I equivocated a boom into his hand so I ran it and trashed it but he had another one so I just ended up getting flatlined.

Nothing new in the deck this round.

Round 4

Versus @PaxCecelia playing Haas-Bioroid: Architects of Tomorrow

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His AoT deck was leveraging hard into MCA Austerity Policy, which is a real scary card that can be easily Friends in High Places’d for additional pressure. I had to keep running it and trashing it. I saw Magnum Opus and Beth Kilrain-Chang first turn which is great and then I got Sifr and my breaker suite out early so I was able to start hitting all his servers. I let him fire the ID ability - why not? Beth just turns it into econ basically, let him have some ICE, gives me some place to put the Parasites since I wasn’t digging into any Clone Chips. Ended up firing off a series of successful The Maker’s Eye runs on R&D so he stacked 5 ice on there and Friends’d an MCA into his scoring remote which meant he had agendas in HQ. I had four clicks so I Clone-Parasifr'd the one ice on HQ and hit it four turns, seeing all four cards in hand including the 2 agendas that I needed to win the game.

Only real change was switching out Sacrificial Construct for Dummy Box which I think is a pretty sensible shift for any shaper deck right now.

Round 5

Versus @x3r0h0ur playing Jinteki: Potential Unleashed

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Sideboarded hard, really wanted to make that cut, but it wasn’t enough unfortunately. Ended up getting to a good 4 points and just needed another Obokata to clutch it but I didn’t find my Sifr and the DNA Trackers were too taxing for me to hit all the servers I needed to. Feedback Filter is real nice when you need it but it turns Kakugos into a 4 cred to break piece of ice which is a lot of money for a barrier. Should have been a little more strategic with my Parasites I suppose but not finding the Sifr made a big difference and I’m not sure what I could have done to get around it. It was at the bottom of my deck, exactly where I didn’t need it, and it ended up getting PU’d anyway so I had to Levy and hope for the best while he scored out the agenda he needed to win the game. Opus is solid and doesn’t need a lot of card support but dang it is slow sometimes when you need it to be faster. Mars for Martians is so strong because it does give you that huge burst of income you need to really kill it. I think a Stimhack might be a good include for this deck but its day is done. Might take Kate out for another spin next tournament though.

I stripped a lot of the diversity out of the deck for this matchup, doubling down on net damage prevention with a Net Shield instead of the Paricia. Took three copies of Laguna Velasco District which is real strong tech against damage decks, getting up to four cards from zero with two clicks is great. Also added another LLDS Memory Diamond for that 8 card hand size, nice when the opponent is running Obokata which you know every CR Jinteki player is going to be doing. Two Levy AR Lab Access too, since you're going to be dropping cards off your stack pretty often.

Conclusion

Had a lot of fun in the tournament, shaper seems to be in a pretty good place right now since there's such a solid suite right in-faction. Şifr is still great even at four influence, but you really need two copies to make sure you see it if you're going to be leaning hard on it and that's a lot of influence to put down. LLDS Memory Diamond makes it easier though since they're proto-consoles on their own. Thanks for reading.