Kate: 1st Place Zurich Regionals 2016

qvm 1921

This deck went 3/4 on the day in a 25 person tournament with four rounds of Swiss and a top 8 cut. I was 1st after Swiss and undefeated in in double elimination.

My corp deck can be found here. The latest legal pack was The Liberated Mind.

Swiss
Round 1: Bye
Round 2: Win against Blue Sun
Round 3: Loss against New Angeles Sol
Round 4: ID

Top 8
Game 1: Played corp
Game 2: Played corp
Game 3: Win against Blue Sun
Game 4: Win against Blue Sun (same opponent as Game 3)

I’ve been playing Kate for a few weeks and it’s no secret which cards are good at the moment. So I put together a Kate that fits my play style.

Notable decisions: "Freedom Through Equality" vs. Notoriety
FTE synergizes with Indexing, while Notoriety (slightly) synergizes with Hyperdriver. FTE also helps you turn off currents (would have been nice against Sol), but Notoriety lets me win if I only draw it at 6 points.

D4v1d or Parasite/Datasucker vs. HQ multi access
D4v1d/Parasucker are the only cards that I think could be dropped for HQ multi access, be it Legwork or [The Turning Wheel](/en/card/10085. I think I have a good chance of winning with Indexing, remote lock and Clot lock and I really love having D4v1d and ParaSucker. Also, I only run one Lady, which means having D4v1d for another Scavenge target is great. I would love to have HQ multi access though.

Tech & silver bullets
I run two Film Critics, two Plascretes, one Councilman and one Deus X. Drop any card to get to 45. Since I went against four kill decks (random, there were many non-kill decks) on the day, I didn’t regret my huge amount of tech. I would also want to run two Film Critics against Pālanā or SYNC (for hosting Food and not scoring it until you can win). With one Critic, you just don’t see it in a some games. If you have ProCo, drawing a useless tech card is not too painful.

Levy & SoT
I just don’t need this. Maybe if you play QT and Diesel you do, but not playing this gives me two more slots for tech cards. I’d rather lose one in 10-20 games because my deck runs out. Nobody plays IG in Switzerland, and none of the German/Austrian/Swedish guests brought it (We’re a positive player experience meta :) ).

Notable play
The Blue Sun player that I faced in the semi-final and final was playing SEA/Scorch and Punitive Counterstrike with the Power Shutdown combo. I discovered this during the first game, so I knew what I was up against in the final. I was on 3 points and we had been racing each other for money. I was worried that I couldn’t keep up much longer, and he had three face-down remotes, with one being protected by two unrezzed ice. The first Jackson was used, the second was out there on the table, but where? I indexed him to bait out the Jackson. I didn’t see a single Agenda in the five cards, but rearranged them in some way and ran again (he shuffled). For once, I was happy to not have a Councilman on the table. I indexed him a turn later to put Government Takeover on top. While Jackson is the best Indexing defense, Indexing is the best Jackson defense. The 2-iced remote would have been a Snare!.

Thanks to Andi and Dani for organizing, and thanks for everyone who came to play and made this a great day of Netrunner!

6 comments
26 Jun 2016 Hongkong Koma

Great deck! It was a very nice tournament - friendly and relaxed. Cheers from the Konstanz guys!

26 Jun 2016 b3ar

Congrats. Nice that you added D4v1d.

26 Jun 2016 Snake Eyes

5/6? I think you mean 3/4. You can't count Byes and IDs where your deck didn't see play as a part of your deck's stastical performance.

Minor nitpicking aside, congrats on your Regionals win! Including D4v1d in your list must have done a lot of work for your wins against Blue Sun opponents. (Double Plaz and double Film Critic too. Teched to the teeth against Blue Sun here!)

26 Jun 2016 qvm

@Snake Eyes Oops, I did not mean to count those games, I think I counted all cut wins, but of course I was only playing with one ID in each of those. Thanks for pointing it out, corrected it here and in my corp deck!

When teching, I didn't even think about Blue Sun. I teched mostly against Palana, SYNC and just general kill (expected Argus, and there were also at least two Argus players at the regionals).

D4v1d was useful in very game and it killed at least 2 oversighted Curtain Walls. On the other hand, I run two CyCy and didn't even have to install a single one the whole tournament. It's kind of ironic, went all the way, but only played as many games as someone who dropped out after Swiss :)

29 Jun 2016 noon

If you want one more influence for Stimhack or Turning Wheel you can switch your ID to the Professor :)

29 Jun 2016 qvm

@noon this occured to me as well, but only once I posted it. But of course the discount and the link are worth a lot more. A friend is still trying to fit this into professor :)

It's no coincidence that all the influence (besides MWL) is in singleton programs. Those are the ones that you can tutor, so spending influence there gives you a great payoff.