Chart Harder - Vamp variant

This deck is the next step of the Charting Harder build I've been running for a while now. My goal here was to clean up shop a bit, because the previous version(s) packed a lot of one-of hardware and events. Granted, with Professional Contacts, the cards were bound to come up, but it was rare you'd see them when you needed them. Stealth is already efficient to begin with, so why not hone its edge to be as sharp and consistent as possible?

Imp and Datasucker are out. Imp is one of my favorite splashes in Shaper but to be honest, I hardly ever used it. That's because if you have to tutor for it, you're taking a tempo hit that's costing you cash, an SMC, and could be slowing you down from getting a full breaker suite, and if you draw into it, you're tempted to hold it until it's actually useful - and it's a pretty situational card - or install it immediately, where it then sits there eating up an MU. And it was mostly the same thing for Datasucker. So I figured it was time to make better use of that influence.

I just recently came across Chris Hinkes' Magnum Opus/Vamp build out of Kit, and at first, I thought Vamp wouldn't work in my deck because I run Kati. But after playing a few games with the Mopus variant, I found Vamp windows to be tight either way. It's very much an opportunistic card, but when it works, I've found it plugs one of the single-most glaring weaknesses in Shaper, which is a complete lack of control over the corp's funds. So just like with Magnum Opus, where you need to be diligent about clicking for 8 every now and again, if you're staying on top of clicking credits onto Kati, you can have that one power turn where you unload her and pile-drive HQ with a Vamp. Will you use it every game? No. Will you win games, sometimes on surprise factor alone? You will.

As for Dirty Laundry, I know it sometimes gets ragged on for being a less-than-perfect, pseudo-economy card, and that it works better when you have cards that already want you to run: Datasucker, Desperado, Security Testing, etc. But if this deck doesn't get off to a good early economic start, it can be a real slog until you get Kati up and running, or do a lot of digging with your ProCo. I want to take this card out for something better, but I'm having trouble finding a decent replacement. I considered Modded, but what's a target for it? Lady & RDI are the only ones that really fit the bill, and it's not worth holding the combo for that. And again, it's not that Dirty Laundry is bad, but I'd love to find a better economic use of those two card slots.

Those are the only major changes here, other than a few tweaks to card numbers. You'll notice though, Akamatsu and Lockpick are out entirely. I rarely ever went above 5 MU - something that will happen even less with Imp and Datasucker gone - and with now that I pack 3 copies of Astrolabe, I have yet to run into memory problems. And as for Lockpick, this deck has always performed fine without it; and when I did see it, I'd sometimes just trash it right away because it was a nicety that got me nowhere closer to where I needed to be. Again, I've been playing this build for months now, and in 80+ plays with this deck, I've yet to lose a game where a singleton Lockpick would have made the difference. The Cloaks and Ghost Runners are more than enough to get your breakers up to strength, and now with 2x Levy (I added the additional Levy for redundancy and protection against Net/Meat damage - you can accomplish the same end with Same Old Thing, but that Levy will end up costing you 2 clicks extra), you're essentially looking at TWENTY-SEVEN Ghost Runner credits over the course of the game. If you're still feeling uneasy about losing that dedicated stealth credit, you can drop the second copy of Dagger and add the Lockpick back in, but I think you're going to be okay.

Give this latest build a try! What do you think about it? How does it work for you, and will it hold up as we zero in on Order & Chaos? Should something go in instead of Dirty Laundry?