Waverider Kit

I've got a similar deck that has been killing it, but with a couple differences:

Study Guide instead of Refractor, plus Sacrificial Construct. This has proven both more resilient and way more efficient for the long game.

Multithreaders instead of Cloak and Ghost Runners. I hate being locked out of servers due to stealth credits, and while that happens extremely rarely with this setup, the extra really help me get in consistently. You'd have to get rid of Lucky Find and one Employee Strike (ES is a wonderful include btw, nice work).

The Toolbox instead of Astrolabe. This is probably the overkill point. I really should just run 3x Akamatsu and Astrolabe.

This deck is disgusting though. The pairing of Kit and Surfer is so shapery it's astounding.

Multithreader is pure gold.

I really like the idea of this deck :)

You could definitely try swapping around the Refractor for a different decoder. Study Guide+Multithreader or Cyber-Cypher+Scavenge could potentially work.

But I think I prefer the stealth breaker. This deck runs tight on memory--the main rig of Refractor+Paintbrush+Surfer uses exactly four memory, and the Astrolabe is mostly so you can use a Self-modifying Code to pull out the last part of your rig when you need it. I frequently don't even bother with the Cloak.

If you wanted to use Multithreader you would absolutely need to put in more memory--Akamatsu Mem Chip, probably. And while this is fine, that means you're sacrificing some of your early game aggression for late-game sustainability. I feel like Kit's early game is her greatest strength as a runner and wanted to capitalize on it, so I went with the option which gave me as much deck space as I could get for economy.

I just Maker's Eye Surfed a Tollbooth wave past a Wraparound into the R&D of a degenerate NEH deck that was spamming unkillable Team Sponsorship SanSan City Grids with Turtlebacks and stole 3 points for the win.

@tiedyedvortex You have my eternal gratitude for making this possible * *sheds tear**.

Wow! This package is so much more appealing to me in Kit than in Quetzal. Some real Shaper bullshit here!

Just a couple of thoughts, what if you also ran 3x RnD Interface and maybe 3x Modded to help get them out? That way you are making the most of that one run per turn. Not sure what you'd want to cut though, everything here looks really good. Also, you could maybe add in some other run effects like Masanori or Data sucker since you know that your runs are going to be successful.

Thanks for the praise, @ila! To answer your questions:

An earlier version of this build did use R&D Interfaces. But, as you noted, the install cost is pretty rough for this deck-- installing the RDI early on is a big initial tempo hit that I didn't really like. Modded would help, but apart from Paintbrush and Plascrete Carapace everything in the deck costs less than 3 to play. Maybe it would work, but I'll just stick with Maker's Eye.

Datasucker won't work because I don't have either the MU or the influence, and with a stealth breaker strength is never an issue.

John Masanori is a really good suggestion, though. He could definitely be slotted in place of Symmetrical Visage; running and getting cards is better than clicking to draw and get credits. My only concern is that an unsuccessful run gives a tag. Like I mentioned in the description, the best way to handle sentries is to run, jack out, paint them to be code gates and barriers and run again. If you have to take a tag in there, you're opening yourself up to Scorched Earth.

@Bigguyforyou518 I'm glad you like it! I've had a lot of fun recently piloting your "45 account siphons" build, and YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE SPACE CAMP inspired my own Tennin deck, so I figure I owe you this one.

What are your thoughts on including Tinkering in this build?

How does recovery from program destruction, say via a Power Shutdown go?

Tinkering is an interesting choice that I went back and forth on. On the one hand, it does exactly what this deck needs: it turns a piece of ice, rezzed or not, into both a code gate and a barrier. This could let you pressure two-deep servers early on, even with just a Refractor, or save you a few clicks if you need to make a sentry both a code gate and a barrier.

But too often I was finding that it was just a dead draw--either all the ice I cared about was already rezzed, or I had enough clicks to run-paint-paint-run again. Frequently as well I might play Tinkering on an unrezzed piece of ice and run, and they just wouldn't rez it. I eventually decided that I would rather just have more money in the form of Dirty Laundry and Armitage Codebusting.

Because of Kit's ability, facechecking ice is super safe, so you very rarely have to worry about destroyer ICE. Power Shutdown is also not a huge threat because of the redundancy of 1-cost programs and hardware (Lockpick, Astrolabe, 3x Refractor). But you're right, without recursion this deck gets hit pretty hard by a Batty+Gold or an Aggressive Secretary. Losing your entire rig at once is something almost every deck struggles with, though, so I'm not sure if it's worth including Clone Chip or Sacrificial Construct just for that.

Amazing! Thanks for making Shaper interesting to me again.

Have you tried a Cyber-Cypher/Scavenge variant yet? I'm thinking it would free up a fair bit of deckspace - you could run Clone Chip and never have to worry about being locked out of servers - not that it's likely, but the possibility that it could happen (Ashigaru or somesuch) always bothers me.

@lolpaca: I have not tried that, but I think it could work. It would be an easy change to do -3 Ghost Runner, -3 Lockpick, -3 Refractor, -1 Cloak, +3 Cyber-Cypher, +3 Scavenge, +3 Clone Chip, and +1 of a neutral or zero-influence card.

The advantage of this would be an even faster set-up for R&D lock: turn one Cyber-Cypher pointing at R&D would be brutal, and if the corp ever tried to score you could Scavenge it to get a new one on the scoring remote and hit them hard.

The disadvantage is that you are telegraphing your intention. If you have a Cyber-Cypher pointing at R&D and one pointing at the scoring remote, a smart corp will just overdraw with Jackson and either hoard agendas in HQ or throw them in Archives behind light ICE. Or, they could set up two remote servers, and alternate between them to burn through your Scavenges.

But with the Surfer combo, you almost never need to worry about getting "locked out" because you don't have enough stealth credits. Remember, if you're surfing the outside ICE in, you are actually only breaking one piece of ICE with stealth, and the only piece of ICE which costs Refractor more than two stealth credits to break is Wotan. So if you have 2 Lockpick and a Ghost Runner with 3 credits, you don't have to worry about getting locked out.

Ah, I missed that Refractor only needs stealth creds to boost, not break. Carry on!

Played this last night at my local game store and the deck is just brutal. No one wanted to rez ice haha. I did make a couple changes (since D&D is not out yet). -2 Employee Strike, -1 Lucky Find, -2 Assymetrical Visage, +2 Legwork, +3 Professional Contacts. Again, awesome deck!

You have very click-intensive (but awesome) run strategy, so I think daily casts would be more useful than armitage in this deck. Additionally, the film critic do enough to damage RP that I don't think you need the Employee Strikes since your strategy will be R&D lock and FC the TFP. This would free up some influence for a parasite or something so you don't have to keep paying 2 credits to break some cheap ice with surfer. Lastly, since you have a way to reliably get it in every turn in mid-to-late game, swapping out 1 maker's eye for one RDI would make sense to help maintain the lock.

Very interesting deck! I've been thinking about how the corp can counter this once its on board. With 3 unrezzed Ice, one possibility might be that he leaves the outer piece unrezzed, and rezzes the second non-barrier Ice. In that case, what do you do? I guess jack-out. But then you cannot run again this turn (if you want to play safe). Any thoughts on this?

Love the combo, can't wait to see the next version as well! A bit worried about being dependent on stealth credits, but if you can get your game flow and reactive consistency stable enough then no problem. Why the Lucky Find? Wouldn't there be better options for you? Seems like a waste of splash.

@sruman

Daily Casts might be a good call, although with stealth credits and incredibly inexpensive support cards, this deck runs slick with almost no money (so the initial temp hit from Daily Casts might honestly be enough to make it unattractive).

3x The Maker's Eye doesn't give you consistent R&D lock, so I think Employee Strike is still going to be pretty important. It also does fine work against NEH and Blue Sun (you can drop it after an Oversight AI if you can't break it immediately).

Fast Advance is still enough of a problem that I would swap out the Lucky Find for a Clot. Since your strategy relies so much on grabbing Agendas from scoring servers, you really want them to need a scoring server (and AstroBiotics does not). You would probably want to find room for Clone Chips as well.

i've gotten destroyed on octgn by variations on this theme more often than i'd like to admit. how do you mess this deck up?

@beef42 Here are some of the ways to hurt this deck:

1. Program trashing. The programs are cheap, and there are redundancies, but killing any part of the combo slows it down.
2. Bait runs. This deck makes money fast but it doesn't have any long-term economy. If you can force repeated, wasteful runs, it will run out of steam.
3. Sentries on the outside whenever possible. They won't ever get to fire due to Kit's ability, but it uses up her clicks and credits to make a scoring window possible.
4. Traps and bluffing. She can always get in...but does she want to?
5. Fast Advance. It's tricky once she establishes R&D lock, but no server means no chance for her to steal.

This deck speaks to me on a whole other level. I've been toying around with ideas to make use of Surfer recently yet the answer was staring me in the face the whole time. I think my mind just blanked and forgot that Paintbrush is an actual card.

I was just considering this afternoon how to make a relevant Kit deck. You just saved me the work. This is so beautifully constructed. Great job, man!

Kit has been my favorite ID since I got into the game, but I've struggled to find a way to make her competitive at the same level as other IDs. This approach is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the inspiration!!

What's the Caprice / Ash Tech?

With only conditional multi-access (Maker's Eye - which you have to have in hand) - don't you just implode if you can only make a single run per turn?

I really like the idea though. A mate did a similar thing but with Study Guide instead of Refractor. I may have been using his deck and was sitting on FA and a couple of Wraparounds...But it looked really effective.

A Buddy of mine has been playing (basically) this deck for a while, and it does have some holes.

@beef42Everything the OP said is true; also leaving outer ice un-rezzed can really mess up the paintbrush plan - it's always important against Kit to look at the server from the runners perspective as you're building it to have a plan in place to undermine it.

@Softman25 it's important to realize that once it gets going, this deck gets in every turn. that means soft RnD locks, and whenever-he-wants remote runs tend to keep ash in check before you can actually leverage him to score anything big. Caprice tech to run it every turn (often for no real credits) until it breaks.

Overall I'd say this deck catches a lot of folks off guard but against decent players it's gonna be tough to string together many wins.

This is awesome, and I do love some Kit + Paintbrush shenanigans.

Any thoughts on Bookmark instead of Plascrete Carapace? The lower install cost seems more in-line with the rest of the deck.

I think it really may be worth considering a Film Critic or two. Econ is fine, but if you lose a Psi or NAPD and have only a single shot at it this turn, it'll get scored out next corp turn. Great great great idea. GFGF.

@Badeesh - Film Critic is already in here...

I tried something similar to this when Surfer was first spoiled, and while this build is definitely better than mine, I think the major problems that I saw are still going to be present. In particular, any sort of defensive upgrade simply ruins click-intensive running like this. Worse, a smart Corp can manipulate ICE rezzes to blockade you. With three ICE you leave the outermost unrezzed and rez the middle instead- then if the runner paints that one, you rez the outermost and ruin their day.

That said, if you're having luck with it, well done and keep it up! I love the idea - maybe I'll take this build for a spin and see if it does answer the problems I had.

Film Critic/NACH is my go-to Scorch protection package these days because it neutralizes SO MUCH. Sea Source, MSR, Argus, Snare, even Ghost Branch can be just shut off.

i saw you responded to the Daily Casts suggestion but have you tried it at all? i just feel like if your run-turn requires all four clicks (as it would against an outermost sentry), relying on click-based econ (Armitage Codebusting) is a problem. perhaps daily casts isn't any quicker really but i can just imagine being in a position where i need credits but also all four of my clicks and i would not be happy.

Just one minor quibble: "it is still a code gate as well"

Kit's ability is: "The first piece of ice you encounter each turn gains code gate until the end of the run." And the run is over by that point, isn't it?

lol, sorry, madness. please remove my previous post.

@the.jxc Nope, this is all during the same (first) run of the turn. I've been playing a version of this since Surfer came out, it's fun as hell watching the understanding coming to the corp player.

@the.jxc That's only an issue for if the Corp can put enough face downs to combat your runs. You can still facecheck with impunity.

The only thing is that it can create giant scoring windows if they go Install ICE > Install Agenda > Whatever - then there's an issue. But, that ICE also has to be a non-code gate...so it's bad, but it's not game ending.

After I saw this Deck here, I build one with Study Guide and Stimhack instead of Refractor, because I was afreid, i would loose to much Initial-Speed if i don't get the Stealth Credits fast enough, but the Tempo-Hit from getting the Study Guide up in Strength was much bigger. Now I gonna try the Refractor.

Thnx for inspiring! :)

Do you know if surfing over a card counts as a bypass? ie. Does Guard stop surfer in its tracks?

You don't bypass Ice, you rearrange it. So Guard dosn't help against Surfer.

I was missing a few packs when I built this deck so I played around with some alternatives which I think worked out quite well in the end. I've detailed all of my changes to the original deck in the notes:

netrunnerdb.com

I just started playing netrunner, but it seems to me that the biggest risk this deck has is running into that first unrezzed piece of ice. The corp can slow you way down by putting all its big nasty sentries up front. What about including Snitch and/or infiltrate so you are literally never caught unaware when you start your combo.

Or maybe put in some r&d interfaces and squeeze in a medium? Throw in some hyperdrivers, use cyber cypher as your decoder, pick r&d then just relentlessly hammer their deck until you win. With a big enough credit pool, you could be virtually guaranteed to win the game from 0 agenda points to 7 by running 4 or 5 times in a turn and accessing 4 or 5 cards per hit, with medium assuring you get at least 1 new card each time.

Also how do you guys post the card names as blue links?

@metafoxx I think you are forgetting the actual wording of Kit's ability. The first ice she encounters per turn gains Code Gate, which means Kit can face check any ice and be all but guaranteed to be safe, as long as you have a decoder and enough credits. So fitting in a special killer wouldn't be necessary to address your concerns.

Her ability also works only on the first ice encountered for the entire turn, so for the same reason, running multiple times per turn becomes quite a bit harder without making a very different deck. Your suggestions might work for some decks, but would not support the core goal of this one.

You can link to cards using # + card name (treat the card title like a hashtag).

What do you think about Omni-Drive with Modded? You can mod this out then put things like SMC (removes itself and costs 1 less to search), Surfer, or the Refactor on it, maybe even Study Guide for that sweet sweet 1 cred discount a turn. :) It also gives you some memory space as well.

As a noob, I grabbed this deck to try out. On Jinteki, I had a SMC and a Refractor out with 1 MU left. I tried to use the SMC for paintbrush and it won't let me. MY opponent claims I need the memory before SMC resolves. Is that correct? If that is the case, it seems you absolutely have to get paintbrush out first.

This deck looks like a lot of fun, I am going to go build it now.

@Fleshbits: Your opponent is absolutely incorrect. At any point when you install programs, you can trash as many as you want (even if you don't need the , I believe). On top of that, Self-modifying Code trashes itself as part of the cost of its ability. This is likely a bug on Jinteki.net, not an actual game rule.

What about using Dinosaurus or The Personal Touch to beef up your refractor, thus making it less dependent on stealth credits? My friend built his version of this deck and insisted on going gordionsaurus with Multithreader because he hates the stealth cards.

@metafoxx Your friend is welcome to experiment with whatever decoder he likes, but in this deck I'm almost certain that the stealth breaker is the right call.

The normal complaint people have with stealth is that you can get "locked out" if the corp can make a server that requires 5+ stealth credits to break. But that's not possible against this deck: with three Lockpicks, you can get Refractor up to strength 11 on a single piece of ice, which is enough to break anything in the game, and then Surfer gets you past the remaining ICE without needing a single stealth credit.

On top of that, the combined credit cost of Refractor and a stealth source (Lockpick, Cloak, or Ghost Runner) is 2. This means that you can throw down your breakers and start getting accesses from turn 1 without needing to set up much of an economy. Compare that to Gordianasaurus--you need to have 9, and you need to install the cards in a particular order or use Scavenge. And since you won't be busting more than one piece of ice a turn, Gordian Blade's strength-maintenance feature isn't valuable, and you should just play Torch.

Multithreader, though--that's a good one, and I'm doing testing to see if I can squeeze a couple in. The big weakness of this deck is unsustainability: paying to use Surfer adds up fast, and this deck has no permanent economy engine, meaning that late-game money gets really tight. Multithreader could be immensely valuable as a sustainable economy. Memory and influence are tight, though.

He also put in Kati Jones and Earthrise Hotel. The Kati helps a lot for economy.

Have you considered slotting Forged Activation Orders instead of Lucky Find? Seems like it could be a nice surprise against Corps thinking they're smart by not rezzing ice.

Yes, this. One of the biggest weaknessess of this deck is that the outermost piece of ice HAS to be rezzed for the combo to work, and kit's ability makes it so you can basically only run once a turn. The corp can counterplay you into the ground by just putting more ice out and then not rezzing it or making you pay a ton of clicks and turns on paintbrush trying to get your combo set up. Forged Activation Orders solves this problem fast. Use it on their freshly installed ice and no matter what they choose, you get what you want and you're free to surf away.

This is a fun looking deck. Thanks for sharing. I will test play this for sure.

I played this last night and it was excellent. A pure delight to play this deck. I was laughing every time the corp player pulled a face as I was surfing into his R&D with makers eye.

This deck is everything I wanted from Kit! It really maximizes her early game utility, and plays around the Corp placing Code Gates as the outermost ice (makes it easier for us to get in now!).

Have you thought about Apocalypse for the asset-Spam decks?