DISCLAIMER: I'm not swearing that this is good, but it IS pretty fun. Also this writeup is too long, w/e.

Ken's my favorite runner, and I don't 100% know why.

• He rewards you for running events, but running a ton of them takes up space in your deck. How do you make those events worthwhile?
• Criminals have access to a lot of great run events, but only 3 give you real dollars now (Dirty Laundry, Mobius, and High-Stakes Job)) and one of those is almost unplayable without PPVP or a ton of drip. How do you set up, and land run events, without compromising on deck space?
• Running enough draw + econ to access those events is mandatory, but why're you Ken if you've only got like 4 events that benefit you?

The answer, I think, is that a Ken deck firing on all cylinders can do more with a single click than most folks can. Ken, IMO, excels when you use Criminal tricks to compress multiple actions into a single access, and use other clicks to make other fun things happen. Desperado + Medium was an amazing combo for him because the threat built incredibly quickly and Ken had the inf to see Medium early in the game. But that's a dead deck.

So how do we do it now? I've been running this deck over the past week, and am taking this time to set down some thoughts.

RUN LOTS

This deck wants to abuse the hell out of Doppelgänger. Two runs for the price of one is fun against asset spam, great with Aumakua, and excellent with Equivocation + Tapwrm + nasty run events. The problems that need to be solved are A) how do we get through glacier/decks that don't make remotes without B) completely fucking exploding and falling apart. Ken needs fuel to run, but once it's up it's like a permanent Beth you can combo with brutal run events and very efficient breakers.

I've built similar decks in the past, and here's why I'm not running certain cards:

• Security Testing is great against asset-y decks (where you don't need so much money because the plan is to hammer centrals) and garbage against glacier (where that's still the same plan, only it's more expensive).
• Bank Job is good. Depending on how the meta shakes out, it might be worth slotting. Right now, with so much Scarcity, event econ has been better.
• Career Fair's a different build. Ken loves seeing 2 cards a turn, and also enjoys Daily Casts. But I recouped 6 card slots by cutting it for Exclusive Party, which is draw-independent and gains steadily in strength over the game, and a lack of reliance on Levy means that recycling Casts + Career Fair + Earthrise is out. Jury is still out on whether this is useful.
• Three Steps Ahead is reaaaaal fun but I cut it. Good against asset spam, but not as nasty as it was with Desperado/Temujin.
• Indexing + Mad Dash is a solid R&D plan for Ken, but part of the annoyance of building for him is that you can't combo a run event into another run event. I wanted an R&D threat that I could pull off in a single click.
• Same Old Thing eats deck slots, and I'm running a ton of draw. It's also vulnerable to Skorp/RFG, and the first thing Skorp does here is start removing Inside Job from the game. I don't think it's worth it.
• Datasucker is good, and worth including if you switch up the economy, but MU is tight and having Datasucker deemphasizes getting some breakers (which is a play mistake). Aumakua can do more with it, until they purge, and with a Tapwrm econ you're already vulnerable to purges.
• I wanted Na'Not'K, and I'm not running Same Old Thing, which is why i skipped The Maker's Eye.
• Apocalypse is fun. This isn't an Apocalypse deck.
• Rosetta seems good with the singleton Equivocation, but I found it pretty clunky to run. It still takes clicks, and those clicks don't come with fun events attached, and it can't fetch Aumakua. Not worth it.

RUN LOTS OF EVENTS

I typically land on 12-14 run events for Ken. It's enough money that it's worth using his ability, and the 17 inf opens up a lot of angles of attack.

• Dirty Laundry is virtually mandatory, and helps with the slightly weak econ in this deck. My Ken decks, without Temujin, tend to operate on extremely lean margins; this build has opened that up some, but there are still moments where that single credit is huge. Getting it to fire on most of your turns is good.
• Similarly, in addition to everything else it does, 3 Inside Job is critical support for Aumakua. Sometimes, you'll be locked out. Inside Job keeps the pressure up when that happens.
• Leave No Trace does similar work, but it's best mid-late once Doppelganger's arrived. The threat of an immediate follow-up for exactly the same number of credits you just spent is mean.
  • En Passant would be great, but I couldn't find anything I wanted to cut.
  • Previous iterations used Emergency Shutdown. Leave No Trace does something similar, gets you a credit, and doesn't take another click. It's better.
• Legwork needs to be a 2x. This deck doesn't use any recursion other than a single Rip Deal.
• Mobius is an experiment. It can get you 3 clicks worth of runs + 4 credits in a single click, which is bonkers, but it's useless in the mid-game and draining in the late. Not sure if it's good.
• Rip Deal is decent recursion: the deck has Turning Wheel, the breakers are very efficient, and late-game it really needs an out for running out of money. Rip Deal's my solution, because it takes fewer clicks than SoT and if the deck needs to Levy it's probably going to lose.

RUN LOTS OF DRAW

Ken needs to see his events to get value out of his ID. This build has three pieces: Laguna Velasco, Special Order, and Exclusive Party.

• You need breakers, money and a few key combo pieces, and Laguna can draw you a fuckton of cards. Putting the brakes on the deck for a sec while you click up 1 cred at a time to install it is a perfectly good idea; once it's online, you're saving a ton of time on draw and it doesn't depend on drawing any run events. It's further click compression.
• The Parties are grease if Laguna doesn't show up, keeping you rolling along until the draw engine arrives. A typical turn looks like "draw 2, get creds somehow, run twice, and then do whatever."
• Laguna saving you clicks to draw cards makes Special Order stronger, and Special Order can fetch Aumakua (which Rosetta can't do).

RUN A BUNCH OF MONEY, BUT IT'S NEVER ENOUGH

This deck goes broke a LOT, which makes decks with Bryan Stinson a little problematic.

• Dirty Laundry is a workhorse, but suffers once the corp puts ICE on Archives. It's still good.
• Gamble is Gamble. Getting to 5 is usually pretty doable here.
• Exclusive Party can make you more money than Cache or Easy Mark, keeps the draw-train rolling and works very well with Laguna Velasco drawing you cards that clog your hand.
• Day Job was a recent addition and has helped a ton; sometimes you need to go to work to pay for your toys and get back to getting in for not-much-money.
  • Peace in Our Time would be pretty great after a purge, but I'm not thrilled about not being able to run when they're at their most vulnerable and giving them money to rez (and Tapwrm probably just died, so it blocks that off).
• Tapwrm is beautiful. Purging sucks for the Corp, and they're definitely going to try to do it a lot. So you keep playing/reinstalling Tapwrms to punish them for purging, because it puts you even further ahead in overall click economy. If they purge to deal with you, they're falling further behind (hopefully). If they don't, you don't have econ problems any more. It's win-win.

SO DON'T SPEND IT.

Your breakers are trying to be very efficient without being absolutely back-breaking to install. Na'Not'K is excellent against glacier and not so bad against most other decks, Paperclip is Paperclip, and Abagnale is a reasonable decoder with an emergency trick attached (but it doesn't have amazing numbers and would be something to look at if some spare influence were to be located). It's probably the worst of the three, and it's not even terrible. Femme is for giant ICE that stayed up through a Leave No Trace.

Aumakua is the main breaker. You want that ASAP. Most everything else depends on what you need at the time, and which anti-AI tech they're running. You need 3 because people WILL keep trying to kill them.

YOU NEED TRICKS

Tricks!

• Equivocation is stuuuuupid good with Doppelganger. One click can be up to 4 cards seen, depending on what you hit. It's very good value, because each of those runs also gives you extra TW counters and potentially Aumakua tokens.
• Leave No Trace into a Doppelganger is lose-lose unless they can keep you out. It's better with breakers, but it's a very flexible card.
• Usually, you want to wind up with an Auma, 2/3 of Na'Not'K, Paperclip and Abagnale, Equivocation and a Tapwrm if any are left to play. You rarely install all 3. Femme is there for giant ICE/encounter effects and nothing else.
• This deck isn't rich enough to run over and over again, so big ol' Turning Wheel turns are important. You can often use it like an HQI/RDI, it's cheap and it synergizes with everything you're looking to do. You can run an ETR on HQ for a bonus cred, bounce and then go back in for two accesses. You can run Archives, boost Auma, run HQ for another token and then access 2 from R&D next click. Or whatever, it opens up lots of angles.
• You should Legwork once you have 4 TW tokens, because you don't have any recursion so whiffing is brutal.
• Dean Lister's an emergency out rather than a primary strategy, but if you can win by burning through him that's great. Also, you can click Laguna 3 times for a giant boost to Auma and then run, and that's good. Sometimes they'll try to purge and then install-advance, and that's a good time to dig with Turning Wheel and Dean Lister.

TIPS FOR IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THIS

• The deck runs VERY lean. It's usually possible to get in, but you'll need to face-check and try to disrupt econ as much as possible. Watch the money.
• Good targets for Rip Deal include any multi-access card, Exclusive Party for bonus value, and Dean Lister for emergencies.
• Let subs fire. You've got backups of almost everything, and you want to watch your credit pile.
• Try not to take brain damage. You're running a bunch of powerful draw, and you don't have recursion.
• Against asset spam, the plan is speed. You don't have the cash to trash everything. Trashing some things is good, but they'll eventually overpower you if you let them.
• Mulligan for econ and some combo of Laguna Velasco, Doppelganger, Aumakua and The Turning Wheel. That's the core of the deck, and the sooner you draw into those pieces the better.

OKAY HOW'S IT DO?

Honestly, way better than I expected. Something clicked when I added Tapwrm + Day Job and upped the Aumakua count, and it's gotten stronger since. I've played probably 10 games on jNet since getting the build sorted out, and that sample isn't anywhere close to amazing, but here's some stuff I noticed:

• CI is fun! It can score out, sure, but this deck runs fast and applies central pressure with lots of multi-access. It's a race, but it's a winnable race. Also, Leave No Trace.
• Skorp is winnable. They'll target Aumakua, but their ICE isn't that hot and they don't run that much of it. Build tokens, play carefully, and watch the credit pile. You're much more likely to die to Punitive than lose to Skorp scoring out, so be aware and try to score a whole bunch at once.
• Jinteki isn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Laguna Velasco does a BRICK SHIT TON of work keeping you alive, and you've got multiple for almost everything. Don't stress about it too much, and don't run before getting a breaker online, and you're probably fine.
• NBN ICE sucks. Clearing tags sucks. You have more clicks than most others to do it, but it severely limits the utility of Doppelganger. Don't be afraid to go tag-me, depending on how much of your deck is left; at a certain point, trashing Laguna isn't worth it, and you can probably spend all of Turning Wheel before they trash it. Win-win (but don't discard the other Turning Wheel unless you have to).
• Asset spam is tough, but not the end of the world. Doppelganger lets you check everything, and Auma benefits from accessing without trashing. The hard part is that you don't have enough money to attack them there, so you might not be able to stop them in their tracks. Luckily, those decks don't run as much ICE and the deck loves cheap accesses a lot.
• Glacier is expensive, but you've got tricks. If you ignore a server, Leave No Trace just gets better and better.
• Fast Advance relies on keeping combo pieces + agendas in hand, and scoring them out. You've got lots of multi-access. It's usually fine.