Swiss Army Smoke (1st @ Poznań Regionals)

Odol 1685

This Smoke deck is a toolbox of silver bullets with an engine to reliably find them that went undefeated in the Poznań Regionals. It so happened that I was only facing Weyland decks the entire tournament, and I had just the right tools against all of them:

  • Misdirection and Film Critics against Argus

  • Clot and Pelangi against Titan

  • Notoriety and dumb luck against Gagarin (even though Astrolabe and Misdirection also could have helped if my opponent gave me the time to look for them)

What might come as a shock is just a single Net Mercur and three Ghost Runners. My reasoning is that this is not a run-based Smoke – I am not packing in Paragons, Datasuckers, Turning Wheels, etc. and running every turn to make full use of Net Mercur and stealth credits. Instead, I am biding my time to make sure that each run matters (with Khusyuk as my primary win condition), and for this style of play I prefer to have my stealth credits supplied by the trapped souls from the past… and also a spectral fox.

Similar reasoning stands behind the inclusion of Peace in Our Time – it allows you to only have a single turn of respite after an exhausting run or being hit by HHN before you can go again, giving the corp little time to exploit the momentary advantage. It is also a nice tool to speed up your setup, even though this particular blade of the Swiss Army Smoke if a double-edged one, to be used with caution.

Shout-out goes to Boreira for making me slot all three Clone Chips for consistency, and also for letting me use his copies of PiOT while mine went MIA.

As my Smoke is still very much a work in progress, any comments and advice will be much appreciated 😊

6 comments
28 Jul 2019 Longi

Hey Piotr, congrats on the victory. What about the Falsified Credentials? Was it worth it? Would not be the influ better spend on another stimhack?

28 Jul 2019 Porkobolo

It is very similar to the smoke i bring in the regionals in torino, that i've not posted. This is my list: 1 Cloak 3 Spec Work 3 Sure Gamble 3 Peace in Our Time 1 Pelangi 1 Trickster Taka 1 Refractor 1 Misdirection 3 Ghost Runner 1 Akamatsu Mem Chip 2 Legwork 2 Film Critic 1 Same Old Thing 1 Gauss 1 Switchblade 1 Astrolabe 3 Self-modifying Code 3 Diesel 3 Clone Chip 3 Cache 2 Khusyuk

It's a little more aggressive but has less tech card (clot/falsified). It went really well, sadly the corp sunked me. I decided to cut even the last net mercur because i did not feel like it's really needed, the one change i want to do now is to cut the mem chip for a freedom. The spec work/cache package worked really well and made me really fast, sometimes i used spec work even on SMC or empty pelangi.

It's nice to see that others came to my same conclusion of a not running smoke :D Congratulations!

28 Jul 2019 Porkobolo

Sorry maybe like this is better

Event (16) -3 +Diesel -2 +Khusyuk -2 +Legwork ●​●​●​●​ -3 +Peace in Our Time ●​●​●​ -3 +Spec Work -3 +Sure Gamble

Hardware (5) -1 +Akamatsu Mem Chip -1 +Astrolabe -3 +Clone Chip

Program (12) -3 +Cache ●​●​●​ -1 +Cloak -1 +Gauss -1 +Misdirection -1 +Pelangi -1 +Refractor -3 +Self-modifying Code -1 +Switchblade ●​●​

Resource (7) -2 +Film Critic 🦄​ -3 +Ghost Runner -1 +Same Old Thing -1 +Trickster Taka ●​●​●​

28 Jul 2019 boreira

6-0 in a highly competitive meta what a performance dude! The idea of one mercur is just genius. Must say that being your play tester was a big challenge already.. Falsified may seem like a first card to cut but it fits the overall idea of value runs in this very consistent deck. Just wonder how would look like a matchup between your runner and corp ;) New champ!

28 Jul 2019 Odol

@Longi Thanks! Falsified Credentials is there to help me against Mushin decks which I believe would make nightmarish match-ups, while also being a nice card against both glacier and asset-based decks. But I agree that it is one of the first cards to cut if some better way of using its influence comes up. I feel reluctant to slot more than one Stimhack, as the brain damage always seems to target my Khusyuks ;)

@Porkobolo Thanks! The Cache - Spec Work engine looks interesting as an alternative to Dirty Laundry, I will give it a try :) How effective do you find 2 Legworks? I am not a big fan of this card in general, and also feel that when you slot a Same Old Thing you might want to have a wider variety of events to choose from to reccur.

@boreiraMy AgInfusion deck would make a very interesting matchup I think, that would probably go down to whether or not Smoke manages to land at least one Khusyuk.

29 Jul 2019 Porkobolo

@Odolyeah the same old thing was a way to choose if i wanted a third khuysuk or a 3 legwork! I have to say to legwork worked really well for me, it can apply extra pressure in the first turns against some kind of decks. Sometimes when you do a 6 cards khuys and found nothing (or maybe it's the second time that you go with no results) can be an hint that the opponent got the agenda in hand. They never expect legwork from smoke and after you play it you got really menacing