Siphon Kate (2x 1st Place GNK Victoria, BC)

Let me start by saying I can take absolutely no credit for this deck. It was devised by an exceptional player in a neighbouring meta, who is a far more talented deck builder (and skilled pilot) than I but I haven't seen anything resembling this deck on NetrunnerDB, and I thought it deserved to be posted.

I've used this deck to take 1st place in the last two GNKs in my area (3-1 each time, with the losses more due to poor judgement than deck weaknesses) and the architect of this deck used it to win the regionals in our area this spring. Before getting my ass handed to me by this deck, I played a tonne of PrePaid Kate, and I have to say that I unequivocally have more fun playing this deck.

My preferences aside, there is only one question really worth answering: Is this deck better than PrePaid Kate?

Well... almost definitely not - if for no other reason than, if it were, someone out there would have built it by now and other people would be playing it. That being said, it does have some distinct advantages to the commonly played variations of Kate.

1) Open Deckslots to Fill with Fun Cards

My favourite part of this deck is that, without being forced to take so many econ cards, I have room for some really cool shaper stuff that I otherwise never get to use, and in this particular build, those cards add to the efficiency of the deck. Refractor is hands-down the most satisfying decoder to use, and fueling it with Lockpick makes nice use of Kate's ability. Modded takes the sting out of installing Magnum Opus and makes R&D Interface a viable include. A guaranteed 3 cards off R&D every run makes trudging through that server every 3-4 turns worthwhile.

Of course, since Account Siphon takes up most of the influence, we do lose out on clutch cards like Legwork, and more importantly, D4v1d, but I think there's an argument to be made that it's a decent trade.

I toyed with a few changes from the builder's original list, but the only one I settled on was -1 Test Run, +1 Quality Time to increase the consistency of the deck.

2) Economic Stability

Arguably the biggest advantage of the PrePaid variant is that you can go from 0 to 9 creds in 2 clicks, and the corp can kiss their scoring window goodbye. It can, however, be incredibly frustrating for your econ to rely on decent card draw - both as you set up, and once you've got the rig in place and need to Levy everything back.

The drawback is that Magnum Opus will make your econ way more predictable for the corp, but it also makes it more reliable for you. This is a deck that can regularly click twice for credits, and then go trash that newly rezzed asset to keep the corp poor. And of course, this deck isn't entirely without burst econ. A well-timed Siphon does at least as much to rob the corp of their expected scoring window as a Lucky Find

Which brings us to the last point:

3) Surprise!

Aside from the obvious pros of Account Siphon, as things stand, Kate is one of the last runners your opponent will expect to get Siphoned by. Whenever I played a new opponent and pulled out Siphon for the first time, the response was always "Wait, what? Oh. Damn." Even people who had played the deck before forget to plan for it, because when they look across the table and see Kate, they already have predetermined expectations and this deck takes full advantage of that. Plus, you retain the advantage even after the initial shock, since now the corp has to spread their ice more evenly between R&D and HQ, knowing you have a choice of stealing their money or looking at the top 3-5 cards of their deck (ideally both!).

Obviously, the downside is that this is 100% a tag-me deck and as such, you lose access to fantastic and valuable resources like Symmetrical Visage, Film Critic and, most notably the awesome Technical Writer.

So...

I'm not sure how this deck will continue to fare. As it becomes more common for Anarchs to pack Account Siphon and Apocalypse, corps may respond by playing a lot of Crisium Grid and then this set up is at a clear disadvantage.

If, however, you love running Kate as much as I do, but are looking for something competitive outside of the rigid PrePaid structure, give this one a try. It's a hell of a lot of fun.