Kate, 2nd place store championships x 2 ( Meeplemart and Fri

Seeing how I get some many great deck ideas from this site, I thought it only fair I publish a few. Hardly innovative, but it might give someone some ideas or inspiration to join the Shaper movement.

Memories getting a bit hazy but I think through both store championships, Kate was 9 wins, 5 losses against all sorts of Corps -- Weyland:BS, Titan, NEH, RP (many times), etc.

It's a basic Stealth Kate deck. The downside is obvious -- it's slow to get started. Pro-co ... yup slow, Stealth stuff, yup-slow, etc. -- so I'll often go down 2-0 or worse in early game. But I have so much fun running big servers for almost no real credits ( my favourite example is 3 grims in a row for no real credits ), I don't mind the early game risk and the uphill battle against NEH ( the deck is 2-2 versus NEH). The game plan is basic Shaper stuff -- threaten remotes and try to lock R&D with 2+ RDIs. The HQI's are important just to keep up the pressure if R&D gets just crazy against rich RP or Weyland (especially when Caprice ruins your fun in there).

Card choices:

Programs: Basically the standard stealth suite. Dagger is great I think but refractor is the all-star. When the lockpicks go down, every Code Gate I see breaks for 1 or 0 real credits. Parasite is important to take out the high-sub ice -- I'm looking at you Komainu and Tsurgi (but also hate Ashigaru now too). I almost switched it out for Imp a few times because that can be tremendous money savings, but overall found parasite was useful more often. The Deus X is there so I don't die (as often) to PE. The corroder is definitely the chink in the efficient-rig armor, it's cheap to install ( but if you're use to refactor you still think it's expensive ...) but the cost to break good barriers is so high even with cloak help.

Hardware: Again, no real surprise here. I'm a definite chicken so I consider 2 plascretes and 46 cards just a Weyland tax right now, although I didn't play a Weyland all day at Meeplemart. The Akamatsu's might be iffy for some but see above for my love of free runs, so if I want 3 cloaks + 3 breakers ( or 2 cloaks, 1 parasite), that akamatsu is nice to have. Replicator might be something to think about but stealth already needs so many cards I couldn't fit replicators into deck (but I do have them in my switchblade version). The clone chips are great -- use them on SMC to get going quicker and on parasites.

Resources: Pro-co is a big tempo hit but essential to deck I think. You have to draw alot to get up your uber-rig and might as well get money while you do it. In many games I hit pro-co 15+ times easy and I've had some games where it would be 20+ with many turns being pro-cox2, run, play something. The scrubber probably looks a bit out of place but I put it in because of NEH and (less so) RP matchups. Saves on trashing the must-trash assets/upgrades (san-san, sundew, etc.) and gives me the option to keep them pretty poor by going after PADs, MHCs, etc. if I want.

Events: Hostage is a tough use of influence but I think pro-co is that important to get as soon as possible, plus I can use it to nab the 1-of Kati if I think it'll be a long game. Since I'm dagger over switchblade, deck has plenty of influence so why not? And thanks to LF, SG, DC + Pro-co usually have enough money to always threaten a server after the rig is up. The Levy probably makes many scoff (okay I know it does), but I usually put it in every Shaper deck simply because ... well, I just don't want to lose to PE I guess :) I try to rationalize it by saying it recurs GH, DC, LF, SG, Clone Chips. and parasite but, honestly, I just need security blankets (see plascrete x 2).

Why not Black Kat you might ask? Well, imho, Black Kat is just not that good. It costs more than corroder (+2 credits, +1 inf) and probably just as costly to break an Eli (you rarely have 2 stealth credits to spare because dagger pretty much gets a reserved cloak) and god help you if you have to pump without stealth credits.

Well, if you have problem with corroder run cost, why not Lady then? I like Lady alot and tried versions of this deck with 2xCerebus, 1xScavenge, 2xclone chips. But I found that I was hamstrung sometimes after running out of tokens plus the extra deck space was better used to just go to 1 corroder plus money cards.

As far as switchblade, it's definitely an option over dagger if only to make Weyland cry when you break the archer for 0 real credits. But the influence for the silencers is hefty ( 2 silencers + Dagger over 1/2 your inf.). Additionally, I found it even slower to setup than the Dagger version. The only popular problem ice for Dagger is Archer really and not that hard to have 2 cloaks/GHs or, better, slap a parasite on it and keep it at 5 strength-or-lower on your turn. Well okay, Tsurgui and Komainu and Ichi kinda a problem for Dagger too but the first two are parasite bait and the last 3 real credits so not terrible.

Well, if anyone made it to the bottom of the rambling, thanks for reading. Comments, questions, and especially suggestions welcome.