[startup] Afterimage Steve

This is a stealth steve list I've been piloting sucessfully on jnet for a couple weeks. Someone asked if it was posted anywhere -- this is the first I know of.

Credit where it's due, this is largely stolen from Meryu who cleaned my clock with this once, and then I was like "I need to steal this list from you".

I have made some changes though, and I think parts of the original transcription were wrong. So all the bad parts here were my doing.

The core of the deck is the breaker suite:

• Buzzsaw, Cleaver, Afterimage.
• Leeches
• Remaining influence on Trickster Taka and Ice Carver.

This suite will let you break or bypass most ice for pennies. For triple-advanced Pharos, you have the boomerangs.

(See also Aunthemod's Stealth Anarch list: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/eb25c3b4-6c97-4c94-8c14-76058770aee7/-startup-stealth-anarch-18-0)

However, the deck does not run poor. You also have available Pennyshaver + Red Team + Security Testing. This combo lets you get 5 credits + a Pennyshaver credit for running Archives. Plus leech counters. Plus you can additionally get Dreamnet draw + The class act filter, for one click.

This also explains why we don't have Sneakdoor Beta which is common in Steve lists -- if the corp doesn't lock down archives, then they will struggle to keep you out of any of the other servers. Instead this deck doesn't have to run any extra MU beyond Pennyshaver.

The only sources of stealth in this list are: Trickster Taka and Penumbral toolkit, which may seem like not enough to use Afterimage sustainably. However, usually the leech counters are all you need.

In terms of how it matches up in the meta, it seems very strong vs. a number of decks that use Tyr or Archer as a key component. (This includes the Prana condenser decks, many weyland decks.) Weyland decks that rely on program destruction generally fall flat, you have backup breakers and can recur a breaker with steve if it is trashed a second time. Punitive counterstrike usually isn't a big deal either because the deck has money. The breaker suite seems very strong vs. Haas bioroid glacier because many of the bioroids are broken inexpensively with ice carver and maybe a leech counter. (Including the MM clearinghouse deck, the architects-of-tomorrow decks I have played against). The deck is generally good vs. black tree jinteki because of Dreamnet and the Steve ability, it is hard for them to deck you. It usually does fine versus NBN because this deck is not poor.

The deck suffers because of the lack of Light the Fire! Sometimes I have been shut out by the skunk void combo without a good answer. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I am not using Lucky Charm. Maybe should try this.

The deck doesn't have a ton of multiaccess so it is hard for it to win fast. Instead, we establish remote lock and drag the game out.

We do have some forms of multiaccess:

• Jailbreak, which we have 3 of and which can be recurred
• Docklands pass
• Mu safecracker, which you cannot feed with taka credits unfortunately.

Other notes:

• The original version of the deck has prognostic q-loop. However, this feels strange in this deck because we don't have that many programs / hardware, we seem to be mostly resources. I think this would be helpful when you've already drawn through the deck and you want reliable click compression with boomerang. I cut it in my version, but I may be wrong about that.
• The original version has only 1x security testing, but I feel like this synergizes very will with red team so I went up to 2x.
• I'm not sure Mu safecracker is really needed, it's kind of a dead card until later. I played many games without this in the deck. I think it's a coin-toss whether to keep it. But it does help give you more multiaccess which is something you want.
• The original version has 3x penumbral toolkit, but I feel like, having 2x and the ability to recur one with Steve is pretty good.
• At one point I had 2x Inside Job. It's just a good card and in many cases, if you need a card from your heap you can pair it with inside job and the corp will give you that card. I cut it to try to get the deck size down, but definitely deserves honorable mention.
• It's reasonable to ask why I don't have Earthrise Hotel here. I feel like given that you run every turn, Dreamnet usually provides more value in the long run and I want to get it down ASAP. You can re-install the class act to draw 4 cards also: I don't usually feel like the deck needs more draw. However, it may be more efficient overall to do something like, -1 Dreamnet, -1 Class Act, +2 Earthrise Hotel.