Mindshop Smoke [25th at German Nationals 4-3]

I have always been in love with Shaper bullshit and this Smoke deck I took to German Nationals has loads of it. As always with big rig Shapers, there is an ideal rig that you would love to have sooner than later, but this deck can do a lot of work with only some parts of it running.

The core consists of Security Testing and Net Mercur. With the Cloak and Smoke credit, you can always find a cheap server to break into and gain your successful run trigger. This makes the more asset heavy matchups workable for Smoke, since you can generate 6c in two clicks every turn as long as you have enough unprotected servers. In matchups with more ICE, Cyberdelia helps making successful runs every turn.

Since we need our influence for support cards, the breaker suite consists of the Shaper stealth breakers Blackstone, Dagger and Refractor. While the latter two are good breakers, there are several barriers in the meta, that make Blackstone cry. In those matchups, you want a Datasucker to lower ice strength to bearable values. Dai V is always a hard tempo hit at 6 credits to install, so I cut it for a single Egret, which can be installed on the fly with Clone Chip if needed. You setup all these breakers very quickly with Stimhack and SMC / CC.

The deck can put a lot of pressure on the corp with the central piece: Mind's Eye. While it might seem janky at first glance, this console is great. You try to install it early game (best case with Modded) and start pressuring R&D until they ice it up well. The Security Testing in conjunction with Cyberdelia will help make these runs viable. To know when to use Mind's Eye, there are both Equivocation and Find the Truth. Depending on when FTT shows up, Equivocation can be fetched with CC / SMC in a pinch. In the best case each run on R&D gives you following triggers:

• 2c from Cyberdelia + 1c from Net Mercur while breaking ICE
• 2c from Security Testing instead of accessing (great to avoid Snares and other unpleasant cards)
• 1 virus token on Datasucker
• 1 power token on Mind's Eye
• 1 power token on The Turning Wheel
• Reveal of the top card of R&D with Equivocation. Let the corp draw, if not an agenda.
• Look (!) at the top card of R&D with FTT

Whenever there is an Agenda on top of R&D, you just fetch it with Mind's Eye. Mirāju is helpless against this approach. If the ICE on there should ever be too hard to get through, just farm 3 tokens and start running elsewhere for Money + FTT triggers (preferably HQ for further Turning Wheel tokens).

Once the deck is set up it is extremely oppressive leaving the Corp few outs. It can certainly be optimized further (finding three cards to cut, would be a start...), but it was a lot of fun to play at the tournament. Be prepared for some mental exercise though, since you have a lot of triggers to keep track of.

Since I can't possibly remember all seven rounds of swiss, here are some highlights:

• Leaving Sportsmetal next to no outs with Clot, FTT, Sec Testing and a full rig.
• Clearing 4 tags from zero credits with two Sec Testing runs and Misdirection
• Starting a run at 20+ credits against a nasty Surveyor remote and Stimhacking successfully all the way through to steal.
• Seeing the winning agenda in the remote, having no money, searching frantically for Stimhack (Diesel into Diesel to draw it), modding out (!!) a Clone Chip to fetch SMC, stimhacking to victory
• Trashing god damn 6 Urban Renewals against Cybernetics Division while staying at 4 credits (including Net Mercur and Ghost Runner) to avoid the Mumbad Virtual Tour

That last game against @Bl4nk3t had the weirdest string of events that I have ever seen in a Netrunner game:

• Break FC3 to trash an Urban Renewal, pass turn
• Corp installs ICE and another Urban Renewal.
• Run, faceplant into Vanilla, install Clone Chip to fetch Egret for Vanilla (!), run and trash Urban Renewal
• Corp installs another ICE trashing the Vanilla, then uses Archived Memories to recur said Vanilla (!!), shuffle hand for comedic effect, reinstall Vanilla to then install another Urban Renewal the turn after...

Thanks to everyone for making this such an unbelievably great weekend full of memorable games. I can't wait for the next German Nationals in 2019!