Kate Learning Deck

Here we have a pretty standard Shaper deck. Shaper is okay but not great with your card pool, Shaper really became what Shaper is today with the first deluxe expansion, Creation and Control, which was huge for them, but Kate still has an excellent ID so we can just use that and make a money and breakers deck.

Economy:

3 Sure Gamble - Pretty much always an auto-include.

3 Magnum Opus - Our primary source of economy, we want to get this installed and going as soon as possible each game.

2 Kati Jones - Our other clicks-to-credits economy card, provides even more efficient economy than Magnum Opus but over a longer period of time. Also want to get this set up as soon as possible.

3 Underworld Contact - This is a pretty decent source of drip economy with your card pool. In the case of Kate, we already start with 1 link so it's not hard to get 1 more to turn these on. It's good to have some click-free economy like this to go alongside Magnum Opus and Kati Jones or we'd never be able to do it all.

3 Diesel and 3 Quality Time - A lot of card draw to get set up as quickly as possible. We don't have access to tutoring (cards that look through our deck for specific things) so it's necessary to have card draw to get the breakers we need. But our first priority is to draw into getting our economy set up. Diesel is the best card draw in the game and a Shaper card that goes into basically every Shaper deck. Quality Time is less efficient and is more often used in other factions as it only costs 1 influence but here we don't mind having access to extra draw for when we need it.

3 Dyson Mem Chip - Our primary way of getting to 2 link, fortunately these do only cost 2 to install with our ID ability so it's not as rough. The link is just to get to 2 for Underworld Contact, after that you shouldn't bother installing any more of these unless you really feel the extra link or memory is necessary. The memory is relevant as you'll see with our programs but Magnum Opus is 2, then we need 1 breaker of each type installed which is 3 more, putting us to 5. The 1 extra memory lets us get everything installed. We still won't be able to install Mimic and Ninja at the same time but that's usually not necessary, most of the time you just pick the one that's better suited for the situation and install that one.

1 Access to Globalsec - Just here to get to 2 link for Underworld Contact if we haven't already gotten there with Dyson Mem Chip. You can install more afterwards if your opponent has a few tracing cards, otherwise don't bother.

1 Desperado - The best console you have access to. We can only play 1 because 4 influence is a lot, in a perfect world we'd have 2 of them to increase our chances of drawing 1. The +1 memory can matter if you installed Access to Globalsec to get to 2 link thus need 5 memory to have 3 breakers installed, otherwise if you already have 5 memory the +1 can still be occasionally helpful if you want to have both Mimic and Ninja installed at the same time (usually not necessary but occasionally helpful).

3 Modded - Modded is great, it's what we call "click compression," meaning we're gaining money (technically saving it, but same thing) and installing at the same time. Modded is also great to help clear out your hand after you draw 5 from Quality Time or potentially 3 from Diesel. Remember that Modded stacks with our ID ability, meaning our first install for the turn, if it's with Modded, costs 4 less. Thus our primary Modded targets are: Magnum Opus, Gordian Blade, Ninja, and R&D Interface. R&D Interface will be your most common target as the game progresses as it's the only one of these cards we want to install multiples of (each one stacks). Otherwise, we can still Modded 3-cost cards and not be too sad about it so: Dyson Mem Chip, Mimic, and Desperado. If you're going to do that, it's not terrible if you can install something else first and use the Kate discount for that, then play Modded so you get the full 3-cost discount (for example: first install Corroder, which costs 1 from Kate's ability, then play Modded to install Dyson Mem Chip for 0).

Utility:

3 The Personal Touch - Not the best card ever (typically this is better if you're playing a lot of fixed-strength breakers like Mimic and Yog.0) but it's alright. We're out of influence so we can't important any more powerful cards but this is still just fine. It can make any of your breakers more efficient but it's especially good on Mimic (because it can't increase in strength) or Ninja if it (or multiples of it) puts Ninja to a point where it doesn't need to increase in strength to break something as it's efficient but costly to boost the strength of Ninja. Otherwise, it can just be used to be more efficient against something you already see and plan on running regularly.

2 Sacrificial Construct - A decent filler card, especially with a lot of card draw we can install one of these for free to clear space in our hand. We have multiples of each program except Mimic so it's not the end of the world if something gets trashed but most of our programs are expensive and it's much nicer to lose one of these than something we paid 4 or 5 credits to install. Also can let you run sooner more safely without all your breakers installed.

3 R&D Interface - We install these over the course of the game and then pressure R&D when we can.

3 The Maker's Eye - Our other form of R&D pressure, more burst pressure as opposed to R&D Interface which is a slower but more efficient form of pressure. The good news is we can combine both of them as they stack, so if we run with The Maker's Eye and we have an R&D Interface installed, we access 4 cards. 5 with 2 R&D Interfaces, 6 with 3. That enables us to have some really big turns with a lot of access to almost surely steal an agenda (on average. There should be an agenda 1 out of every 5 cards on average, so a 4 access will steal one 80% of the time and a 5 access should almost always steal one). Because we play all this multi-access, we really want to avoid making many runs for single access (you should pretty much never run R&D for single access with this deck, you can occasionally run HQ just to pressure it or if you think the Corp is holding a lot of agendas).

Breakers:

I'm not sure if you know this yet but each faction specializes and thus is the most efficient at breaking one type of ICE - Shapers break code gates, Anarchs break barriers, and Criminals break sentries. Here we have just taken all the most efficient breakers and put them in our deck. Gordian Blade is our most efficient code gate breaker, it's still one of the best in the game even with every card that's been released. Corroder has been the best barrier breaker in Netrunner for almost the entire history of the game, there's finally just been one released that's probably better than it (although it wouldn't be for this deck) a couple months ago. Sentries are more difficult as Ninja is efficient but only for certain strengths of ICE. Ninja is best to break 4-5 strength ICE whereas Mimic is there for the 1-3 strength ICE. Ninja does have the advantage of always being able to break the sentry whereas Mimic can't increase its strength and thus we can get blown up if we run into something it can't handle. Thus, Ninja is our primary breaker as it's the safest and we keep Mimic around in case we see a lot of things that we want to break and then we'll install it.

With how our memory works, we always want to use 2 memory for Magnum Opus which leaves us 2 memory. After that it's just up to you to see which 2 breakers you need the most until you get to 3 memory, then you should usually have Corroder, Gordian Blade and Ninja installed. If you're at 5 memory but all the opposing ICE is breakable by Mimic and you already have Ninja installed, it's fine to install the Mimic over Ninja (trashing Ninja) as we do have 2 Ninjas in the deck and can always draw one again if you really need it.