Inversificator Kit (1st @ DFW District 2025)

What a sendoff for my original favorite runner.

Kit was the first deck I built when I started playing Netrunner back in January of 2016, and I played a ton of Kit decks over the years. Cyber-Cypher. Torch. Study Guide. Refractor.

But nothing topped Inversificator. It was so great I even took it to GenCon 2017 in Andromeda. It was so great they put it on the MWL restricted list for years.

As I said, I started playing Netrunner around January 2016. It was a running joke among friends in the Dallas meta that I joined Netrunner at the worst time (Faust had just been released, followed soon by the Mumbad cycle - once the boat finally arrived) but I still managed to love the game and stick with it. I went to Worlds each year after that and had a blast right up until "the end" when FFG lost the license and retired the game.

I didn't keep playing through the early years of NISEI, though I always kept an eye out to see what new cards they were designing and found it interesting. Early last year though, there was a big resurgence of the game here in Dallas. I found that Null Signal had only improved over the years, and I jumped back in.

Being extremely out of practice, and unfamiliar with the current cardpool and meta, I was looking for a runner deck that would be quick for me to learn and straightforward to play, so imagine my delight in finding cableCarnage's The Grug Brained Runner. It was perfect!

Well, almost perfect... In the notes on breaker choice: "lewd picture also strong but grug not own lewd picture". Wow look at that, my first day back in the game and I already have an advantage over cableCarnage! A quick breaker swap and we were off to the races.

Over the past year, this deck was my main deck, evolving through a bunch of different iterations and changes as the meta shifted and I came to grips with what was or wasn't working. I took it to Worlds last year (albeit with Trick Shot still in it) and it surprised me by outperforming my Corp.

Alright enough history, a few quick notes on card choices and uses...

Inversificator

It lets you do so much to adapt to the game, and many of the folks who missed its glory days aren't hip to all the shenanigans, so I'll list a few here.

The floor, the absolute most basic thing is that you make them pay to rez all their ICE to tax you on even one server. Run R&D, they rez, you swap it to HQ. Next turn run R&D again, they rez, you swap it to the remote. Next turn run R&D again, they've now paid for three ICE just in an attempt to single-ICE R&D. You can also swap ICE like Winchester off the server it wants to be on.

Okay, so they're used to playing against Kit, now they try to double ICE their important server, often putting a Code Gate on the outside to eat Kit's ability. You can break the outer ICE (even if it wasn't a true CG) and swap it to the inside. It's still a code gate for the rest of that run from Kit's ability, so you break it again and you're in.

Theoretically a three-ICE server can keep you out, but only if none of them are code gates, so you can swap the CGs from other servers into the tall one. If they go so hard as to rez no code gates at all in order to play around it, you're probably winning that exchange anyway. But just in case, we're packing the other breakers as a backup plan.

Cards that aren't as good as Inversificator

Propeller is cheap and we probably won't need to use it enough to tax out the counters.

Na'Not'K directly benefits from tall servers, which is exactly the case where we really need to use it. Plus with K2CP Turbine installed we almost never have to pay to pump strength even early in the game. It would probably be fine to swap with Echelon, but I liked that it specifically addressed our tall server weak spot.

Miss Bones was Scrubber for a long time, which to pick really came down to expected matchups and influence.

DJ Fenris is often Nyusha "Sable" Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy instead of Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter, for the sake of Deep Dive, especially if you might have to steal an Ikawah Project.

Fermenter seemed like a weird influence spend, especially with Kit's meager 10, but it was worth its weight in gold. It often cooked its way to 10 or 12c to fund a Deep Dive on the next turn. Many times seeing 5 tokens on it prompted the Corp to hard purge, and the whole extra turn was often worth as much as the money would have been.

Inversificator is expensive at 6, but typically I'd put down an SMC and Simulchip while getting setup, and overdraw pitching the Invers. The next turn an Overclock would pop SMC for Turbine while Simulchipping back Invers for 3. At that point I'm fully setup to run anywhere cheaply, and can afford to let Fermenter cook a while.

Burner is fantastic. It puts Seamless Launches, Oppo Researches, and Public Trails on the bottom of R&D, or it puts an agenda on top right before you run it and Deep Dive. If they go hard ICEing R&D, it isolates an agenda in HQ where it's easy to get.

Anyway, the deck is a blast and is pretty flexible. I've had fun playing Kit since the beginning, and fun playing this deck for over a year now. I'll miss her, but it was a delight to have such a great sendoff.