Stealth Kate

Why both 3x RDI and 3x indexing?

Looks like an obvious, good way to put together a stealth deck!

The big question is can it rig up fast enough?

I wonder if an extra Dagger and Refractor would be a good idea, to help draw them quicker, and put less pressure on SMC?

I think id wait for trade in my self to save 6 influence before doing a stealth deck. Looks good though a console would be nice.

Yea i had toolbox to make it run even cheaper long term.

I did have 1 more dagger and 1 more refractor but figured I would up that if I have issues. Clone chip + smc helps rig build fast so I'm hoping it's fast enough. I could see tinkering too.

As for the heavy multi access, with stealth you need all the bang for your buck you can get since repeat runs are unlikely to work due to stealth availability. This is, obviously pure concept and I'd like to have community help in fleshing it out. Maybe it deserves just makers eye and escher or something.

Very nice decklist...the only thing I'd be afraid of is Targeted Marketing since it relies on SMC and does not run any currents...

Have you thought about Dino for the Dagger / Personal touch theirs quite a few 1-2 Str sentry's like Komanu/Tsurgi that you could save the Stealth credit on and archer will force out 2 use's.

Datasuckers are another idea for Str issue and may also spread ICE onto archive which will thin it out abit.

Dino seems alright for dagger, but the 5 cost kinda blows. The thing about hq is, you can just run it normally to pressure it. If they don't defend it, then keep doing it! Nerve agent would be nice due to the cheap runs, but I don't think the inf spread is good for it. This deck should eat layers on layers of ice alive, I don't see why having tons of RnD access is a problem. Thats where the agendas live!

With all the hardware would you want to find space for Inside Man? Maybe drop a ProCo and a Daily Casts?

Your deck pretty depends on drawing Self-modifying Code pretty early in order to get started. I'd probably drop the Clone Chips and slot in some Test Runs instead. It's a bit more expensive, sure, but it's also a lot more reliable early on. And it's not like you're doing a whole lot with the economy you have in the deck anyway.

The math on Blackcat is pretty unimpressive to me, with corroder still coming up cheaper most of the time. For the same influence, I might take some datasuckers (as none of your other breakers need stealth to BREAK subs, you can lower strength in a pinch), corroder, and maybe some cyberfeeders(?). It would also mean being able to run 3x cloak, 3x lockpick, 3x silencer if you were so inclined, and probably cut the ghost runners.

Looks a lot like the builds I came up with back when these cards were spoiled in the draft packs. I love it.

I tend to agree with @falseidol on BlacKat. Swap it for Desperado.

@Kenanyou can use clone chips to pull SMCs back to find the needed breakers, I feel like testrun is a bit cludgy for this setup.

@falseidol Ice with multiple subroutines are definitely a thing. Maybe the variance in ice selection makes blackat not as good now, but I bet theres enough matchups for it to matter. I definitely do agree that it is better if you run Quetzal, since you would only use blackat on multisub barriers. Ill consider corroder.

@CJFM I don't much like 1 ofs, unless they're events or tutorable programs, I'd rather slot a good 3 inf event honestly. I don't think desperado would add a lot of value anyway. Maybe I'll slot it in on OCTGN when this is all available.

@GPWKThanks, I'm curious to see all the variance in builds people can come up with.

@x3r0h0ur: I totally understand that interaction. The point I was trying to make is that in order to start breaking ICE, you need to draw at least 1 of 4 cards: the specific breaker you need or a Self-modifying Code. If you have a draw where you see a couple of Clone Chips and you're not finding any of the 4 cards you really need for awhile, you'll be falling behind the corp pretty quickly while the chips collect some dust in your grip or on the board. Dropping the Clone Chips for Test Runs now give you 7 possible cards to get your deck in a spot to begin breaking ICE.

@x3r0h0ur You're not wrong, but at the same time, you're still paying 3 for Eli, 4 if you don't have enough stealth credits tabled yet. And I'm going off its sneakdoor stats, which are intensive on your stealth credits and rarely dramatically better than corroder anyway. Another consideration for corroder is that it will be good for early game matchups that play a lot of cheap etr and you don't have enough stealth cards yet

Does the sneakdoor math include that the stealth credits are generated for free, or include them at all? It seems not, and think that it significantly impacts the value of the credit. If you didn't have to generate the credits used to break (recurring) the calculation is significantly different.

Also it says it breaks hive for 5, which is wrong, it breaks it for 2 stealth right? 5 is the WORST case for blackat and best for corroder. 4 is the best case for Eli with corroder, and blackat is 4 at worst. At it's best Blackat beats a full hive for 2 recurring credits, and eli for 1 normal and 1 recurring. If you're just looking at the average field, you're being mislead on the efficiency.

Ah eli would be both recurring, str+1 is 2c normal my fault. So still 2 recurring credits, not bad.

I think I stand by my assessment that corroder would make a better complement to the deck though, because it will be better for matchups like astrobiotics that take cheap binary ICE, while only being marginally worse against ICE like hive and Heimdall (neither of which are ICE I think justify teching against).

Moreso, you open yourself up to cyberfeeders and datasuckers, both of which help your entire breaker suite--and would also free you up to take a parasite if you wanted, always a solid include in Kate.

I think Blackcat will shine if NEXT Silver becomes popular, and/or some mean 0-3 strength barriers come out of the woodworks, but I don't think you get enough from it take over the speed and independence you get from corroder

Not to mention, barring any other changes mentioned, you could still USE your stealth credits on corroder :/

@x3r0h0ur I didn't mean 1 of them, I mean get rid of BlacKat and Dyson Fractal Generator for 3x Desp.

@x3r0h0urI have been brainstorming this stealth build for a while and Im not sure its the best move yet since I need to run the deck more but my mind goes towards Replicator to get the hardware pulled out of the stack quicker and thin the deck for other things we need to find?

@Jamieson Replicator is better now than it has been in the past. I think to pull that off you'd be well served to swap over to aesop's based econ, using daily casts and armitage, those with replicators can fuel an econ engine fast enough to rapidly install all the needed parts. Though, you'd be durdling a lot, as shaper tends to do when it comes to medium/large rigging. I'd definitely have to test out replicator, but I'm not optimistic, purely based on the 10 or so other replicator decks I've built, and how 'too slow' they are, and in today's meta of NBN, it feels like the least opportune time.

I do suspect, however, that we will either see a runner that uses the stealth mechanic (if it isn't nasir already), or, most likely, a stealth console, something like 5 for 1 MU and 2 recurring stealth credits or something to that effect.

Also, in this build I can easily see tri-workshopping it, but then you're really burning clicks. Just some thoughts for people as they test this baseline.

BlacKat vs Corroder is pretty interesting - the match-up against Eli 1.0 is so important since it's in almost every corp deck at the moment.

I wonder if a Personal Touch or two for BlacKat would be worthwhile? Before a Personal Touch arrived, BlacKat would break all the smaller barriers very nicely, and once the PTouch was on it, BlacKat would break Eli for a single stealth credit, which is obviously extremely good.

After all, Corroder isn't that great against Eli either at 4 credits to break, and that poor match-up is a big part of what is making Eli so popular.

Or maybe you find the space for some data sucker and/or ice carvers, to better accommodate the value of a 4 strength black cat

@x3r0h0ur NOT related specificly to this build in general but SHAPER as a whole

Shaper as relied on recursion and search abilities of the heap - Clone Chip Levy AR Lab Access what are your thoughts on the new Chronos Project agenda and what it will do to recuring heap cards? maybe Test Run will over step Self-modifying Code as the go to since it can pull from both places. I wonder how dominant Chronos Project will be in the meta

The problem is that it is a 3/1 agenda. Think of all the 3/1 agendas out thus far, and how pretty great they are, but they never slot after the cut process. Why is that? Because you can normally just score a 2 pointer, which wins you the game. But you will counter with "But this being scored could ensure you win the game!" While true, it increases variance, and as we know, variance is bad for Corp decks (or runner for that matter).

The way I see it is that it suffers from the same issue as philotic. If you get it early, it barely does anything. If you get it mid game, you might have difficulty scoring it, since the runner can trick in and steal it. Late game, when it might matter, those heap recursion decks are likely to or maybe have played levy and reset already. Also late game, runners can get in anywhere, and are likely to win if you try to score from a remote. This leaves you with fast advance only to score it...which seems pretty lame to score a 3/1 late game with fast advance tricks.

I do not think Chronos Protocol will hurt shaper as much as everyone thinks. There will be some serious feel-bads the 1 or 2 times it happens to you, but if you're reasonable about it, it falls well within the scope of "welp, I ran into my foil, nothing I can do about it"

Finally, isn't test run already the best shaper tutor? :)