Code Scramble - Euro's Best Kit

First of all, you can see the deck being played on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/269219275

Although in that match-up the deck plays a very different game than usual. But more on that later. I chose this deck because I strongly believe that it is well fit to combat the current Weyland meta that is presented to us all the while having good match-up across the board. The main strategy of the deck is to run aggressively using Cyberdelia money and very efficient breakers, like Cyber-Cypher to lock down R&D with Deep Data Mining and camp the remote for when they try to score normally.

CARD CHOICES:

Why are you playing Kit? I think this is the question most people are asking. The reasons are: in a meta where Corporations are playing Fast Advance or Rush, behind gearcheck ICE to try to score fast, having an ID that invalidates ICE is strong. It is also well documented throughout the history of Netrunner that cards that invalidate ICE are strong and Kit invalidates 1 ICE per turn. I also think that Kit is not as widely played as it should because people think 10 influence is too little. There’s a mental blockade that it won’t do enough. I think these people might want to give Kit a fair shot. Anyway, the faction to beat for Euros was Weyland, which plays a lot of Hortum and a lot of Mausolus (which are Code Gates), it also plays a light set of ICE – some Titan lists run 9-12 ICE and Skorpios lists go for 10-12 as well – Kit is able to have accesses through these thin lines with ease. You beat FA and Rush with lots of accesses.

So with that in mind, how are we accessing?

Deep Data Mining – This is Shaper’s strongest win condition at the moment, the sheer power of this card reminds us of what a Medium R&D Lock was like. See five cards, money while Corp goes through the remaining ones, play around ALL the information you have. See five more cards. This card also punishes, severely, Rushers that ICE remotes first in hopes of quickly scoring agendas. The deck has a set of Cyberdelias that, not only give you money, but they also give free MU so that you can keep installing your programs but not affecting your DDMs.

Legwork – The one-of hand check. Helps completing the board-lock. All the agendas you didn’t see in DDM or checking the remote must be somewhere. If everything is going according to plan, the Corp will panic and install a lot of ICE in R&D and Remotes but be very light on HQ, this is always a free run that wins you games.

Stimhack – This card locks the remote, invalidates a lot of ICE, gets rid of defensive upgrades and helps you pull out Inversificator out of SMC when needed. It is an all-around fix all that helps you access cards. 1 is usually enough for setting-up or making a final assault.

The Turning Wheel – It’s rare that you don’t get in a server with Kit. But it’s not rare that you may not see Agendas, this keeps building counters until you plan into making a final attack. Can act as a pseudo-legwork and a pseudo-DDM if you are having MU constraints, although you shouldn’t. It doubles down as a last nail in the coffin when you’re running DDM with 4 MU free. Access how many cards? How about 10+… sounds mighty fine be me.

To access we need programs, so we have the following:

Inversificator – This beast of a program dictates the pace of the board. It can only be stopped by a three ICE’d server, from which, none of those ICEs can be a Code Gate. This price is fairly steep to pay for the meta-Corps right now, so you just rule the board, move the ICE however you like and make a DDM run paying 2 credits… which you get from Cyberdelias, anyway. It happened.

Cyber-Cypher – is your early aggressor. The slick cost of 2 credits and the 4 (!) strength threathens any server from turn 1. So, the Rusher cannot and will not gear-check you. It’s also funny to pay 6 credits for an Archer getting 1-3 back from Cyberdelia and accessing 4+ cards. What Inversificator ends up paying too much, Cyber-Cypher compensates by breaking everything for dirt cheap, they play very well together. Usually one Cyber-Cypher will go to R&D and another to the Remote, but feel free to adjust according to the match-up.

Inti and Na’not’K – Inti could easily be “Lady”, but that would mean that I would have to play Scavenge and since I was expecting Skorpios, that didn’t sound like a good proposition. Also, everyone is playing small barriers due to Paperclip being a thing so Inti fit well into the aggressiveness I was hoping with this deck. Na’not’K is also there to shut aggressive sentries if need be. Not all decks have a lot of sentries but it’s a nice insurance to have.

Alright, how do we pay for all of this?

Sure Gamble, Modded, Daily Casts, Liberated Account, Professional Contacts – These are your money cards, all in threes barring Liberated Account, this is because Liberating Accounts fights for the same clicks as Professional Contacts, but you want to be using Professional Contacts almost every time. Liberated Account is a great starting hand enabler since you can keep more hands that don’t have ProCo and is a great setup for plays. It’s also cute to shuffle when stealing Degree Mill. Sure Gamble and Daily Casts is your standard economy package and Modded has a lot of targets in this deck to be warrant a full set: Cyberdelias (cost 0), Inversificator (costs 3), Na’Not’K (costs 1), Maya (Maya?!?!?!? We’ll get there… costs 0 as well). ProCo is the main source of cards and drip economy (of sorts).

Now that we have the bulk of our strategy, let’s talk about the Tech cards (or the spicy includes!):

Interdiction – Is very good against Batty, Ash, Sandburg, is a cheap counter current and also has applications against Asset Spam strategies.

Test Run – This is a 1-of mainly against Skorpios, you Test Run for Inversificator, use DDM, steal an agenda and hide your breaker away from Hunter Seeker. Can also recur programs lost to Stimhack or other incidental damage and can contest a remote by fetching Cy-Cy. But it was mainly to combat Skorp that I slotted this.

46th card – which is the 2nd Cyber-Cypher, for the same reason above. You run very light on programs, so you don’t want to be locked down by Skorpios, so I added one more breaker, but didn’t want to cut any card for it. Since I draw a fair amount of my deck it didn’t affect consistency.

Clot – A lot of Titans were used to play against Valencias, used to be free to Fast Advance at leisure; the threat of Clot plus Inversificator means they can’t attempt a score uncontested. This also helps your Legwork hitting points.

Misdirection – against Argus this is really brutal, also helps against CTM (they’ve scored an ARES, you go, trash their money cards, take the tag and trace, clean both for 2).

Gebrselassie – This was against more glacier type decks where this card can save up a lot o money with Inversificator throwing around ICE but having it’s strength fixed, didn’t get to play it, but, it’s there. In the whole tournament it spared me 8 credits on two installs. Net 4. Meh.

Maya – Ok, this console is here for 2 reasons. It’s 2 MU for 3 credits and I used the ability quite a few times. Ask yourselves, how does a Titan win when it knows you can have Clot, you just DDM'd, stole an Atlas and bottomed a Biotic Labor? Answer: it doesn’t win. It can also bottom Hunter Seekers, Hard-Hitting News, Obokatas you’re not ready to steal and don’t want the Corp to have them. It does a lot but has a cost, Beth helps with mitigate its cost, but it’s there, it’s up to you to evaluate the board-state and choose to use it.

How did it fare in the tournament?

So, the good news is, against CtM, Skorpios, Titan, it crushes. Hard. These match-ups are in absolute favor of Kit. And throughout the tournament I managed to beat said IDs. The bad news is, my deck is geared for these decks. It auto-loses to Jinteki damage… and I was paired not with 1 but 2 out of the THREE Jinteki: PU of the whole 244 people. So I lost those games and then two more with Corp and on round 7 I was eliminated by my good friend Carlos, on stream, because he knew my decklist and played accordingly.

CONCLUSION: The deck is strong, you can gear it up to beat damage (Liberated go out, in comes Peace in Our Time and Feedback Filter) and beat other Corps that are more prevalent in your meta. The skeleton remains the same. Give Kit a chance! She deserves it.

Some shout outs to my crew which made the whole experience fantastic! All of my opponents who were awesome, even if they were playing the only Corp I didn’t want to face all day. To Johno for putting my deck on camera!!! And to @Ulkrond because he said he liked me a lot in the stream and I’m secretly a fan of his deckbuilding style (in mad love with Art Thief at the time).

To finish off with a little boasting:

UNTIL THE NEXT EUROS, WHERE SOMEONE TOPS ME, I AM TO BE CONSIDERED EUROPE’S BEST RIELLE ”KIT” PEDDLER PLAYER!

Thank you for reading.