Kate Faust - 1st place Sheffield

This is the runner deck that I piloted to 1st place at Sheffield Regional. Compared to my rather standard corp, this is a pretty non-standard deck that always evokes amusing reactions when 1) installing hyperdriver 2) installing Faust.

I've played this deck for a long time on jnet, though the influence/tech slots have changed alot over time. The basic idea is that the traditional Kate rig of cycy, lady and mimic is very efficient, but each breaker suffers from a limitation - Faust aims to patch up these holes. It stops the corp from taxing out lady tokens with nonsense ice like vanilla and ice wall, it allows you to break codegates on multiple servers, and can be used in a pinch to break sentries like ichi, news hound and Colossus that are out of Mimic's range. Proco provides excellent fuel for Faust, and I believe is simply very good in the meta, due to tagging decks being relatively unpopular, and the lack of blisteringly fast corps. Hyperdriver came into the deck when I realised that I was often not playing diesel once I had proco installed. Hyperdriver can act as a pseudo-diesel in the early game, but the main idea of course is to combine with proco for tempo, and potentially a power turn or two in the mid to lategame. Bloo Moose replaced tech writer when Free Mars became legal, mainly because of how broken the card is - I feel it's rather a nonbo with this deck, but if I draw it early I can adjust my strategy to using faust sparingly.

The tech slots are pretty self-explanatory, but there are alot of them. Employee strikes came in mainly because of Aginfusion, but help in a variety of matchups, while the change from Aaron to NACH wasn't too painful to make. Deadweight tech cards can still be put to use by feeding them to Faust.

Mini tournament report:

Round 1: I played Kate against Builder of Nations. My opponent drew tons of money but very little ice, and started spamming the board with scary facedowns, most of which were traps. I played passively, afraid to run when he had the money advantage, and he triple advanced one of his cards, without scoring it. I knew what was coming and also knew I didn't have the balls to run this card ever, so just prayed it wasnt the GovTake. Next turn it reached 6 advancements, I dug R&D and stole... Government takeover. Horrible luck for my opponent as it took much of the sting out his deck, - I won a few turns later with another R&D dig.

Round 2 against Ed, who is playing spiky Palana. I don't remember for sure, but think I mulled into a mediore hand, but I do manage to keep employee strike up for much of the game. He draws up heavily without icing hq, I decide to legwork and steal a food, also seeing an MCA informant. I play proco and beth out soon after, and poli op, which ultimately ends up being the target. He starts up a remote and manages to score a house of knives while I'm durdling, soon after I start digging R&D and hit a snare with 3 cards in hand, which he declines to trigger because he's only on 5 credits. I don't recall exactly where I stole the second 2 pointer from, though I did hit another snare out of R&D, and a shock in archives. He scores an Obokata in the remote while I'm low on money/cards, and celebrity gifts to show me another in hand. Sadly with crisium on HQ I can't recur my legwork, so I focus instead on R&D, which is now defended by a data loop, the new NBN ice that forces you to return two cards to your stack on encounter. I access 3 cards and see an Obakata...with 3 cards in hand. Feedback filter cannot be used to mitigate the damage so I have to leave it, failing to keep an entirely poker face, which Ed picked up on, though he couldn't work out exactly why. Next turn he jams Obakata in the remote as I'd hoped, which allows me to proco 3 times and run R&D, this time accessing the Obakata with enough cards to steal it. Tight game.

Rounds 3&4 I take ID's, on Tr1s's advice. It guarantees making the cut, so I just play a few friendly games with tr1s while we wait.

Top 8 game 3: I won my first two games of the cut by corping, but now I cannot escape running, and I'm against Gary's moonspam. I get an OK draw and snipe a food from his hand with a casual dirty laundry. A couple of turns later I've installed several key pieces - Astrolabe, Proco, and all 3 daily casts. Gary has thrown out a bunch of remotes but doesn't seem to have anything special going yet, so I install 2 RDIs and hit R&D, which is only defended by vanilla. I find an agenda, and a few turns later setup a power turn with freedom into R&D dig, with the idea of following up with legwork if I miss. I find the win on R&D, putting me in the grand finals. To be honest I was just lucky on my accesses this game, though I may have won even if I'd whiffed entirely at the end.

Grand final: Gary is back, but needs to beat me twice. Once again it's Kate v Moons, and this time he seems to get a much better draw. My own draw is decent, with a Sure Gamble and Proco on turn 1, but I do allow him to sneak out a cheeky Vit while I'm setting up my economy. I get an early RDI and hit R&D a few times, but come up dry, while Gary draws up with Jackson and plays out more and more assets. I legwork him on a turn where I feel like he is about to score, he rezzes Lakshmi to reveal a Vitruvius from hand, which I could have hosted on film critic, but I miss it. He scores it soon after, as I continue to draw through my deck with the help of Astrolabe and Hyperdriver. I install the second RDI and play a makers eye, finally stealing an agenda, but still feel like I'm on the back foot.

I use clot and sac con to slow down further scores and Gary's deck starts to get pretty small. He tries to sneak out a naked ABT, a reasonable move since I didn't check the last 10 or so remotes, but the way my 5 click turn works out, I'm left with 2 spare clicks and nothing better to do than check the two new remotes. So now it's 4-4. The threat of clone chipping clot prevents any snap wins by fast advancing food, so I take a quiet turn, drawing up and installing CyCy pointing at R&D, which is defended by two fairkids. The following turn I play freedom through equality, and same old makers eye, which yields the winning agenda.