Rielle's Hardware Kit

Jashay 716

This deck is a work in progress; I expect to be tweaking it for a while to come yet...

I've been looking to get a deck based on Replicator going for a while now. It seems like a card with some very powerful potential, but I struggled to make it click. I had previous decks with Kate and Chaos Theory, but they struggled to apply pressure reliably in the early game. Also, I felt that I was putting in some bits of hardware to help Replicator get more use, rather than because they would help me win the game.

Enter Kit. She doesn't have the inbuilt advantages of Kate or CT, or even the same amount of influence, but she does have her 'Make-a-Gate' ability. All you need is a decoder and you can crack any single ice server. And on the hardware front, you are guaranteed to get use out of Lockpick.

BREAKDOWN:

PROGRAMS: I haven't played with this deck enough to be fully confident in my choices here. Zu.13 is perfect, with its efficiency and cost of one, as an early game breaker. Torch is meant as a late game play, where its higher STR gets it through most code gates trivially. However, Cyber-Cypher has the same strength, and costs 7 less, although it obviously loses flexibility. I'm sticking with Torch for the moment, as it helps more when you need to crack a big remote.

I dislike both sentry breakers, but since I dislike almost all available killers, they'll have to do. Snowball will do, since I don't have the influence for Corroders. Omega is slightly too pricey for my liking, but being able to crack any 2-deep server with just two breakers is pretty brutal, and puts a lot of pressure on the corp.

EVENTS: Money, card draw, and an Escher to mess things up if the corp puts up some effective defences.

RESOURCES: Money and card draw, with an Escher to ruin their defensive setup. I was back and forth on Armitage vs daily casts, but I prefer the burst potential of Armitage, and the cheaper install cost. Inside man does a lot of work in this deck mid-late game, but doesn't always arrive at the right time.

HARDWARE: Cyberfeeder and Lockpick are recurring credits, as is the Spinal Modem. I might drop the latter to free up some influence, but I am happy with it so far. Plascrete is a necessary evil. RDI to help digging. Replicator to help get multiples of all of these out. It also helps thin the deck.

HOW TO USE IT: I struggled a lot in the initial games with it because I was looking for the Replicator to click before I did anything. This worked okay with CT and Kate, but with Kit you lose the early pressure advantage of her ability. So now, I'll mulligan if I do not get a Zu.13 or SMC or Torch. Get a decoder down, and start hassling. Kit works best making one run a turn, use the events and clicks to get a full hand again. If you can get the replicator train rolling, brilliant, but don't sacrifice tempo for it. If your opponent can only lightly ice his servers, go for blood. Don't wait for the replicators; the hardware is in the deck to be stand-alone useful, you'll get more advantage of playing them when needed as opposed to waiting for the combo.

Any comments would be appreciated!

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