Rotato Smoketato - 6th (of 34) at Slovakian Nats

I recently moved to Italy from the US for a year, and decided that as long as I'm here, I should try and hit up some of the Netrunner events. My first foray into this was attending the Slovakian Nationals, hosted in Bratislava. Seeing as I had literally no idea what the meta looked like over here, I decided I'd throw caution to the wind and just bring what I personally have been working on. This is my Runner.

I decided on Smoke, because runner econ is in a weird spot right now, and Smoke doesn't run using real credits. Shaper also just has all the good tools right now (just take a look at the Restricted list if you don't believe me). Beyond that, Shaper is my comfort spot, having started playing in PPVP Kate's prime, and helped create Lock Hayley in regionals of last year. Unless deck power is drastically different, I find I play better playing something I feel comfortable with over something a little better with which I have less familiarity.

Anyhow, on to the deck.

What the Hell Is Econ

I know, right? I decided that most of my econ package would be based on Peace in Our Time fueling a near un-killable Tapwrm. Looking at other decklists and having seen what other shapers at the even played, I am certainly not alone in this. Beyond this, I only really have a couple Daily Casts and the Gambles to prop up the deck's econ. The little bit of secret econ are the credits you get on Net Mercur. They're useable for anything, so try and earn them whenever you can, and make sure they get used. Don't spend them willy-nilly or whatever, because you still need stealth credits to function, but if you have a ton of them, use em for that Sure Gamble.

Aside from the Mercur (which there's 3 of because god not seeing it early enough just loses games), I only have the 2 Cloaks. This might actually be a mistake, but only because I'm playing Switchblade. I think Dagger builds might be fine with this. However, since I need 2 Stealth credits for Switchblade to function, I feel like I can't be as aggressive early as I might like to against decks that you need to be more aggressive with. A Ghost Runner or two will probably make it into future builds because of this. This would have been especially helpful, seeing as basically everyone was playing some form of Jinteki at this event, so being able to quickly handle Code Gates and Sentries was needed.

Breakers

As I said, I wanted to break with as little real money as possible. I also wanted to have an answer for Tour Guide, because without it you basically just concede the Gagarin matchup. Switchblade is the only real answer here, then, even if it is a little slower to get started, and taxes the Stealth creds more. Refractor is the obvious choice for Code Gates, since it's simply more economical than it's newer brother [Houdini](/en/card/11045 against basically every Code Gate that's played.

A lot of people play #Paperclip here, and I absolutely can't fault them for that. It's a really, really good card, and I could see myself switching to it in the future. However, in keeping with the theme of "I hate paying money," paying only counters to break with Lady still feels amazing. I mean, that's why the card was MWL'd for so long anyhow, right? Because it was amazing. Turns out? Still good. However, there will be games where you have to run very aggressively, and can run out of counters.

So I'm playing [Atman. "What, not Dai V" I hear voices asking already. No. Fuck Dai V. I've tried it, and every time I have it in hand, I hated myself and never wanted to install it. 6 is tons to pay, and you still have to pay to boost every time you use it, and it takes 2 stealth credits on top of all that, just as a final kick in the soft bits. It's okay for low str things, but I often find that just an Atman is good enough. I had a game vs Grail Pālanā that was using Galahad and Kakugo as their only barriers. Atman 1 won that game. CI often just uses Vanilla as a gear check, and you need to run like crazy vs them. Atman 0 helps tons. Plus, you can still break with stealth credits if you don't want/need to use them on other stuff, so it's still economical to get in and access.

Tech Tech Tech Tech Tech

Indexing wins games, so I'm playing an Indexing. Why not two? Probably a good question, and that might change. However, in the Jinteki-infested meta of Slovakia and the surrounding environs, Indexing isn't as good, because Mirāju can be cleverly placed on R&D to shut that shit right off when you go back for the score. Equivocation is my other R&D pressure card, chosen because it can be tutored with SMC, and because it's pressure all game long. Also because it's only 1 deckslot, and deck space in Smoke is super tight, yo.

HQ multiaccess comes in the form of The Gauntlet. I chose this over Legwork because I both wanted a console that had 2 memory, and actually to save on deck space a little bit. Having my console also be my multiaccess meant that I could save a slot for something else in the future. Also, it adds constant pressure as well. Smoke is kind of a remote-lock deck, so you don't really need much HQ pressure until they can no longer score in a remote and the agendas start piling up in hand, and then Gauntlet means you're accessing 2-3(-4?) cards every run. It is expensive, though.

I'll burn through the obvious stuff. Mad Dash wins games, especially in a remote or after an Indexing. Deuces is an all-purpose good card that can just be card draw, but can also get you out of the HHN -> Zealous Judge trap as well as make informed runs later in the game. I honestly couldn't find something I'd rather spend my influence on, and I've never regretted it. Beth gives extra clicks, especially after Peace. Clot wins FA matchups, and helps against specific builds of CI, potentially gaining you extra turns. Slums was a little more experimental, but can help win the Gagarin matchup once Tapwrm catches you up on money, and can permanently remove traps you access from centrals (or faceplant into in remotes ) in other decks. It could easily be something else as well, though.

Feedback Filter... is a trap. I was talking about my Smoke deck here on Stimhack a a week or more ago, and everyone was like "Dude, you need an answer to Kakugo, it'll discard too much and you're just a 40 card deck." I realized that I'm not playing the richest deck in the world, but being able to stop key or lethal net damage could be beneficial, so I made room and threw the stupid thing in. I played against almost nothing but Jinteki all weekend, and pitched it to the junk every game. It just never felt like I wanted to spend the 2 credits and a click to install, because I never felt like I was going to get value from it, even by preventing the occasional Kakugo fire, the literal reason for its inclusion. My solution to Kakugo pinging me? Run intelligently, and don't just keep faceplanting into Kakugo all day long. Frankly, it's fine to take some net damage, and I don't need every card in my deck to win games. Nothing's grindy enough right now for it to make a difference, I feel. Partially, though, some of that is due to the People's Hero:

Film Critic. Holy shit do I wish I had two of these, because I leaned on the one copy HARD. It won my first match vs Skorp, and every other match vs Pālanā and PE (there was also Nisei, but I didn't end up facing them). The funny thing was that I was worried my deck wouldn't be fast enough vs something like Titan (see above, re: Switchblade and lack of Ghost Runners) and being able to recur Clot if I needed to, so up til 5 mins before the tournament began, I was playing a lone Clone Chip. At last, I decided that having Film Critic would probably lose me more games than not having a single Clone Chip, and HOLY SHIT GOOD JOB, ME. It was the best card in my deck in every game other than the CI match.

How'd the deck do?

Well, I only lost one game with it, and it was in the cut against a slightly modified version of Mordequi's new NEH prison deck, Lockshop (who went on to win the tournament with it). I think some more work needs to be done on the deck itself, but it's kinda disgusting once it gets going. I still think I could have won, because there was a turn where I needed to trash Shannon, MCA, and Tech Startup all in the same turn, but I only had 3 clicks because of MCA and identified I needed to kill all 3 this turn if I wanted to have ashot, and foolishly had already spend click one installing a SacCon that was 900% useless all game long. Slums would have almost won the match on the spot, had I ever drawn it, as well. That was a real downer.

Other than that, I won all my games, and it performed quite well.

** This Is The End. You Can Stop Reading Now.