Point Break

photon 70

A well-waxed surfer build :)

Your surfboard Surfer, Study Guide, Paintbrush powered by Multithreader.

Waxed with Hunting Grounds and Escher.

Indexing, Infiltration and The Maker's Eye are your access tools, multiply with Same Old Thing. If you can make fit in your own build, take Legwork onboard too.

Employee Strike helps against some Corp abilities, especially against RP, maybe include a second copy depending on your meta.

Film Critic always does a good job to keep nasty surprises from your ride.

2 comments
18 Apr 2016 Mechanoise

Since 2014 I've been running Kit, she is by far my favourite runner, and through it you learn a lot about her ability and how you need to control it the most effectively. I'm by no means an expert, but I've had enough experience to hope my advice warrants some thought, so I hope you find the following useful. :)

Kit's main power is early pressure, end of. The sacrifice of 5 influence grants you capacity to drive forward and butcher the corp early, snagging a few agendas off before they double ICE, or compromise their money through aggressive targeting of ICE to force the rez. Getting your breakers early is seriously important, and Study Guide is an amazing...yet troubling breaker, (believe me I've been trying to force it to work, but it's so difficult to.)

Study Guide needs powering up. To deal with an Eli it would need 8 credits to boost and 2 to break, 10 credits in one shot. Losing 10 credits, (not including the install cost) THAT EARLY slams your tempo and doesn't synergise with her ability, since you'd be on the recovery for another run. I get the Multithreaders are meant to slow boost the Study Guide, but each turn that ticks over is a wasted opportunity to capitalise on the corp's early weakness.

The Paintbrush+Surfer idea does work, but will cost you money, and Ash is a serious pain you do NOT want to encounter after spending your whole turn clicking to paint and running the server, so money is key. I feel the biggest issues with this deck are: Slow Setup that will harm Kit's ability, Draw, and Money to support Surfer for each turn, since you may have to click for Daily Casts one turn, then click for paintbrush another - 2 whole turns to support a single run just won't work. So I propose the following:

  • Lose the Test Runs - They don't work with any of your tools. If you Test Run Study Guide you can't boost it because it'll leave your rig at the end of the turn, so it makes it an expensive, glorified Special Order.

  • Lose the Akamatsu Mem Chips - Your final rig aims to have Study Guide, Paintbrush, Surfer and both Multithreaders, that's 6MU, your standard rig with a Maya installed, so replace Astrolabe with Maya and you free up 2 cards.

  • Lose Hunting Grounds. If you're afraid of Data Ravens, just add New Angeles City Hall to remove the tags, since you can Film Critic the Agendas you see and prevent NACH from being trashed. It would also mean you can drop 1 of your Plascretes, since your opponent could not Sea Source you if NACH is active and you have 2 credits spare.

  • Lose Indexing and Escher - Indexing does so little since you can only run once per turn, unless you see it early, which is a 1 in 45 chance to begin with. Escher might be amazing in the late game, when ICE is littering the servers, so consider your meta, but you really want to wrap things up by the corp's mid game. I'd strongly suggest Tinkering, since you can only Paintbrush rezed ICE, and through Tinkering you can convert unrezed ICE to suit you through your Surfer Runs without provoking the rez first and wasting clicks.

  • Add more money, add more card draw. 2 Quality Times at least, another Dirty Laundry, Daily Casts, Kati Jones, whatever you need to ensure your econ is stable throughout. If you're spending time setting up, may as well have Kati to unload.

  • Consider Stimhack - The Runner won't always suspect a Stimhack in Kit, but with 1 credit and a Stimhack is turns a 0 strength Study Guide into a 5 strength Study Guide immediately.

  • Consider Lockpick - It also boosts Study Guide and mitigates the need to spend your own money to break subs.

I hope this helps somewhat. Feel free to fire any questions my way. Good luck!

19 Apr 2016 photon

Thanks for the elaborate comment and suggestions, I appreciate that very much. So much that I am going to publish that second version right away ;-)

I have been having some encouraging experiences with that deck. Especially did I not have such heavy issues with it that you foresee but still I get your point(s). Just for the record some clarifications from my side:

  • Test Runs are probably not needed yet they have the ability to bring stuff back from heap if anything goes terribly wrong - not so bad in times of MWL. E.g. once I have successfully recovered from an Archer wipe-out (falling off my surfboard, yes...)
  • Astrolabe can be great especially against asset decks, Jinteki BS etc. but substituting for Maya saves slots and is not such circumstantial. Together with NACH it is actually a not so bad combo after all!
  • Not only Data Raven but also Komainu is food for Hunting Grounds but yet again NACH is less circumstantial with the above combo and more versatile.
  • Tinkering might be a good substitute for Escher with which I liked to move a rezzed barrier outside a suspicious remote and then just surf in.
  • Stimhack really is a useful addition, at least one can be sure that the credits are all well spent.

Yes, I guess that helped "somewhat" :) btw, for pm check bgg.