Copenhagen Procon Kate (Copenhagen regionals 2015 3rd place)

This is a part tournament report from the Copenhagen regionals 2015 (post Breaker Bay) and part decklist analysis.

Having played next to no netrunner for more than 6 months and very little in general since 2013, I decided to take a modified Prepaid Kate deck and a NEH fast advance deck to the Copenhagen regionals. I had not played either of those decks or even archetypes even ONCE before going, so my expectations were very modest, to say the least. In that light, I think I should be more than happy with my 3rd place, even though I felt that I was very unlucky to not win the final of the losers bracket to make it to the final.

I decided I wanted to play Kate, because I used to love playing Katman and won several smaller tournaments as well as a top 8 finish at the 2013 Nordic Championships playing that. However, I had never actually played prepaid Kate and was a bit sceptical of it. So when I saw a decklist using my beloved ProCon in prepaid Kate, I decided that it looked like my kind og deck. That decklist is here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/19456/proco-calimsha-kate-winner-london-regionals-19th-april-56-.

When netdecking I usually always make a few changes, so I'll elaborate on those.

First off, I knew that I absolutely wanted 3 Professional Contacts instead of 2. When playing Katman I found that ProCon was the number one most important card to see in your opening hand and getting it much later than turn 3 is pretty terrible. Also, with ProCon providing almost all of your draw here, it becomes even more important. I was happy with that decision, because during the 8 games at the regional with this deck, I only once did not get ProCon in play by turn 2, usually having it in my opening hand. I strongly considered going to 2 Symmetrical Visage instead, but in the end I was very happy with ProCon, which I usually used 25-40 times per game and usually more than once per turn. That's slow money, but a LOT of money over a whole game.

Basically my strategy for mulliganing was that I would mulligan if I did not have either ProCon or Prepaid VoicePAD in my opening hand. That strategy worked as I had one or both of those in every single opening hand (sometimes after mulligan, obviously).

The other major difference is that I cut Clot for another Legwork. This was because I didn't antipate much fast advance. As it was, NEH had a pretty good day (including my own NEH deck) and including Clot would probably have won me the losers bracket final. The legworks did score me several agendas on the day, so its a tough call.

A controversial move is that I removed the 3 diesels, added one Quality Time. This meant that I would be relying almost solely on ProCon for draw meaning that the deck could potentially be very slow to set up. In the end I only used that one Quality Time ONCE all day and I would say that only in one game I felt that the deck was painfully slow. I will content that adding more draw is probably good, but that the ProCon style fits my way of playing.

I went from 2 Scavenge to just 1 and I can't say that I regretted it. It is nice to have to recur Lady and move Cyber Cypher around, but this deck is very low on deck space.

On the hardware side I added one Dyson Memchip. I did this because I felt that the deck sets up to crush late game, so 5 MU might be too little. I picked Dyson over Akamatsu because the extra link makes ZU not cost any MU, making plenty of room for everything.

I cut the Utopia Shard for a [Datasucker]. (/en/card/01008). I really didn't like the idea of playing Mimic and Parasite with no Suckers and I didn't even like just playing one Sucker. In the end I must admit that the Sucker didn't see much play (I saw mostly low strength sentries), but in the two games that it really did work, it was probably pretty crucial.

I went from 2 to 3 Self-modifying Code, which I think is completely crucial when you only rely on ProCon for draw.

Oh yeah, and the deck has 46 cards. I just could not decide what to cut. I never used the Levy, but I got close to being out of cards two times, so it is kinda nice to have it in. Especially because you are probably about to win those very long games and it would be a shame to lose due to running out of cards. I only used the Quality Time once and cutting it probably wouldn't have made a difference on the day, but having zero draw is probably too risky. The stimhack quite simply won me the game against one RP deck and can be a lifesaver.

As for the actual tournament, I started out playing pretty poorly, clearly not knowing the deck. First match, my opponent plays HB NEXT and gets a seriously good start. However, the BIG blunder I make is that my opponent sets up a scoring remote with 2x Turing (Code Gate strength 5) a NEXT Bronze (another Code Gate) and some other piece of ICE I don't remember. He scores one agenda after the other with no upgrade protection, simply because I figure that my Zu is never getting into that remote (which was correct), but what I forget is that the deck has a Cyber Cypher (and I have an SMC out) which breezes through that remote. Needless to say, I did not forget about Cyber-Cypher for the rest of the day. Whether or not I would have won if I had not made that mistake is debatable though, because he had a TON of ICE out very very quickly. He made 2 ABT's for 6 pieces of free rezzed ICE and had a total of 11 pieces of rezzed ICE out before I was even close to being set up.

So early rounds, I was basically scrambling around with Kate, winning a little but losing more and relying on Near Earth Hub to carry me through to a #6 placing after 5 rounds of Swiss (29 participants).

It wasn't really before the top 8 games that I found my stride with Kate, while my NEH deck on the other hand started to falter a bit. In the top 8 Kate beat two Replicating Perfection (which dominated the day) decks and very very nearly beat the NEH deck in the final of the losers bracket (where I ended up because NEH crashed and burned against Maxx). In that game against NEH we were both at match-point. He had a scored Astroscript and a Biotic in hand, so all he needed to do was draw an agenda and he would win. On the other hand I had him completely R&D locked with a full rig out, including R&D interface and I was playing Maker's eyes and SOT to see 4 cards off R&D whenever it pleased me. I also had a Legwork in hand that I could play if he tried to draw through the lock. Anyway, during this playstate I saw 10 or 11 cards off of R&D without seeing an agenda. So my opponent popped a jackson (that had been sitting face down on the table for a long time - I should probably have checked it) before mandatory draw and drew the Astro that he needed.

My most memorable win was against RP in the first round of top 8. I was basically completely screwed. My opponent had a Nisei counter and a server with a double advanced Future Perfect, a rezzed Caprice and a face down card, which I assumed to be an Ash. Three pieces of ICE were protecting the server AND he had an Enhanced Login Protocol current in play. It seemed like there was no way I could win. He was gonna win next turn. I didn't even have a Mimic in play to enter the server or the centrals. This is how I remember it go down:

Click #1: Install Mimic.

Click #2: With the Nisei counter I could not do a regular run, so I had to do a Makers Eye run on R&D hoping to score an agenda to trash Enhanced Login Protocol. That is what happened.

Click #3: Run remote. Win the psy-game against Caprice (bet 2), my opponent uses Nisei counter to stop me after I win the psy-game.

Click #4: Running out of money I stimhack the remote, I yet again beat the Caprice psy-game (betting 1), then I beat the Ash trace of 4 (helped by my 2 link) and steal the Future Perfect for the win.

A lot of luck was involved, but that was pretty epic.