Stealth PrePaid Kate (2nd place GNK, 3-0)

I put together this deck and piloted it alongside my HB:ETF hybrid glacier/biotic deck during a recent GNK. MWL 1.1 was in effect, with cards legal through 23 Seconds. Across 3 rounds of Swiss, the deck went 3-0 against ETF, SYNC, and ETF, and carried my Corp (a disappointing 1-2 record) to 2nd place out of 13 players.

I don't know how I feel about dropping Clot and Clone Chip entirely. Some people would call that blasphemous for a Shaper. I saw 2 or 3 opportunities to use Clone Chip with SMC to set up my rig faster, but ultimately it wasn't an issue. Had I played some other flavor of NBN, I probably would've had a poor match-up. As it was, there was only one single opportunity where I could've used Clot; everyone else used the standard advance or never-advance approach.

My idea here was to use Mirror to allow a full stealth rig + 3 Cloaks, and to use Mirror to play more aggressively. PPVP allows for great burst economy from very few credits, which lets you recover from Closed Accounts very easily and make meaningful runs on the same turn. Mirror can even reset a PPVP recurring credit. I also wanted to test Deuces Wild, which I thought would further add to PPVP targets.

As it was, Deuces Wild and Mirror were good, but not dramatically so. The surprising MVPs were Freedom Through Equality, which directly won both games in which I drew into it, and The Turning Wheel, which allowed me to land both of those FTEs. I loved having turns that consisted of Lucky Find, FTE, and Maker's Eye to gain a net 4 credits and breeze through R&D, using Turning Wheel tokens for even more accesses, and score 3-5 points in one go. I think I only got to use Mirror's R&D ability once or twice, although it was a nice bonus when it worked out.

The deck has plenty of card draw options, 1 Plascrete for protection against kill, and Film Critic to tech against The Future Perfect/Fetal AI, SEA Source-based decks, and a few miscellaneous cards...but I never had an opportunity to play either. No great tech against Hard Hitting News, but because the SYNC deck I played wasn't going for the kill, I just went tag-me, used PPVP burst econ to trash SanSan City Grids, and paid 3-4 real credits (for Resistor) and 1-3 recurring stealth credits per run to land high-impact multi-access runs.

I could cut a Lucky Find for influence, and maybe a third Deuces Wild. Might be able to drop 1-2 Lockpicks without too much impact. I also might consider dropping Mirror for Astrolabe, or even Maya; Deuces Wild would combo great with making a run and then removing the tag afterwards. I'd love any other ideas or feedback on how to improve, or to make the deck more viable for more competitive tournaments.