Introduction and Thanks

Before I get into my deck description I just want to say thank you to everyone involved in the Stimhack Online Cache Refresh (SOCR) community. Particularly to FightingWalloon for running this fantastic event & Sanjay for taking over the next round. I highly recommend this event for everyone as it is a fantastic format for both newer people to learn in and for experienced players to show their skills. There will be a new league starting up soon and while the information is not up yet I'll leave a link to the previous league announcement which has lots of information about the format and tournament. If you want to keep up to date just keep an eye out for announcements or consider hanging out on slack with us all. I have encountered only friends and had only excellent and fun games throughout this entire experience. Don't be intimidated by slack or the tournament - just reach out, engage, and you'll have a blast.

SOCR7 Planning

Coming into SOCR7 I knew 2 things:

1. I needed a plan for Surveyor

2. I wanted to play shaper with Patchwork + Creation and Control to have a very strong Economy

Shaper was also one of the obvious choices for raw strength in this league. They can take the most advantage of C&C, have some of the strongest tricks to run remotes, as well as yo win the game from RnD. They also had the much needed draw to take advantage of patchwork every turn.

While there are a few more Obvious IDs, I quickly realized this deck needs to find either Patchwork or Professional Contacts (and preferably both) very quickly. For this task Ayla is more valuable than the other fantastic shaper IDs. The consistency from this ID was paramount over the whole tournament, I am not sure how well this list would work without her.

As an aside I think Ayla gets overlooked as being for "janky combos". Really the ID shines whenever you have any need to find certain cards early, or have cards that are great to keep in your pocket until you need them. Between the NVRAM and mulligans it felt almost impossible to have a bad starting hand.

Playing the Deck

The current gameplan is pretty simple. Get your ProCo + Patchwork engine up, then build money and play tricks until you win the game. Indexing, Compile, Escher, and Stimhack are all fantastic tricks to help you get in. Otherwise just continue to draw, build and make piles of cash.

Maxwell James and Emergency Shutdown are both a little strange but they really punish corps for running ice which costs more than 4 to rez. Looking back at previous versions of the deck you can see that early on I had a much stronger focus on these tricks. Before Maxwell was re-balanced the deck could really punish corp econ and expensive ice rez while also applying great pressure to the remote.

Sneakdoor Beta is the flex influence but generally it is fantastic to be able to apply pressure to HQ on demand. I think sneakdoor might be best out of shaper just due to how easily you can get it exactly the turn you think it will be most important.

Notes and Lessons

SOCR7 was a strange format where I had initially underestimated the power of Wall of Static. It isn't obvious why this card is such a problem but the first time you break it for 5 with Laamb you will realize you need to do better. My initial builds and games really suffered before I learned this lesson.

Atman (particularly when combined with Datasucker) is a fantastic answer for most barriers and some other tricky ice. I've realized through the format that Atman was really my main fracter. In some cases though Battering Ram or very rarely Laamb could step in and fill that role as well.

I think I correctly planned for Surveyor with the combination of Engolo and Compile into Femme Fatale. This proved to be efficient enough for most of the tournament.

Engolo is a strange breaker, despite being my main decoder it often felt more like a killer similar to Mongoose. As an aside it is usually only 1 more to break with engolo vs mongoose on a lot of common ice. Between this and Compile into Femme Fatale Surveyor was not an issue. Going up against CritHitd20 in the cut I knew I needed even more help though and my flex influence went to Faerie which works fantastically with both compile and clone chip.

Other Cards Of Note

Notoriety : This card is most important in 6x3 point matchups and in GFI matchups without real 3 pointers. In both of those it can easily reduce the number of agendas you need to steal by one.

Modded: 3xModded seems like a lot at first however T1 Modded into Patchwork is about the best thing this deck can do. Additionally Patchwork ensures that every card in your deck is at worse a 2 credit discount. This allows you to play more copies of cards that are only situationally good by effectively making every card in your deck modal.

Escher: While in theory this card is incredible in practice it rarely was more than ok.

Compile: This card is fantastic and might be the best shaper card in Kitara. It helps so much with early rush and also provides some important efficiency for repeated remote runs.

Final Thoughts

Overall I loved playing this deck. While clicking ProCo may not be for everyone I got to play every game with a strong sense that my decisions mattered and that the outcome of the game was well within my ability to control. My two losses were both close games and I never felt like I was let down by my deck, only poor decisions while playing. I really enjoyed this deck and hope you do as well should you choose to give it a spin. I've been playing it in casual JNet & at local meetups against all challengers and it is always a blast.