Artist Colony Stimshop Primer

This deck is a midrange Chaos Theory deck, inspired by Ulkrond's Art Thief and sigma83's Victorinox.

The goal of the variants of this deck is to lock a remote, assemble a full breaker suite and playset of RDIs, and then alternate hitting R&D and the Magnum Opus, keeping any scoring server under lock.

This is accomplished without going through your whole deck using the powerful Artist Colony to tutor needed cards. Artist Colony also opens itself to heavy tech card usage, and the Stimshop engine can discard dead cards. Due to this, this deck is heavily customizable.

This deck has few tech cards, so you have room for more. I will go card by card through this deck to show which slots are open, and will go through a large number of possible tech cards, noting which lend themselves into "packages".

The frame of the deck is the following cards: 3x Diesel, 3x Stimhack, 1x Clone Chip, 1 console, 3x R&D Interface, 2x Artist Colony, 3x Fan Site, 3x Personal Workshop. You will also need a 3 or 4 card breaker suite, 3x Quality Times or similar to draw more cards, and at least 5 ways to get a Magnum Opus online on turn 1.

These 30 cards are close to set in stone. Any changes made here should replace cards here on a 1-for-1 basis, for example, this list uses 1 Earthrise Hotel and 1 Logos to compensate for the 2 missing Quality Times. The goal of this frame is to accomplish the basic gameplan described above, and Magnum Opus economy allows a lower amount of slots dedicated to economy to make room for tech cards. Needless to say, once cards like Sure Gamble and Daily Casts are swapped out of this list, you need at least 5 ways to find your Magnum Opus on turn 1 to avoid this deck from falling on its face. The reason 1 Clone Chip is essential is when a breaker gets nailed by #Keegan Lane, or when a Stimhack hits a breaker. With those out of the way, we can move onto the tech cards.

Breaker Suite: Corroder is the most midrange fracter. Simple 1-for-1 breaking, and easy to use. Players may prefer the slow but powerful Ankusa. If this breaker is used, a Inti or Cerberus "Lady" H1 is recommended as a stopgap breaker.

Gordian Blade is an equally simple decoder. ZU.13 Key Master is too small a decoder to use, but both Torch and Study Guide are usable. Torch is likely too slow without Test Run and Scavenge cheating it out, and Study Guide will likely need a Cy-Cy as a stopgap.

GS Shrike M2 is the killer here. Both lists referenced used Femme Fatale as the killer, but I believe the Shrike is the stronger option when not using the Test Run Scavenge combo. Look out of the upcoming Golden as an alternative to GS Shrike M2. They are both similar breakers, but they have minor advantages over each other.

Finally, D4v1d and Atman are options. These depend on your meta, but both shore up Femme's weakness of high strength sentries. If you aren't on Femme, this is likely not necessary.

Console: There are not many options here. Depending on your programs, you may want to give your console 1 or more extra memory. If you only want 1, then Astrolabe and Logos are excellent options. (Dinosaurus will have ordering issues) If you want 2 memory, Box-E, Maya, and The Toolbox are options. Box-E will alleviate the brain damage, Maya will bury cards for a cost, and The Toolbox is a very expensive console with strong late game abilities. Brain Chip is very hit or miss. You sometimes will be forced to trash programs due to memory, and sometimes have more hand size and memory than you know what to do with. Also, it costs 3 influence.

Other Tech Cards:

Sure Gamble or Daily Casts: Extra economy cards if you don't like the idea of being creative. Always a solid choice. The upcoming Beth Kilrain-Chang also falls under this category.

Employee Strike is great for shutting down annoying corp identities. It's hard to tutor or recur, so beware.

Vamp can shut down a glacier's scoring server with enough money.

Same Old Thing recurs any relevant tech events, or just more Stimhacks.

Plascrete Carapace will protect you from a kill, even when not installed. Since you might end up with a low handsize from Stimhacking, very important for survivability.

New Angeles City Hall is the alternative method for not taking damage. Film Critic is a must here to keep it in play and avoid midseasons.

Feedback Filter and Net Shield are your techs against net damage, Deus X can work too, with enough recursion.

Political Operative is a tutorable way to remove a troublesome Caprice. It's brother Councilman could also work, but you get an action speed mismatch, which could prove problematic.

Rachel Beckman allows you to spend a turn taking 10, which is always powerful. You will need the aforementioned NACH package to keep her safe, unless the only tagger in your meta is Data Raven, in which case feel free to get cheeky with Hunting Grounds instead. Also note that Rachel Beckman allows Liberated Chela to forfeit a Fan Site. 2 agenda points is nothing to laugh at, but this combo requires a large amount of moving pieces.

Utopia Shard is the strongest shard, and acts as a legwork event, which can be alternatively hard-installed. You will need to hit archives after this, and you can delay the pop. Ideally, you should already have experience using this card, instead of me explaining all the differences.

Hades Shard can easily get a large amount of points against those cheeky with Jackson. You can install it off Artist Colony and pop it immediately, which depending on what you hit may be worth the 7 credits and cost of 1 agenda. This also applies to the previous shard.

Clot is FA hate. The Source is an alternative which can frustrate any deck that doesn't expect it. You can back the former up with Clone Chip and Sacrificial Construct, while the latter prefers Fall Guy and Film Critic.

I believe I have most of the major tech cards, so I will move on to the packages. Packages are simply a group of tech cards that benefit from each other and thus have an more powerful effect than their individual components. Think of them as a bulk discount.

Fall Guy, Rachel Beckman, New Angeles City Hall, Film Critic, Political Operative, Beth Kilrain-Chang, The Supplier, Hostage: You may recognize this group of cards if you've played the Off-Campus Iain deck. This is a group of connections with powerful effects when used together. Professional Contacts is another powerful connection, but once you replace Magnum Opus with that, (then cut the stimshop package, etc.) I would argue you are no longer playing this deck.

Vamp, Ankusa, Golden, Clot: These cards allow you to declare economic warfare on the corp. Provided that the game goes at least 10 turns, the existence of these cards in your deck will give the game to the person with more money. Thus, these cards should be used when either your deck's economy is unusually strong, or your meta's corps have unusually weak economies. Also, make sure the corp can't rush while you are setting up your rig.

Cerberus "Lady" H1, D4v1d/Imp, extra Clone Chip or Scavenge. These cards allow you to get an extra use of the efficient but limited programs.

Rachel Beckman, Feedback Filter, Hunting Grounds. Being able to take 10 and spend 3 to block a net damage allows this deck to outlast a non-scoring Genomics player's 3 Bio-Ethics. Hunting Grounds protects Rachel Beckman against Data Ravens, but can also get value against Tollbooth and Komainu.

Again, if this deck is missing anything, please let me know in the comments.

TL;DR: Stimshop with Artist Colony has a lot of room for tech cards, making it an extremely customizable deck.