3rd place NZ Nationals. Bullshit Kate - Or how I learned to

3rd place NZ Nationals. Bullshit Kate - Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the keyhole

Full credit to Calimsha for building this deck for me, and to LSK for starting the combo-runner trend with Hypershitfucker, and rotage for starting this specific style of combo-runner as well as bluebird503 and ryanbantwins for their contributions towards it.

After losing many games with variations of Andromeda, Maxx and other good-stuff runners, I was pointed at this deck for NZ nationals (thanks Calimsha). In testing I was making tons of misplays and still somehow winning more games than with these legit decks. The deck suited me well, as it is essentially the runner version of my corp deck (CI7 - link here).

This deck was called by some "Dyper kate", but can we just take a moment now to acknowledge how dumb this name sounds? I propose that from now on we call this "Combo kate" (or alternatively "keyhole combo kate"). Nobody wants to be thinking of baby excrement when they play their deck.

So how does the deck work? Just draw and gain money to setup the cards you need and make one power turn.

• Two Leprechauns installed
• 3 Hyperdrivers and a Keyhole on the leprechauns.
• A turning wheel installed
• A DDOS installed
• Some False echos and Clone chips (just enough to deal with the ice) installed.
• Beth installed.

With Beth installed you can potentially have 14 clicks on the combo-turn.

The combo turn (ideal):

• Gain hyperdriver clicks, pop DDOS, (14 clicks remaining)
• 1st click: Rumor mill (to turn off Jackson).
• 2nd to 12th click: Keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole, keyhole.
• 13th click: Run HQ and spend 10 turning wheel counters to access 7 cards,
• 14th click: Run archives.

If you have the opportunity to take an agenda from a remote during this turn, you should probably do so instead of keyholing. Similarly if you see the win in archives you should just take it as soon as you can.

Obviously in some games you aren't able to do all of this, If you're fairly sure there's no Jackson you can not use Rumor mill, or if you think there's 1 you can use councilman to prevent the combo from being interrupted. Both of these options gain you another click to keyhole with.

The deck has up to 17 cards to help you draw and install faster, being:

• SMC - install your leprechauns early. It is often safe to use clone-chips to double-fire these.
• Artist colony and fan site - This gives you so much value. As soon as corps realise what you're doing they have to start rushing agendas before you're setup, and the fan sites accelerate your setup phase quickly.
• Diesel and quality time - self explanatory.
• Sports hopper - self explanatory, but also helpful against kill decks (such as gaining extra cards during combo for accessing PE agendas, or just surviving a scorch if you're worried about that from breaking news).
• Astrolabe - Super high value in some matchups. Against Russian NEH this was the only good card in my opening hand and it fed me about 15 cards.
• Beth - This card is a monster. Usually the extra click is spent on a draw, and even a credit is useful enough as the deck is very econ-lite.

Tech cards: - Rumor Mill - Shut down jackson on the combo turn, shut down caprice/ash if you try to access an agenda on that turn too. - Escher - Your best option for dealing with ressed ice on R&D, use at the start of the combo turn. - Atman - Sometimes you don't draw the escher, or they res something on HQ. It is nice to have an option here. - Councilman - Not as good as rumor mill but in many games works just as well, can be fetched with artist colony which is an advantage. - Sports Hopper - mostly draw (cheaper to install with Kate too), but also acts as your anti-kill tech.

Some of the worst hate for this deck are cards that res ice outside of a run (such as ABT in my streamed loss). Your best card for dealing with this is Escher, but there is a single Atman to help too (for example if they ice HQ too). If the corp can stack 8 ice on R&D there is no way to gain enough false echos to beat this, however this is extremely hard for the corp to pull off without the combo having already been assembled.

After swiss rounds, I was placed first. I had a Bye, then a win against HB:EtF (using escher against R&D ice), a win against Russian NEH, an ID (but in checking the game I beat Sync) and an ID (but in checking the game I beat HB:EtF). Technically undefeated for this day.

In the elimination, I beat a sync, and then had a rematch against David's EtF (same corp as the ID game from swiss). This game was on stream and unfortunately I wasn't able to represent the deck well, with David having figured out the best play to beat this runner and executed it extremely well.