Unfinished Smoke (1-4 2nd of 10 @ Mankato GNK)

I threw together this weird mix of CodeMarvelous and meanlady Smoke decks in about an hour the night before the tournament. I thought I might get some fun testing games in with it, but my plan was to play Liza at the GNK. When I got to the event, though, I saw everyone sleeving up green cards. I got out the Smoke deck, realized I'd only spent 14 influence, and cut a Film Critic for a Stimhack.

My one win was over The Outfit, because Taka plus the existing Smoke stealth econ easily powers Switchblade through a Trebuchet - Surveyor - Trebuchet remote whenever you'd care to run it.

My losses were mostly because the setup is just a little bit too clunky, making you a beat too slow to stop fast Corps from scoring out. There isn't quite enough real credit economy in this deck, and apparently 3 SMC and 3 Diesel isn't enough to find rig pieces fast enough either.

Sportsmetal Real Fake Points: I can't get breakers up fast enough and have to rely on Dai V, which slows me down enough for Sports to score out.

Mti: Gauss shows its weakness here, because 3 Clone Chips isn't enough to get cute with reinstalling it for the strength boost. That slows me down just enough for Mti to score out with me on 5 points.

Haarp: Can't find Film Critic even with Astrolabe up, and then with both of us on 4 points, I hit an inopportune Award Bait. That gives them the winning SSL since I can't steal or Critic it.

Argus: I hit a Hortum with Refractor in hand, and that gives them the Reversed hit that resets me and lets them rush to 5 with an Atlas counter, HPT in hand, and Armed Intimidation in the remote (unadvanced, but Audacity in the deck). I steal it, but it was a no win situation.

Lessons from this:

• Khusyuk is a card, and the combo with FTE is real.
• Getting to six 1 cost cards installed is easy. The deck can afford to lose some 1 cost cards without compromising Khusyuk.
• Taka is basically an autoinclude in Smoke.
• More sources of real credits are needed. I wasn't able to use Kyuban all day for multiple reasons, which make Sec Testing much worse.
• Datasucker isn't necessary, so the Sec Testings can probably go in favour of more sources of real credits.
• Sticking Khusyuks is so important that I think including either an SOT or 1-2 Lucky Charms is needed.

She may not be one of the top runners, but I do think Khusyuk Smoke has potential in this meta if built and tuned correctly. This isn't the right list, but I'm publishing it to show people what not to do.