Lean and Mean: Stealth Kabonesa (29th @ Worlds)

This is the runner deck that took me to 29th at worlds this year, going 5-4 across both days.

The biggest problem for stealth decks is the immense amount of time required to get set up. Kabonesa alleviates that with the ability to effectively start the game with 3 SMCs in hand, allowing you to mulligan more aggressively for key cards like Net Mercur and The Turning Wheel. The icing on the cake is being able to pull a disposable Cloak or two as an emergency source of stealth credits and to always have a Misdirection on hand.

The deckbuilding process was also a challenge to myself to double down on the goal of a rapid setup time by purging as many tech cards as possible. The result is a "lean and mean" stealth deck that's greedy and fragile but also quick with a strong late game.

A couple of words about specific card includes:

Cold Read: This is a powerful econ card early game (except, I found, against Mti) that funds the SMCs you pull from your deck, giving you a Net Mercur credit to boot. It can also enable burst plays in combination with Wu's ID ability, such as: fetch SMC, fetch Cloak for 0, and Cold Read a remote, pulling the breaker you need, then trashing the Cloak.

Datasucker: Nice to have against DNA Tracker and Archangel, must have against IP Block and other 4-strength barriers. You don't need it in every matchup, but for those that you do, this is almost always your first SMC target.

Rebirth: This is an easy include since Smoke is a such a good baseline to Rebirth into. But it also gives you the option to take Jesminder against Argus or CtM, Kit against Acme, or Akiko for some last-ditch R&D accesses.

Blackstone: Had I known how many times I would be taxed out by Endless EULA, I would have swapped this for BlacKat, possibly removing a Falsified Credentials and the Utopia Shard. Laamb was also a consideration for this slot for its synergy with Datasucker and its ability to break Excalibur/Sand Storm, but its memory cost heavily constrains your SMC installs in the early game.

Daredevil: Extraordinary in glacier matchups, producing even more value from your once-a-turn run and giving you legs against spiky decks. I briefly considered Paragon, but in a deck with few situational cards, the filtering is less relevant, making it only a slight upgrade over Cyberdelia.