It was requested that I make a Deck Archetype thread for the recent Chaos Theory decks that have seen some success like Chaos Theory Stimshop. Does Chaos Theory have any place in a seemingly Kate dominated meta?
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GNK – Games of Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (10 players)
if I’m being honest, she doesn’t really have a place in the metagame. She has a large fanbase, I assume because of the deck size, and because of this, she’s the poster child of durdly shaper. But, her only real thing that set her apart from kate was stimshop, and haley and nasir both do that better now. 1 mem is not that strong of an id ability, and 40 cards is not nearly as powerful as people seem to think it is.
I dunno about that. There’s one thing she certainly does better than anyone else - Opus. The MU is huge for enabling Opus and a full rig, and 40 cards makes you a fair bit more likely to draw it early. Relatedly, that other MU heavy econ engine that’s all the hotness right now, Au Reviour/Snitch, is also good out of CT for the same reasons. And I’m not sure you could run the Oracle May deck out of anyone else as efficiently.
The question I guess is, are any of these things actually better than what you can do out of other Shapers? Obviously as it stands PrePaid Kate is leagues above them all, but people are teching against her more and more so different styles of Shaper will likely get stronger in the near future. As for Nasir/Hayley - I love them both, but they’re just more alternative ways to play Shaper, not necessarily better than any of those CT builds. Neither of them play Opus as well as she does IMO. But the jury’s still out, particularly on Hayley.
I agree. Opus alone can outpace most corp economies and CT is the best home for Opus. Just being able to get a full breaker suite out with no additional memory cards provides more consistency. While having 40 cards only increases your chance of seeing Opus or SMC by about 4% over a 45 card deck, it does allow you to get through your deck quicker to get your full rig out.
The Au Revoir builds obviously need all of the memory and consistency they can get and Selverin has proven that Stimshop is a Tier 1 Deck.
I am curious with the dominance of RP right now, how many people are running Vamp out of CT?
I feel like the release of Astrolabe did more than anything else to make CT less justifiable. When Opus Kate was leaning on Akamatsu to make 5MU rigs work, in decks that weren’t installing a lot, CT was often better. 'Labe kind of simultaneously levels the consistency and MU between CT and Kate.
Except that Astrolabe in CT gives you the MU for Deus/Sharpshooter/Atman or even a TestRunFemme.
There is one other point to consider. CT Stimshop in particular is very fast and fun to pilot. It can solve a lot of problems on the fly and always has a chance to win. Yes it has to be competitive but if “Fun to Pilot” wasn’t a factor, then every corp would be RP, don’t you think? 
My (janky, Beach Party+Pancakes/Comet+Doubles nonsense) CT deck runs Opus and Vamp to great effect.
The main reason I’ve stuck to the deck is because it’s a lot of fun to pilot, and it’s also fun to play against until the vamp happens.
The CT String Theory deck still has feet, but it isn’t tier one.
All of above was posted today. Really? Is everyone here sure that there is no viable green deck other than PPVP Kate and the only interesting question is how Blacklist affects optimal decoder choice for this deck? 
What CT does best is “install quickly the minimum you need and then mix earning money with running (and sometimes draw to get your powerful events)”. Kate and Hayley have install-centered abilities. Nasir’s ability indeed is great for Stimshop deck, but it makes him fragile in late game and doesn’t work well with Opus. CT gives you perfect MU for Opus + breakers rig (allowing one extra “trick” program once you install Astrolabe), 40 cards make you more likely to draw Opus/Workshop/Stimhack quickly and the style of play of this deck doesn’t need any other Shaper’s ability.
Part of the issue from my perspective is that even if you can support its MU Opus isn’t all that strong of a card. You need to use its ability 5 times before its paid for itself, and even once you are in profit its very click intensive economy.
At this point my view is that Opus is a necessary evil for Shapers without better economy options, not a strong card in its own right.
Kit does the minimum rig better, hayley and nasir do stimshop better. Ct has two very underwhelming abilities, and bad chocolate + bad peanut butter makes a pretty mediocre peanut butter cup
I think it’s the same argument as ProCo at that point (and the same break even). It’s very strong if you get it early and worthless if you get it late. Hence the reason most CT decks are built with an 82% chance of being able to get it out turn 1. How click intensive is a lucky find if you have to click 3 times just to draw it or SoT it when in a jam? The beauty of Opus is it’s a known quantity once you get it down that you can figure into the equation as a constant and not a variable. It performs the same against a single remote glacier deck as it does a Horizontal Nearpad.
I think the issue is that Opus has gotten relatively worse and worse as the game has gone on. Criminal gained Sec. Testing, Kate gained the Prepaid engine, everyone got Hotel, Kati, and Sym Visage, Anarchs got enough card draw to find a steady stream of burst to supplement Kati, and Noise got more ways to find Pawnshop quickly as well as Cache. Opus decks have been in the same place since C&C.
The advantage of Opus is that it doesn’t take up many card slots, so most of the rest of your deck is pure business. Because it’s both easily tutorable and unlimited-use, all you really need is Opus and your econ is done. The fact that Opus is a known quantity is actually a huge disadvantage; knowing how much money you can make as the runner is generally possible in any deck. Unless you’re drawing to find econ cards, how much money you have available on your next few turns is pretty easy. Opus, on the other hand, signals to the Corp that you pretty much have to click Opus X number of times before you have Y dollars to spend, which allows you to dictate the tempo of the game as long as you have some way to pressure runs. Worst case scenario is that the runner has Stimhack or Sure Gamble, which is kind of a nonissue or a one for one a lot of the time if you’re just pressuring runs with Assets.
By contrast, Kati plus burst econ is hard for the corp to judge and much more click-efficient, Sec Testing Desperado is cheaper to set up and often a tempo gaining play rather than a losing one, and Cache Pawnshop and PPVP snowball in efficiency as the game goes on to become way more powerful than Opus.
Brings me to a thought… Would Amped Up be worth considering as a sort of “surprise burst-up” card in an Opus deck? The big problem is obviously the 3 Inf… then again, for the 6 Inf you’re often spending on Lucky Find you could have two, they’re recurrable, and can be used for other power turns as well, not just for Opus-fests.
Seems a lot worse than Stimhack.
I feel like the best options for Opus decks are definitely just Siphon or Stimhack alongside Modded and Gamble. Siphon works well because you can often ignore the tags with Opus econ and use the tempo to make a remote play, and Stimhack because it takes the known-quantity Opus efficiency and throws it out the window while also being a great economy card against non-remote based decks because you can use it with SMC or Workshop to just speed up your setup time.
Speaking of Account Siphon and Mopus, one thing that I think CT does better than everyone else is 6-Siphon. Code Siphon is a great way to find Mopus. I built a one trick pony 6-Siphon CT deck because it amused me, but maybe there’s something more stable involving Mopus? 2 Account Siphon instead of 3 to free up some influence, Test Run + Scavenge for Femme and Torch… probably nothing there but at least it would be aesthetically pleasing.
I know I’ll just get shit for saying this in here, but CT, Siphon(s of all kind) and Test Run / Scavenge all go well together with Comet. Played a janky first draft of something similar at last week’s meetup, and while the cost to set up was a bit high, a Cometed Test Run+Scavenge click is pretty brutal. Biggest problem for me at this stage is just how much Garrote sucks.
disclaimer: probably dies really hard to Blacklist - good thing nobody plays that, right?
I’ve been experimenting with a Supplier build that has 3x Earthrise, Daily Casts, RDI and 1xBaby (no Data Folding BS.) It doesn’t synergize with Stimhack the way Workshop does and the influence hurts your breaker/HQ multi access options. But when you can chop an RDI out for $2, get $4 from dual Daily Casts, click Opus for $6 and still make a run, it makes for a positive tempo turn.
That actually sounds great. CT is the only Shaper aside from Kate who can be happy playing huge amounts of events. My favorite thing about that idea is how extra memory is awkward to play in CT, but here you get it stapled to a card that you are playing primarily for non-memory reasons.