Competitive Kit Discussion

Doesn’t hurt. Turn off some more annoying currents. Just won because I had Static up.

Since I won a Store Champs last week, it freed me up to play around with some more experimental builds. This was one of the first things I came up with, and it’s definitely been the most fun so far:

Kitpocalypse

Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman (Creation and Control)

Event (16)
2x Apocalypse (Data and Destiny) [color=undefined]••••• •[/color]
3x Diesel (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Indexing (Future Proof)
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set)

Hardware (6)
3x Astrolabe (Up and Over)
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]☆☆☆[/color]

Resource (10)
3x Aesop’s Pawnshop (Core Set)
2x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
2x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

Icebreaker (7)
1x Atman (Creation and Control)
1x Cerberus “Lady” H1 (All That Remains) [color=#32CD32]☆[/color]
2x Cyber-Cypher (Creation and Control)
1x Inti (Creation and Control)
2x ZU.13 Key Master (What Lies Ahead)

Program (6)
3x Hyperdriver (The Underway)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
6 influence spent (max 10-4☆=6)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

It’s got some real problems, but it’s also fun as balls to play. General gameplan is to make money in the early game and scout the central ice without worrying too much about accesses. Against anyone but NBN FA (more on that in a minute) agendas will start to pile up in HQ because they’re worried about building a super-duper-Kit-proof remote. Once you smell an agenda hit the table, the plan is to Apoc – an ideal turn looks something like popping Hyperdriver, eating your Astrolabe with Aesop’s, running the three centrals (with a Dirty Laundry/Maker’s thrown in if possible!), playing Apoc, reinstalling a fresh Astrolabe and Aesop’s from hand, and… twiddling thumbs? In any case, that ideal setup never actually happens, but it gives you a sense of what you’re looking for. More realistically, you’re probably going to spend at least one or two of those extra clicks getting the necessary breakers installed or dealing with unexpected complications. Having an SMC in the heap and a Clone Chip or two on the table can help a lot with click compression, and, provided you’ve got enough cash available means that the Hyperdriver won’t even be necessary. I’d say in about 30% of games you need to wash-rinse-repeat this whole process before closing out, and in maybe 50% of those double Apoc games (so 15% total) you need the Levy.

If you are playing against NBNFA, you’re still in pretty good shape. Apoc isn’t going to be a priority here, but it’s still often more efficient than actually trashing a SanSan! Instead, focus on using Kit’s speed to keep them under heavy early pressure, and work those Indexing/Maker’s as hard as possible. If you do go for the Apoc, it’s usually worth hitting HQ a few times to clear out any Beales that might be hiding out there.

So that’s the theory, but here are the very real problems, and they all stem from the 10 influence issue:

  1. Failure to find an Apoc. The bulk of the time, you’ll find one before you need it, but the corp has a strong start and both copies are in the bottom 25 cards, things might spiral out of control before you can get a handle on them. Earthrise Hotel might be a good option, but it would take some getting used to the rhythm of this thing to make sure you weren’t Apoc’ing them away with 1-2 counters left on a regular basis.
  2. No Mimic. In fact, Atman is the only way to break Sentries apart from Kit’s ability. Most Sentries aren’t a huge deal for you – you generally don’t care too much about Architect firing on the turn you’re going to Apoc, for example – but those with ETRs (Tour Guide, Rototurret) or big enough consequences (Assassin) have to be dealt with. Atman can usually handle the ETRs for the same price as Pipeline, although you could run into some issues if a corp knows the list (or gets lucky) and arranges some very specific ice configurations. I’ve thought about adding a Deus X/Sharpshooter to deal with some of the bigger ice, but I’m not sure what I’d cut.
  3. No Clot. If Kit had 12 influence, this would be my first addition. I hate to say it, but this alone might make it worth rethinking this whole thing as a Kate deck. The win chance against FA would probably go up at least 40%.
  4. Cash. Ironically, you often have more money after an Apoc, particularly if you’ve got an Aesop’s in hand when you play it. But getting that first Apoc off – especially if the corp draws a balanced mix of ICE and is able to stack them on centrals – can be expensive. Unfortunately, Shaper’s main econ option (Mopus) is really, really poorly suited to an Apoc deck. When I consider problems 1 and 2 in conjunction with this, I’ve even thought about adding Quality Times, more programs, and Freelance Coding Contracts… but past experience suggests that this is a fool’s errand.

The last thing I’ll say is that it’s not worth fixating on Apocalypse. I’ve lost more than a few games because I had tunnel vision on “making the deck work,” while Maker’s Eyes sit in my hand unused and the corp scores out. There’s a tricky balance here between trying to keep yourself in a position to Apoc and playing the board state. E.g. I suggested above that you Apoc the first agenda, but if you’re playing against a Titan Rush that tries to get cheeky by scoring behind a single piece of ice, install your Zu/CyCy and call their bluff. OTOH, Kit will absolutely allow you to pull off some early power turns (say turn 2 Indexing with a Maker’s chaser) by bankrupting yourself, but getting to 5 points and stalling out usually isn’t worth it.

I used a slightly tweaked version of this list at two Store Champs this weekend and managed to win both of them. Here is the list I used today: Stealth and Stim · NetrunnerDB
Yesterday I tried a different version with Inti and Atman instead of Corroder to get a 2nd Legwork in there. Turns that was a bad idea (not that surprising ;)). Never installed Atman and even with a Stimhack running through a Hive with Inti is … difficult.
I played against a lot of ETF and really liked it. Stimhack to kill their early campaigns is crucial and most of the time slows them down enough that you can snag some agendas and finish with R&D digs.
Money is tight most of the time but it works out if you get out your ProCo early enough.
I really liked the addition of one SOT for more Stimhack, Legwork or Maker’s Eye.

I can’t say anything about the FA matchup, Haarpsichord Kill seems to be unwinnable without some anti kill tweaks though. TBH I don’t know if it is actually possible to have good matchups against Glacier, FA and kill at the same time.

Glad it worked for you!

“Beat Foodcoats, keep Fastro reasonable, concede Kill” was pretty much my thought process building the deck. So, I’m not surprised it worked out this way.

Dirty Laundry and 3rd Lockpick are probably the worst cards in the deck, so I’d look at cutting some of those to fit in Artist Colony and Plascrete.

Tech Writer can function a bit like a 4th copy of ProCo, in that it’s a really strong card to see early in a long game, and can help you in those “late ProCo” games, and Dirty Laundry and 3rd Diesel are potential cuts for it. If you’re beating Foodcoats, I wouldn’t bother with this, though, because Diesel and Laundry are both quite good against NEH.

If you expect FA you can always go -Lucky Find +Clot, I ran lucky find in kit before and the deck survives if you take it out.

I like the Maker’s eye + R&D interface includes, I really should try running both for that 5+ card dig on R&D.

So I’m running a Stealth Kit build with Professional Contacts and Personal Workshop and I feel like whenever I play professional Contacts I take this huge tempo hit where I need to draw cards top make money, but then I don’t have enough money to play those cards if I don’t have personal workshop out yet. Is it worth it to keep it in? Or just replace it with diesels and daily casts?

it is a hell of a tempo hit. I switched to symmetrical visage for a while, but found that in the early game I often wanted to draw more than 1x per turn and ProCon would have been worth it, so I’ve switched back recently.

First of all, it’s obviously much better when you play it early. If you have 3x in your deck, consider mulliganing for it.

As you pointed out, using it to draw when you are too low on credits to play anything is not a winning proposition.

Best case scenario, get a little burst econ from Sure Gamble/Dirty Laundry early, then play ProCon and try to stay at a credit level where you can do useful stuff with it. The only 4-cost cards in my deck are RDI, plascrete, and lady, so generally hovering around 3-4 credits is sufficient to keep from flooding myself.

Also don’t be afraid to overdraw and discard if you have some recursion.

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Better players than me believe that Professional Contacts is good so I keep it in my deck. I agree that it is a major tempo hit the turn you play it but my philosophy with Stealth Kit is you are starting at a tempo disadvantage already and are racing to setup before the corp can gain too much of a lead.

All those turns you play things like Lockpick, Cloak, Ghost runner? You’re sacrificing clicks now to build towards a late game where the corps ice doesn’t matter. This is the reason I like stimhack in Kit, it lets you simultaneously develop your board via personal workshop and SMC while interacting with the corp’s threats.

Additionally, I think Diesels + Daily Casts are auto includes in Kit whether you’re running Professional Contacts or not. They both help you setup quicker and help you get towards your end game of a full stealth rig + R&D interface.

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Piggy backing on what others said, having additional burst econ really helps smooth out the installation. Dirty Laundry or Lucky Find goes a long way. If you can find the room for it, Career Fair can be a nice include as well (particularly if you’re running Daily Casts).

That said, I think ProCo is a meta choice and you should know when to cut it from your deck. In a faster meta, you probably want Symmetrical Visage instead. If Plop destroys glacier and NBN becomes the corp of choice again, then ProCo should probably be dropped for a faster, leaner draw package.

Thanks, I had 3 test runs and 3 dirty laundry to tutor and run while gaining econ, but I think I’ll put in the Diesel and Daily Casts.

Do you:

  1. Run R&D as soon as you get Refractor?
  2. Install R&D Interface as soon as you draw it?
  3. Play The Maker’s Eye or Legwork as soon as you get Refractor?
  4. Install Dagger as soon as you draw it?
  5. Pay to trash corp cards before you draw ProCon?

Stealth Kit’s economy can’t really support any of these things. She has to be really careful with her money early game. There’s this popular meme that “Stealth Kit wants to make one run a turn”, but that’s false. She can’t afford it. Even if the run is free with Stealth credits, she might not want to eat the opportunity cost.

If you deny scoring remotes, agenda density in central servers only goes up as the game goes on, so you should generally hold off on running R&D until the corp has Jackson’d at least once, since that means your odds are better.

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Hi all,

Here’s the Kit list I took the Scottish Regional with this weekend:

I dropped one game in the Swiss and one in the grand final.

12 Likes

Nicely done, congratulations! Super glad to see someone still carrying the mantle for Kit.

Cheers!

If asset spam disappeared tomorrow, I think stealth Kit would be a top runner deck. She can overpower any ice setup late game and her ability keeps the the corp from being able to rush agendas out early against her.

I still think +1 personal workshop is worth including with 2 RDI + stimhacks, you can get so much tempo from a stimhack that gets you a breaker from SMC and installs an RDI for free.

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Yeah, which makes me wonder why she didn’t show up at the last Foodcoat worlds. Did artist colony really help that much?!

Pre-MWL vs Post-MWL. All the other shapers started looking better when PPVP Kate got hit hard. There was a glorious few weeks of Kit after the MWL before people realized that faust + wyldside was broken.

2 Likes

Yeah, I guess.

The answer to this is pre-MWL Foodcoats. I’m almost exclusively a Kit player and I stopped playing her during this deck’s reign. Single accesses, even if they were free, were pretty terrible due to agenda density and the ICE was absurdly taxing for its rez cost.

Now that Foodcoats has to choose between premium ICE, NAPD and Caprice, the match up is a lot better. In addition, it has such a horrible time against the current Whizzard deck has pushed it into a much less prominent place in the meta.

Stealth Kit is not that strong against pre-MWL Foodcoats.

Refractor and Dagger both need a stealth credit to break Architect for 2 (which sucks), or to break Ichi 1 for 3 (which sucks). Eli is a huge pain in the balls, whether you’re on Corroder or Lady (recurring Lady with Clone Chips is a lot worse when you aren’t Kate). About the only ice from that deck it handles gracefully is Turing (which is admittedly a pretty good thing to handle gracefully). You can’t really afford to trash BBG and Campaigns, so they wind up with like 4 beefy ice and Ash / Caprice on R&D and the remote and you just get taxed out.

The only way I could win with any kind of consistency was by playing 2x Stimhack (it’s really good to be able to reset the board if they open Eve / BBG / Ice).