Competitive Kit Discussion

I’ve only played a couple of games, but Temujin does feel good in Kit. I doubled down on it and threw in Patron as well to click for 2 cards and 4 credits, usually from archives. You can easily do it on turns you don’t need to run elsewhere even if there’s 1 ICE on archives, and if they commit and rez two ICE there… well, I’d call that a win. Then you replace your Temujin with another on R&D and bring forth the hammer.

My inf is 3x Temujin, Legwork and two Clones. Not happy about playing Snowball, but 3 Temujins feels like a must, and can’t really go without HQ pressure either. Maybe go down one clone, turn Legwork into Turning Wheel or Utopia, and then include a Corroder. Doesn’t feel good either though.

List is very basic, basically took a pretty standard stealth kit and just subbed 2x Kati 3x Proco for 3x Patron 3x Temujin and freed the influence.

In some light testing yesterday, agreed that temujin is great in stealth kit. I was on 2x fan site 2x artist colony (film critic, NACH, and temujin being the main targets). Instant speed install of temujin is great (oh, the only ice on hq is quandary? Door’s open, boys!).

I like paperclip here as well: being able to defer committing the MU to a fracter until you really need it is nice when you’re juggling smc with the rest of your stealth bits.

My influence was 1 spooned, 2 temujin, and paperclip. I might reluctantly lose the spooned-- seeing it early is a huge help but as an untutorable 1-of, it isn’t available early all that often. Could change to 1 rumor mill for late game ash/Caprice and a flex spot (stimhack, clone chip, utopia shard).

I’m still unsure that with Kit you would want to have to make more than one run a turn. I guess with Temujin you’d need to run twice or put it on R&D, but that might irritate the corp into icing more heavily than they would have. I usually hold RDIs in hand and wait until I have two to drop them, signalling “Okay, I’m going to win now,” and usually this is the corp’s signal to start icing. I found that Kit combined with any strategy that requires you to run a specific server for cards or credits is problematic. Patron lasted exactly two days in my Kit deck for this reason. I’m still unconvinced that Mirror’s recurring credit does Kit much good—for those who were about to say “but Temujin plus Mirror credit.” It’s still risky to spend stealth creds on anything other than multiaccess. I only ever install Mirror if I have looming MU issues, but often enough I get through games without needing either my Corroder or my third Cloak.

I went the other way yesterday for testing Blood Money and included 2 x Beth, which I feel is more consistent with Kit’s ability and tempo. There is a very slight anti-synergy with ProCo, in that you will often find yourself drawing a card at the start of your turn that would have got you a ProCo credit, but this is a good problem to have. Use the click you would have spent on ProCo to put money down on Kati or do something else.

Of course, against a wealthy Blue Sun opponent, I did get the fifth click from Beth several times. This, I shouldn’t have to tell you, was obscenely good. And yes, with five clicks, I did occasionally run more than once a turn.

Just to clarfiy: Patron alone is crap. I would never play it - Shaper just doesn’t have the same kind of support for it that Crim has for Sec Testing. The entire point of playing Patron is the synergy with Temujin.

If there’s any open server you can always click 1 drop Temujin, run 3 times for at minimum a Day Job. Extra value if you already had Patron down, and for any Dirty Laundries you hold. If the corp wants to deny your remaining 8 contract credits, they have to double ICE the server. Usually the server is archives since most corps don’t bother icing it vs Shaper. Forcing the corp to defend a useless server is worth more than those 8 credits.

The key difference here to to ProCo + Kati engine I used to play for months is the speed at which you get the money. I dropped them because there are so many ways to lose either of those cards right now, and the tempo loss can easily mean game. Like, you throw down your ProCo turn 1 and next turn the corp plays Hatchet Job, now what?. Kati is even more problematic because you are generally poor while clicking her up, again opening yourself to all trace plays yellow corps have to take her off the board. Oh and you have to run, otherwise they’re just gonna throw down a naked Breaking News to snipe her.

Just to throw out some numbers, if you have turn 1 Temujin and 1 Dirty Laundry you can skyrocket to 16 credits. With 1 ProCo and 1 Sure Gamble (equally likely) you end with 6 (+ 2 extra cards).

Not saying ProCo + Kati is a bad engine - it’s been a staple in Kit for a long time. Just, for the reasons I mentioned, I do not feel comfortable running it anymore. I’m definitely going back as soon as it feels safe again.

I didn’t really feel like it disrupted my development too much-- either it’s on an open server and you use it purely for econ, or you put it on a server that you are running anyway and it defrays your cost (or earns you money). But you make a good point that if you are on the Kati plan, your clicks are a bit scarce.

I installed on both R&D and HQ at different points. R&D is great when you are able to get reasonably-cheap accesses (even if they’re single-access, if you’re coming out richer than you went in, it’s all good). HQ is nice because it lets you apply pressure to multiple servers: without good HQ multi-access (maybe a legwork + SoT’s), corps will frequently single-ice HQ in order to stack ice deeper on R&D.

If neither of those is profitable, then you can drop it on archives or an asset that’s going to be sticking around for a while that they wouldn’t normally ICE and can’t trash (pad campaign or a political asset, for instance).

I am definitely going to give Beth a shot as well-- agreed that it is more in line with plans that require you to spare a click each turn for charging up Kati.

Has anyone tried out EMP Device in Kit? If they can only rez one ice, then it must be a code gate. But the influence means you’d need to use Tyson observatory or trade in.

If it was 1 or 2 influence maaaaaaybe, but even then probably not. When playing Kit it doesn’t really matter if the corp rezzes ice or not because you can cut through it. Why not Escher or Tinkering if you’re having ice problems?

also it’s one-time use with no easy recursion. i could see it working in a deck that rarely runs and just lets the corp money up, get Beth online, and start going for Fan Sites, Liberated Chelas, and Notorieties to close out the game.

otherwise, i don’t see them pulling their weight, especially given the massive influence cost and Kit’s low influence

Is stealth kit just totally overshadowed by the coming smokepocalypse?

I’m thinking that Net Mercur will be really nice in stealth kit to give you a homemade bad pub to help out against asset spam.

Will be starting from something like this tonight (totally untested atm). I suspect it needs more draw and multi-access, and it leans really heavily on kit’s ability and the current popular barrier choices (wraparound, resistor, vanilla) to deal with barriers. Per the discussion from a few months ago, I’ll probably also try it with Kati + spooned/real fracter instead of Temujin.

Stealth Kit + Temujin

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

Event (11)

Hardware (6)

Resource (17)

Icebreaker (6)

Program (5)

9 influence spent (max 10-1★=9, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Escalation

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

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I’ve thought the same re: NM and fighting asset spam. That said, I’m not sure if Temujin is right for Kit given influence and her ability triggering only once per turn. I feel like corps are icing all centrals now because of Temujin and so you cannot just triple run archives so easily and you’ve wasted her ability. I’d rather drop the inf on Legwork (or something)? But, probably just needs to get tested. :slight_smile:

My win rate pre- and post-Temujin is about the same, or maybe a little lower with Temujin.

Temujin is not inherently incompatible with Kit, but you certainly need to adjust your usage of it. For me, Temujin #1 goes on Archives and you’ll certainly net 12 credits minimum before it becomes unappetizing. Temujin #2—and #3 if you’re lucky—go on R&D. The idea here is not straight econ but rather replacement credits for what you’ll spend to get in. In that sense, four credits per turn is still huge, but it means you also need an upfront source of econ to get in.

Thoughts on the build above:

  • 3 Beth is too many. I feel the optimal number is 2, and I have been experimenting with 1 post-Net Mercur. Beth is best once the corp hits 15 credits, so it’s not critical to see her right away.
  • Snowball > Inti (they both kind of suck but at least Snowball has a minor ability).
  • Scrubber is not effective here, I feel. Kit is simply not going to beat many spam decks, and corp play is less horizontal lately to leave fewer Temujin targets. I guess you could have a Paricia and get influence back for a real fracter :wink:
  • You need R&D Interfaces, lots of them. R&D multiaccess can’t be sold short since this is your win condition. You’ll never compete horizontally, so don’t. Beware Indexing, which is a trap in Kit. You can make one R&D run per turn, that’s it.
  • Consider cutting down to 2 Refractor. That’s a lot. Or, drop some Scrubbers to get a Corroder and Inti or Snowball as back-up so you can drop the Clone Chip. I’ve never lost both copies of a breaker in the dozens and dozens of games I’ve played as Kit. But Chronos and Ark Lockdown is real, so bring a spare.
  • Consider a current like “Freedom Through Equality” or Employee Strike.
  • Lastly, Mirror is not for Kit. You won’t run more than once, and if you do one stealth credit won’t help. You want Astrolabe.
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Inti is fine in the current meta, but it needs to be backed with Atman or Lady. I prefer Atman, it solves multiple issues with one card slot. You don’t need a perfect rig. Snowball is garbage, don’t play it. Paying 7 the first time you encounter an inner Vanilla is not what you want.

I think it’s a huge mistake to go below 3 Refractors. You want it early and you don’t want to pay 3 for it. Cutting SMCs to 2 is better. The only way I can see going to less than 3 is to replace up to 3 of them with Houdini - this depends a lot on your meta.

Mirror is totally not worth it. You are paying 2c over Astrolabe for a pretty useless ability and an extra MU that you don’t need. Labe is so good vs horizontal, especially Russian NEH. Also on the note of MU, there is no reason to play Scrubber over Paricia. Paricia is +2c the turn you install it, and it can be tutored in a pinch for ±0. The assets only limitation is mostly a non-issue, and in matchups where you need it MU is also not an issue because often your rig is Refractor and 1 other breaker.

I think Temujin works better in Kit that it does in any other shaper because of her ability to make single-iced servers negligible - and don’t give me that 1 run per turn crap, that’s just false these days when corps are mostly on gearcheck. 1 facecheck per turn is more accurate. HQ is a good Temujin target early, especially if it’s open turn 1. It’s basically pseudo HQ pressure without spending additional influence, and you can force early double icing with it. Archives is not great unless you really need the money, or are also on Patron or something. Once RDIs are down then you go for R&D.

My win rate with Kit increased considerably with Temujin - it allows you to generate enough money to stay ahead in money race matchups and trash key assets vs horizontal (provided that the rest of your econ package isn’t lacking).

My influence currently is: 3x Temujin, 2x Clone, 1x Clot.

I haven’t yet decided what to cut for Mercur, but I’m leaning towards cutting Cloaks instead of Casts.

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Thanks for the feedback, @enk and @nutritionalzero!

Some thoughts-

  • Beth: 3 is too many, 2 is fine (as @nutritionalzero pointed out, doesn’t shine until the corp is up and running).
  • Mirror was mainly because I’ve found MU to be problematic in the past and wanted to try it out. Net Mercur reduces the need for cloak, so I’ll try astrolabe out.
  • @enk: very good point about Paricia and MU. My preference for scrubber was on the basis of balancing it with a full rig (and to a lesser extent, stacking them). Perhaps my visceral hatred of asset spam got the best of me here :slight_smile:
  • re: refractor numbers- I switched from 2 to 3 when I last played stealth kit regularly and was surprised by how much of a difference it made in terms of consistency and saving SMCs. I’ll be sticking with 3x. Houdini is interesting, but most corps that are double icing servers will avoid code gates anywhere but the outside, so it just seems clunkier and more expensive for the most common cases. Then again, it seems incredible with Escher out of Kit, so who knows.

Switched up the influence to 1 clot, 1 utopia shard, 1 clone chip, 3 temujin. Dropped 3x scrubber for 2x paricia (could be 1 + casts or some other econ). Other key changes were the addition of an atman and 3x RDI. Would love to fit in an escher.

Thank you all for the feedback!

Is Study Guide a bad card?

This wins a lot for me. Apply remotelock early with Stimhack. Legwork their agendas before they can get a remote that stops you. Finish them off in R&D. Simple Fundies :slight_smile: Beth is busto.

Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman (Creation and Control)
Event (24)

Hardware (5)

Resource (5)

Icebreaker (5)

Program (6)

9 influence spent (max 10, available 1)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Blood Money

5 Likes

After playing your beginner deck, I like Astrolabe as a change from Dinosaurus here.

You have the TR + Scavenge combo. Any reason why you don’t

  • -1 Gordian Blade
  • +1 Torch

I suppose the idea is that you’re breaking rarely, and when you are, you either need to spend you stim money, or you’ve been pressing the Opus button for long enough that you’re swimming in money, so you aren’t going to get value back from the extra 2 strength. Is this correct?

I often play something very similar, but with a Zu + Torch instead of 2x Gordian. I likely run more.

I guess you want to have Opus + Decoder online ASAP. Kit is strongest while there is no stacked ICE. Hoping to draw TR + Scavenge or paying 9 (!) to install Torch is just not compatible with this plan. And having two Blades in the deck helps drawing them naturally, which is the cheapest way to install.

@TheBigBoy Have you considered throwing in an Inti? 1 Lady doesn’t seem like enough, and Inti can do lots of work on its own without costing any influence.

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Yeah, you certainly need a second decoder. Like I said, 1 Gordian or 1 Zu for the early pressure, and Torch when you have one of the two combos (stimhack + PW/SMC or TR + Scavenge).