I rarely comment on articles, but I thought I’d put this out there since there’s a lot of talk about Kati versions, and I have experience with that.
Here’s the version I’ve been playing.
Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer
Event (5)
3x Diesel
1x Test Run
Hardware (11)
3x Clone Chip
1x Dyson Mem Chip
2x Plascrete Carapace
3x R&D Interface
2x The Toolbox
Resource (13)
3x Armitage Codebusting
3x Ghost Runner
2x Kati Jones
2x Order of Sol
3x Personal Workshop
Icebreaker (8)
1x Atman
1x Cerberus “Lady” H1
1x Deus X
1x Femme Fatale
1x Inti
1x Mimic
1x Sharpshooter
1x ZU.13 Key Master
Program (9)
1x D4v1d
2x Datasucker
1x Imp
2x Parasite
3x Self-modifying Code
http://netrunnerdb.com/en/deck/view/174404
I get a little underwhelmed with Kati, but she’s such a consistent source of cash that it’s hard to deny that she’s decent burst economy for Nasir. I tend to install Kati only early-to-mid game and when I have a window to build up, and usually only against certain archetypes where I expect not to get tons of cash from ice. She’s slow against NEH unless you can effectively read the opponent slowing down and can take a turn to install and click her, but then you have to worry about Biotic-Breaking News → Trash. Not hard to play around it, but sometimes the corp will trash your Kati even if she’s empty. Not sure which version is “better”. I think there are lots of good variants of Nasir that perform similarly. The above deck is more aggressive than El-ad’s and slimmer, but it lacks the eternal cash-engine of Mopus. Kati’s worth experimenting with, for sure.
The way the deck plays is similar to @IirionClaus’s but it runs cheaper and requires less set-up. It’s very much like the deck @mediohxcore just posted, except it opts for Test Run instead of Scavenge (personal preference, I think: getting Femme out against Blue Sun is fine or reusing Lady/imp from the heap with some creative installing).
I’d been playing this deck for a long time (since way before this article came out) but there are some things I’ve done to the nrdb version, such as adding Lady. And I’ve considered hard cutting Femme altogether to add Utopia.
Code Siphon has also been pretty cool to try out in a version of this (with Magnum) so that you can effectively go SMC ->> code siphon -->> click credits -->> lose tag and end the turn with a breaker and magnum opus out (best case).
El-ad has seen this, and maybe a few others here have. I wrote an article on this deck, focusing on the progression of the Wyrm-Parasite archetype that a few of our local players have really embraced. Here’s that, if you’re interested.
–CJFM