Discuss the latest StimHack article by Alexfrog here.
A Related Kit list:
1 Atman
1 Femme *
1 Yog *
1 Gordian Blade
1 Corroder **
1 Datasucker *
1 Parasite * *
1 Imp * * *
3 Sahasrara
3 Self Modifying Code
1 Deus X
1 Magnum Opus
Hardware:
3 Clone Chip
3 R&D Interface
3 Akamatsu Mem Chip
Events:
2 Scavenge
2 Test Run
1 Escher
3 Sure Gamble
3 Modded
1 Dirty Laundry
Resources:
3 Professional Contacts
3 Daily Casts
2 Kati Jones
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Is the one Dirty Laundry just the fourth Sure Gamble?
Yeah. It could be Plascrete or Public Sympathy or whatever else as well.
played this kate deck tonight card for card… wow was that a fun deck to play. I had previously suggested in the BGG thread that this could be a cool setup with the professor adding in sneakdoor and faerie and such; however Kates ability really went the distance and made me tons of money.
I really enjoyed the professional contacts… It made draws feel so good, and it was great with the pace of kate’s deck - maybe it was just because it was a dfferent play style than turn x: make tons of money, turn y draw tons of cards. It was nice having those free deck slots from the burst draws to play scavenge and test run.
Wow scavenge was sick in this deck, trading up with sahasra, resetting femmes, imps and parasites - such a great tool for the deck.
Even deus ex got some mileage blowing up heimdall 2s and being in the garbage in case of emergency vs jinteki.
Some cards that didn’t pull their weight were: Atman. I was really glad this was a 1 of, because I never seemed to need to install it for anything. During my games, I could have atman’d and gotten through some stuff for cheap, but it always seemed like I had more effective plays to make. It is an amazing card, but after playing with the single copy in this deck, it is certainly reasonable to not include 2 or 3 of them “just because”
sahasrara was great; however Im not sure the deck needs 3 of them. 2 also seems perfectly reasonable. I think I will be cutting 1 of the 3 to add a pawnshop.
Mag opus did a little bit of work, and it wasn’t a terrible 1 of.
Cards that I wanted during the game (didnt need, but would have been convenient for some plays)
- Crescentus
- Nerve Agent / Sneakdoor Beta
- ninja
- aesops pawnshop
- plascrete carapace / some kind of tag avoidance
If I had crescentus I could have made at least 1 escher run a turn sooner and stopped one of my opponents for biotic-ing 1 agenda in another game
I didn’t get into HQ very many times, and I would have liked nerve agent to be able to yank all of the agendas and imp more wisely. Alternatively, sneakdoor beta would be even better since it is a major archives threat if my opponent isn’t icing it up archives aka the place where their best ice goes after I escher.
Probably my inexperience with the deck, but I didn’t like having to fetch femme as my sentry breaker every time, I would prefer to just be able to get ninja when I need it, I suppose atman fills this role as the cost to atman for 5 and break ichi2 is 11 credits versus the cost to install ninja and break ichi2 for 10 credits.
I steamrolled an nbn tagn bag deck pretty easily only having to clear 1 tag the whole game, but against a weyland deck I don’t think I would have felt as safe and I will have to play some games vs weyland to determine what the actual need is, but lacking tag avoidance could be a weakness. I don’t realy ever feel too safe vs weyland as noise, and that asshole has 3 imps and nerve agent.
Pawnshop would have helped me make some plays where I actually didn’t have a program in my grip to install in order to trash an imp or femme so that I could reset it with clone chip. 3rd scavenge would have made the same plays possible, but I think there is good utility in using pawnshop as a 1/2 sahasrara 1/2 scavenge.
Anyways amazing deck, it’s a really cool archetype that you have created and I think it definitely has a place in the current and future meta.
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Agreed. If nothing else this style of deck is super fun and plays very different than other decks out there. I have actually been pretty happy with Pro Contacts… whenever I get it in a reasonable time frame. Not having it early really makes this deck struggle.
The deck looks very flexible and complex, exactly what I like.
I’m not convinced about pro contacts though… Not only do you need to get it early, but you need quite a bit of time to recoup on investing in playing it, and as a resource it’s ofc quite vulnerable.
I’m not a fan of modded either in the deck. Between sahasrara and kate’s ability installing your programs should be mostly free/cheap so I’m not sure you can reliably get the full value? (there’s R&D interface but is that enough?)
I agree this deck probably wants at least 1 pawnshop which should be quite easy to fit in.
Would switching corroder to the inferior snowball be worth it to free up the influence for the 3rd data sucker and 1 crescentus (or 1 nerve agent to pressure HQ and limit SE vulnerability with imp)?
Pro Contacts: Yeah I was very skeptical. But its actually very strong if you get it early.
Modded fits with the pro contacts strategy. You want to spend lots of clicks on Draw+$. Modded converts one of those draw+$ into $3+$. Thats a $4 click. Even if you only use modded for a $2 discount, its still a $3 click.
R&D interface is the biggest use of modded. With Kate, it makes it free. There are also Grimoires. You can get Kate discount on something else, then mod one.
Pawnshop: If I felt I needed to trash my things more, I would add more Scavenge! Aside from Daily casts, all the things you might want to Pawn can be scavenged.
Also: There are extra Sahasraras because they are also scavenge-bait later. Play early, it reduces your costs, and it turns into another parasite.
Re: Barrier breakers: You could cut Corroder to free up influence. If so, replace with Inti or Snowball probably.
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Good points, during my games I spent my early game positioning myself to win the mid game (and snowball into the lategame if needed) while still being flexible enough to keep the corp from scoring or banking too much.
As such, I think I usually had more credits than I needed to win the game at any given point, in other words, I would probably not need pawnshop for money, and scavenge would be a better card.
Unfortunately, I haven’t played a game where I have been unable to land a professional contacts in the first 5-6 turns - so I can’t confidently say that the economy is robust enough to survive the worst case scenario - my gut tells me that it is, I think the one opus is a good coverage card for these situations.
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I tested a modified version of the deck tonight, and will do some more Wednesday, but it was really interesting. I took down PC and Saha to 2x each, adding 2 Dirty Laundry, dropped MO for a third Test Run and fit a Plascrete in somewhere. A lot of the time I felt kind of poor, but honestly it doesn’t take that much cash to rig up or run with this. Memory can be an issue, even with 4x MU cards, but not much you can do about that without hindering the deck.
Opening hand PC is pretty nice, and there were definitely turns where it felt like drawing a card as my last click felt like better value than putting a counter on Kati. That seemed weird but if you think about Alex’s article on PC for a bit, it makes sense. A card that opens an action that’s comparable value to clicking Kati? Seems pretty good in my book.
I tried Ice Analyzer over Modded, because I felt like there could definitely be times where I would have a Modded target that was suboptimal or it’d be sitting in my hand for a while, but once Saharasa’s out so many programs are just free, while what I really want to do is get RDI’s out.
Having 3x RDI and Clone Chipping an Imp out does feel good 
Edit: Dropping Imp for Sneakdoor is not a crazy idea. I could see arguments for both, and both are powerful cards to tutor out of nowhere. Personal preference I suppose, though getting to Chip the Imp out again is nice.
Why are we cutting prof contacts? Seemz like a terrible idea. This card is great when I get it early but I’m going to cut one to make my deck less consistent for no reason?
Sorry to rage but I see people do this all of the time, and it I don’t understand the logic.
Take it easy, buddy
I’m just tweaking the deck to my personal preferences, not saying everyone should do this. I have a deck-building philosophy that anything I’m running triples of should be useful every time I draw it – so this includes Daily Casts, Sure Gamble, Account Siphon, cards like Parasite, etc. After the first PC the remaining two are dead cards so I cut one. Same goes for Sahasrara.
I replaced those slots with Dirty Laundries, which I find useful most of the time but not always, so there’s only two.
Let’s say a PC got replaced with a Dirty Laundry. The PC you would’ve drawn would be a Dirty Laundry and maybe you would’ve preferred a PC at that moment, but instead you got a DL. Not the worst substitution in the world. On the other hand, let’s say you already have a PC in play. You draw a DL that would’ve been a PC – so you got a card that gives you value instead of a dead card.
I understand the argument why redundancy equals more consistency, if there’s one form your rig should look like, but I feel like having more consistently useful draws is more important. PC is just an econ card – as long as your econ is balanced, you’re fine.
The one exception I make is for cards that require something for some sort of combo that gains incredible synergy – maybe Sahasrara in Noise, for example.
Thanks for the answer, that’s sound reasoning to me.
While I always want contracts early, and don’t mind taking a dead draw later in the game to get it - I certainly agree with you that 3 sahas is too many for this deck and turning it into a scavenge has been great for me.
Yeah I was on the fence about 3 Test Runs or 3 Scavenges. I like the Test Runs to allow for more tutoring because of the low icebreaker count, but Scavenging to retarget Femme and Scavenging Imp for a free Parasite has been great for me as well.
I’m glad we didn’t have to get into a fistfight over it; it’s just my personal preference… I hate seeing dead draws late in the game, but I totally get why you would run 3x of important cards.
It definitely has to do with opportunity costs – if there was a card that just wins you the game if you draw it, clearly running 3x is good, even if the 2nd and 3rd copies do nothing for you. If there’s a card that’s always a dead draw (ahem Data Dealer) clearly you run 0 of. The grey zone in the middle is up for debate I suppose, and has to do with how relatively powerful your substitution is. I liked DL in this deck because it allows you to both draw more by playing out cards and take useful actions, like running.
We’re all good players here so we can respect each other’s opinions 
I’ll be testing some revisions at league tomorrow night so I’ll have more info then, I think it needs a plascrete though, it’s only 1 card but once you play it you’ve bought yourself so much time to win vs tagnbag that it might as well say “you win the game” on it.
I agree that it needs plascrete. I’d like to have two.
Re: Running 3 ofs. If the card is critical you your deck/economy, then I think its correct to run three, even if the extras are dead draws. The cost of a dead draw is minimal. Its 1 click (or in this deck, its taking a $1 click). They also sometimes get discarded to damage, which makes them useful when it happens.
Well to be fair, the cost of the dead draw is the opportunity cost of what you gave up by running 3 of.