The following is a very long post with my stream of conscious commentary as I attempt to determine if Kit “stupidnickname” Pedler will be a competitive shaper identity.
Problems with Kit:
- Corp anti kit strategies.
Playing ice that is expensive to rez, and can’t be walked through with yog on the outside of a server can really negate kit’s ability. Ichi is still 6 credits to break with a gordian blade.
Standard inside job protection. The corp can slap pop up windows and ice walls and other cheap ice as the top layer in all of their servers in the same manner as they would protect against inside job to negate kit’s ability. Additionally, the corp might want enigmas and other ice they would otherwise throw away when the runner has a yog to cap off their servers.
The worst part about all of this is that the corp can use both strategies at the same time to build effective servers.
- 10 influence! This is extrmely restrictive, in my opinion kit’s ability does not warrant such a harsh penalty.
Since influence is half of deck building, I think it’s important to discuss how to spend these 10 influence points to make kit work well.
Her ability is the nuts in the early game, and becomes less useful, in theory, once the corporation can lay a second and third layer of ice.
The first instinct is to play yog.0 on a dinosaurus and constantly get the inside job ability. Backed up by some tinkerings, this seems like an awesome strategy. My problem with this strategy, and the purpose for this discussion is this:
yogosaurus is an expensive 2 card combo that kit needs to assemble in the first 1-3 turns in order to cash in on her ability (and thus mitigate her influence penalty.)
Yog is obviously great, and in a kit deck we want to play at least 2, probably even 3 if we can set the deck up to take advantage of her ability. Boosting yog is going to be worth it against almost every deck, for boosts we have personal touch, dino, ice carver, and data sucker.
I don’t think I’d want to play more than 2 dinos in a kit deck, and thus not want to rely on them for yog. The existence of salavage means that if necessary we could play it in our kit decks and salavage yog for itself in order to host it on a dino once you have installed one later in the game.
if the current trend continues and cheap ice continues to be king – using an anarch rig might be the right choice.
3 mimic, 3 yog, 3 data sucker? geeze 9 influence already? Maybe this isn’t the right way to go?
Should kits early game strategy be to just sure gamble (maybe modded) out a gordian blade or yog on turn 1 and just run hard? That seems very good to me - certainly a good excuse to not spend influence on inside job and save it for tricks with better late game like stimhack.
How to keep up the pressure if you can install an early decoder? Criminals have account siphon and shutdown and desperado, what kind of early game pressure can shaper use to snowball into the late game? Siphon, Shutdown and desperado are pretty much unplayable as 1 ofs and Kit doesn’t have the influence for more than that. She definitely has influence for data suckers, which might be the best way for her to start putting herself ahead of the corp through making early runs.
Shaper has a lot of lategame tools at their disposal, but I’m not seeing anything to help kit threaten the corp early on, making kit’s ability hurt has to be priority 1.
I think 1 or 2 escher could find their way into this deck, Late game escher’s will be pretty clutch - how strong early game eschers can be I think is something that might need to be determined after testing.
Given that I would want escher in this deck to keep kit’s ability ticking if the game goes long – I definitely want sneakdoor beta in this deck. If I can get the corp to dump 1, 2 or even 3 ice on archives, that just gives me the perfect place to stash my opponents 3 best ice after an escher.
2-3 yog, 2-3 data sucker, 1 sneakdoor, some mimics and some stimhacks seems like a fine influence package at this point.
I don’t feel like I have enough influence to run data suckers at this point, I’d rather have femmes for testrun instead of mimics.
Now I definitely want test-run because It’s more important to spend fewer credits and lose some tempo than to just tutor out a program with self-modifying code (because im making runs instead of clicking opus).
Since most of what I encounter will be code gates, I shouldn’t need to tutor for other breakers, why would I want self modifying code at all? Test-run femme is the best interaction for this deck, it’s less influence than inside job and it has actual synergy with kits ability.
My thought is that the MU cost of self modifying code won’t be a big issue since I can get away without a full rig for a long time, and lacking influence for extra copies of sneakdoor, self modifying code seems like the best second choice. Additionally, there might be programs that I would want tutors for like paricia depending on what other cards come out or how the meta develops.
With the presence of self-modifying code, I don’t want modded for this deck, I’d rather have easy mark or armitage codebusing, stimhack also would be another way to get a femme on the table with SMC.
Deck so far:
1 Kit
Programs (14)
3 yog [] [] []
2 gordian blade
2 self modifying code
1 sneakdoor beta [][][]
2 magnum opus
2 femme fatale [] []
2 snowball or battering ram (depending on how easily I can get extra MU)
Event (16)
2 Stimhack [] []
3 Test Run
3 Sure Gamble
3 Tinkering
3 diesel
2 quality time
2 Escher
Hardware (8)
2 dinosaurus/Omni Drive?
3 Personal Touch
3 RDI / makers eye
Resource (5)
3 Armitage Codebusting
2 personal workshop
So yeah, obviously no good answer to scorched earth, probably can ditch personal workshop for plascretes if they are necessary, I don’t like playing expensive cards like femme and RDI without an option to keep hands with no econ but workshop.
Kit seems like a good candidate for the runner “choke” deck that could possibly be made when archive restoration comes out in spin cycle. Getting a yog down and locking your opponent out of drawing ice they can use as defense might be a good way to keep the early game power of kit snowballing while your opponent draws the same old thing and you keep ahead of him by looking 1 card deeper with RDI.
