I think Kit is well-positioned if not for Foodcoats. You can run Scrubber but trashing assets is still problematic. If you keep them off assets early you buy ETF time to seal up centrals and potentially nullify your ability with outer code gates. If you stay aggressive early, you lose to the Ash/Caprice remote.
Has anyone been having success as Kit versus Foodcoats lately? Am I misrepresenting the match-up? I feel like Kit’s only consistent way to beat Foodcoats is on RND, and having to score 4 agendas there is pretty tough in my experience.
I have had a similar experience. Stealth doesn’t pull enough weight against their most troublesome ice (to wit: Eli, Architect, Ichi), and you can’t afford to trash their crap.
@Four_Leaf assures me that Opus / Vamp Kit has a better time, though.
As far as Panchatantra goes … you can Yog Architect wherever it is. Let that sink in for a minute. It’s also non-unique.
I’ve been playing Vamp Kit for the past month or so, and I’ve had a fairly even match-up with our Foodcoats player.
I remember Lukas stating that when Kit first dropped he was expecting more players to take to her, but also that his biggest mistake was nerfing both her and Paintbrush. If our guesses of Panchatantra are correct, this is most likely his fix.
And I’ll echo @oconnor0 - Surfer Kit with Pancha would be amazing.
I expect your success rate against Foodcoats is directly proportional to how many anarch cards are in your deck. Vamp/Scrubber/Parasite/Datasucker are key cards in the matchup and Kit doesn’t have the influence to import everything.
As @higgs_bozo said, stealth isn’t great against strength 3-4 ice. I’d expect Yog/Opus/Vamp Kit to do better but haven’t played it recently.
I’ve been playing stealth kit and stealth Hayley against foodcoats and I can’t say I think either are doing well. Architect and Ichi is a huge pain unless you’re on switchblade, but kit can’t even run that unless you throw all her influence at silencer. This leaves holes elsewhere.
I’ve tried running a lot of money and dagger and it felt ok in kit, and I’ve tried Hayley and switch and it all feels fine until you see caprice bounce you out of the remote and you have no more stealth credits to use without using an entire ghost runner.
I’ve been playing a Nexus + Escher deck for about 1.5 months on jinteki.net. It has been doing a pretty good job. See the long write up of how it plays, its match-ups, and its decisions at:
Sorry for the long write-up. It is MWL-safe.
From the NRDB comment:
The deck is based around three simple observations:
Security Nexus is amazing, if expensive. It turns an ice per turn into “pay some credits to bypass”, independent of what the ice actually is.
Once the corp gets more than 2 ice on each server, Escher invalidates all that hard work.
To get the boat-load of money required to get Security Nexus out, with sufficient link, and an efficient breaker suite, we’ll rely on Magnum Opus.
A side-effect of this deck’s construction is that it side-steps many of Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhumans fundamental weaknesses, but this is another topic, for another day.
Interesting deck, I’ll try it out though I’m suspicious of Paintbrush + Tinkering. When I tried them in Kit spending an extra click on a run was a sizable drawback but I wasn’t running anything like this deck.
@Kore: agreed. This is the first non-jank deck that I’ve been able to make them work in. There’s reasoning behind each in the write-up, but because the write-up is a novel, let me summarize here.
Tinkering: This is solely there to act as an access to a remote when the corp doesn’t believe you have access. A very common move against Kit is to install two ice on a remote, and an agenda behind it. Tinkering ruins those plans. We don’t want to get too behind early on, and this card helps with that. A primary motivation for this is that we have to spend more time than other Kit decks developing our credit pool to drop the necessary pieces. This cuts into our draw power, which can make getting the correct answer out in time difficult.
Put another way, if we could fit SMC + decoder + opus in an early rig, we wouldn’t need Tinkering. Thus, you don’t need it with Astrolabe. But we can’t rely on getting Nexus out in time to threaten the remote.
Paintbrush: This is often dropped the same turn, or a turn before you win the game. It lets you into a previously inaccessible remote. It lets you into R&D. It can even be an econ card if using a click (= 2 credits) plus using Torch is cheaper then using the corresponding breaker.
Tinkering isn’t essential if you can threaten remotes early another way. Paintbrush is hard to do without against glacier.
I really like the idea here and it suits my general play style. After the MWL I was re-tasking my Nexus Kate and including Escher and a few of the other cards you see here. Why do you feel Kit over Kate for this style (Nexus) I know it’s an age old question.
Age old, but important. Thanks for asking (I’m a little sad that this is generating no discussion).
Kate’s discount doesn’t help much with this deck. You save 1 out of 6 credits from the Rabbit Holes, 1 out of 8 credits from the Nexus, 1 out of 4 for Lady, 1 out of 5 for Opus, and, say 1 out of X times 2 for two more breakers. You’re saving 4 to 6 credits = 2 to 3 clicks. The game often goes long (15-25 turns) as we’re playing control, so 2-3 clicks isn’t great. The Kate discount is not doing much work here compared to the PPVP shell.
Kit’s ability is doing a ton. It is saving us credits in two ways:
a. We only really install a single breaker for a significant portion of the game, and often only install the second breaker very late after the amount of Opus clicking makes any Kate discount marginal. This saves us quite a bit on paying for breakers.
b. We are getting through the first ice for cheap, regardless the type. Every run, we’re paying the Torch cost, rather than the cost for what is often a less efficient breaker (esp. versus sentries). This saves us credits per turn commensurate with torch efficiency. Kit’s ability is an econ ability in this deck (and in most of my decks).
Deck building is different…not better or worse…but different. We can go all in on the TR+Scavenge combo for Torch which decreases the variance on getting Opus out first turn. Consequently, we don’t need the clone chips (which is great with the MWL). Faust isn’t really necessary here (though Inti might be). Our list required more code-gate breakers that will be dead later on.
Escher is much better with Kit. Torch beats the hell out of Zu, and we can stack code gates for sustained pressure much better than Kate. This turns Kits ability into econ later on.
I genuinely believe she’s better here than Kate. I only learned about the Kate build very recently, so I haven’t playtested it enough to say anything with authority beyond the high-level observations above.
Most importantly, Kit is awesome. She’s the runner that is the most fun to play with ;-). Take that, Kate.
I actually miss Kate’s link more than the discount here. Kate gains a slot, a click, and 3 credits by not playing Dyson. On top of the (you’re right) relatively paltry economic benefit of her discount.
I haven’t tried it yet, so I’ll reserve judgments beyond this snap one until after that.
This is one of my main concerns as well, the what could effectively be 1 credit per bypass attempt tax playing Kit is scary; however, he makes some great points and I may spin up the deck as well for some testing.
Excellent points and write-up for the deck. I am curious how much impact the lack of link on Kit’s ID affected this deck in your testing? Were you able to reliably hit your mem chip or dos you find that it just turned what was typically a free ice into a 1 credit break?
My concern here is knowing I have to spend one seems to psychologically encourage the corp to boost at times as well. (Based on limited experience without a 3rd rabbit hole in Kate)
Also this may answer my own question is it truly just that you don’t care about hitting Nexus as early as a Kate player might need to due to Torch/Kit.
Agreed. Paying 1 credit to get through vs. 0 adds up. I don’t know how much it is offset by the Torch discount. Depends on too many things.
Dyson is annoying, but is more there to fix the variance on not drawing a Nexus. The MU lets you get up to Decoder + SMC. Without it, and not drawing Nexus, you can be pressured into pushing past the second ice without any safety net.
It is quite common to be paying the 1 credit to get through. This needs to be factored into your “econ” phases of moneying up. I haven’t found it prohibitive.
When I see the corp putting any money into the trace, I’m happy. This is a control and denial deck, and if the corp is bankrupting themselves to keep me out, I know that will translate into sustained accesses later on for me. No-one except for extreme horizontal drip can get money faster than Opus.
Put another way, the corp paying into Nexus feels like using mini vamps. It is glorious.
I go into painful detail in the writeup into how you need to stay ahead in econ so that the corp can’t lock you out. So the presumption is that you’re ahead in econ which dissuades the corp from paying into the trace.
Isn’t @Zeromus’s blitzy kit with 3x Indexing and 3x Maker’s a lot better now with the reduction in Architects and Elis? I personally feel that going the Nexus route with Kit is going the wrong direction. She already effectively IS a nexus for one ice a turn. And the deck played Vamp.
True story. Now she is two layers of Nexus. The difference makes the corp’s expenditures much more significant to keep you out. I don’t understand why someone would write off getting through two layers of ice/turn. Its awesome
Check out my diatribe on vamp in the deck write up. It’s great. I played a variant of this deck with vamp. I never wanted to use it.
I know you like Femmes. I do too. I’ve seen too many Tour Guides recently, so I put in the Shrike.
If you still want the Femmes, I’d +1 Femme, -1 Shrike, -1 Tinkering (TR + Femme is a Tinkering), +1 choose one: scrubber, utopia, power tap, stimhack…or Femme, because I’ve seen your decks before ;-).
