Competitive Kit Discussion

Decklists
342

Bump bump.
Anyone having any luck with kit lately?

343

I may catch flak for this, but I think Rebirth has made main decking Kit a bit hard to justify. The meta is not particularly well suited for aggro, which is the only justification now for main decking Kit IMO. Kate or even CT seem better choices for Kit decks, including Stealth. Having a full influence suite is more important now than ever, with Corp strategies forcing Runners to have answers for many things.

344

I top-eighted at the London regional with an update of my list that won Scotland. Probably sitting on changes for now (not that they’re very dramatic) because I may take it to nats in August.

345

I agree that Kit isn’t a great choice for the current meta. I’m only still running her because I’m an idiot.

However, I don’t think Rebirth is worth it in Kate/CT. I think Kit is strong when you build for Kit. Switching to Kit as another shaper does mean you get more use out of whatever sweet decoder you’re rocking but I don’t think it’s the best use of an influence and a cardslot, particularly when there are so many good options in Utopia Shard, Political Operative, Hunting Grounds or even good old Stimhack.

3 Likes
346

Actually kit and jes are nice interchangebly because both siphons are quite good. Kit helps you land them, jes lets you avoid tag me as a result. Theres a case to be made for starting as either. Kit is better, but less inf, jes has the inf, but lacks the early aggro.

347

Are you having much success with siphon out of shaper? It never seemed particularly strong to me. It certainly doesn’t seem to match anarch account siphon spam and while shaper can tutor, anarch now has such reliable AI access I don’t see much case for it.

On the particular subject of Kit/Jes rebirth - if you’re going the siphon route you presumably want to start in Jesminder for the influence and then when do you want to switch to Kit, making your siphons worse? After you’ve played them all? In which case you’ve probably already had to assemble a fair breaker suite. Before? In which case wouldn’t you be better doing it out of Kate for the influence and cheap set-up since you won’t be Jesminder when it matters anyway?

348

I have used siphon in jes to okay success. Basically spam with panerabread combo. I’m more speculating on the rebirth thing, I’ve not tested shaper rebirth beyond professor into kate, and CT into jes.

349

Fair play. I didn’t mean to dismiss siphon in Jesminder (or necessarily siphon in any ID) but I don’t think Rebirth holds any special value in doing so.

It seems to me you either intend not to go tag me (and therefore want to stick with Jes) or intend to go completely aggressive, and potentially tag-me, in which case Kit or Kate seem the better choices.

With Siphon being so influence heavy I don’t think I’d want to spend one on Rebirth when its relevance isn’t - at least in my opinion - especially strong.

2 Likes
350

I was thinking about stealth Kit after the rotation and I realized that she doesn’t lose that much and she could be more amazing if they print stealth support in this cycle or the next. The major loss is lock pick which is the second best card in the deck (after refractor) but after the printing of Dai V it seems likely that stealth hasn’t been forgotten about and another source of stealth credits is coming.

Of course, the next rotation rips the heart out of the deck but that’s even longer away and who knows what netrunner will be like then.

1 Like
351

There hasn’t been much Kit discussion lately and I think in part that’s due to the current popularity of CtM and other ice-light/asset-heavy decks. Sync is another challenging matchup and I’ve yet to beat EoI Sync in all my practice games which is a bit jarring since stealth kit is my most practiced runner. It is annoying to lose when my practice partners are just experimenting with Sync, I know their decks better than they do and it’s still not even close. I still think it’s worth examining Kit and I think there are three viable approaches for the modern meta.

  1. Play a different ID.
    The sad truth is that Kit is never going to be favored against asset spam. Shapers have the roughest time against asset spam compared to criminals/anarchs and kit has the least influence to import hate. We can import Salsette Slums, Scrubbers, Networking and other hate cards but at that point, we’re better off playing Whizzard or Andy. Having an ID that only affects 6-8 cards in their deck is not a good starting point for a competitive deck.

  2. Focus on different matchups.
    For all the hype about CtM, IG, and Sync, the most played deck at Gencon was still EtF. It’s still worth considering the EtF matchup and I think kit with 2xStimhack, 2xPolitical Operative is favored against them. She’s also quite strong against rush and it might be worth accepting that we have some unfavorable matchups to double down on winning the more common match ups. Here’s my current list that tries to do this Stealth Kit w/o Clot. @higgs_bozo I’ve become increasingly convinced that Baby + Kati is better for Kit than Professional Contacts. I have no math to back this up but I’ve tried both versions and gone back and forth for months and baby/kati just feels more effective.

  3. Try to improve the difficult matchups
    Kit vs CtM might never be a favorable matchup but it might be only a 45%/55% matchup with a little bit of experience and deck tweaking. How about 2x Film Critics, 2xNACH? I think adding asset hate in Kit is a dead end against these decks and the best plan is to be able to hammer R&D/HQ and score out quickly. NACH prevents the Breaking News/EoI play and film critic lets us gab the Future Perfects/Fetal AIs safely and host the Global Foods without scoring them and making us vulnerable to EoI. I haven’t actually tested out this kind of Kit so I don’t know if that’s going to be enough but it should be a start.

2 Likes
352

Yesterday I toyed with the idea of throwing in Temujin Contracts and Patrons as an econ engine for Kit. 6 influence stings, but the stupid amount of money should offset the problem of having to swap Corroder for Snowball or Inti. A stealth rig in Kit basically walks through any 1 ICE server so picking those sweet cards and credits up shouldn’t be a problem when lots of corps are pretty thin on ICE.

I haven’t had the time to try this out yet, but it may be worth looking into as an option to combat assets and traces with just pure money.

It’s obviously weaker vs Glacier (but you can still force them to double ICE archives). Against Rush it should be more or less the same as the old Proco engine.

1 Like
353

I largely agree with you that Kit is poorly positioned. One advantage she may have against SYNC and CTM is that these decks can rarely double ICE any server until the mid-game (at least), unless they are willing to leave a crucial server undefended. The tricky caveat is that Shapers have to work very hard to avoid HHN if they are going to run early. @enk 's desire to experiment with Temujin isn’t misguided. Temujin, while somewhat heavy at 2 influence each, may alleviate Kit’s early game economic disadvantage, while giving value to HQ runs. It also synergizes with Kit’s ability to crack single-ICED servers in the early game.

If you’re willing to accept that you’re going to get tagged at some point in this meta as Shaper, you can run Maya with no downside. Maya and a single RDI can ensure NBN never finds their EOI/Closed/HHN. The more I type this, the more this doesn’t sound like a totally bad experiment.

You probably want to run 3 if any at all, though, and that only leaves poor Kit with 4 influence. It paints a pretty stark narrative, too; Kit the transhumanist willing to contract her services for cold, hard cash.

354

What about running 2x temujin and an artist colony package to tutor it? It’s expensive on card slots, but given Kit’s general “one run a turn” mentality you’re going to have trouble running through 3 temujins, and AC gives you a consistency boost to help find it early.

Thinking maybe something like this. Probably a bit too vulnerable to ASI blow-outs, but it could be a starting point.

Event (11)
3x Diesel
3x Dirty Laundry
1x Stimhack ●
3x Sure Gamble
1x The Maker’s Eye

Hardware (9)
2x Clone Chip ☆☆
2x Lockpick
2x Mirror
1x Plascrete Carapace
2x R&D Interface

Resource (15)
2x Artist Colony
1x Beth Kilrain-Chang
2x Fan Site
3x Ghost Runner
1x Kati Jones
1x Political Operative ●
1x Sacrificial Construct
1x Same Old Thing
1x Symmetrical Visage
2x Temüjin Contract ●●●●

Icebreaker (3)
1x Dagger
1x Refractor
1x Snowball

Program (7)
3x Cloak
1x Clot ●●
3x Self-modifying Code

8 influence spent (max 10-2☆=8, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Blood Money

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

1 Like
355

I like the idea of Temujin and I’ll try it out in my version of Kit. It can’t do worse than my previous attempts against CtM. Played a couple test games against it and it felt pretty brutal. CtM gets going so quickly that it was impossible to setup Kati or any econ at all before they started rezing must trash assets like Sensei. NACH was a great endgame against them, turning off Hard Hitting News and Breaking News but by the time I had enough money to use it, the game was already over.

It felt really hard, if not impossible, to setup a rig, trash their important stuff and stay out of Hard Hitting News range. I didn’t try going tag-me but that seems like it plays right into their hands.

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You can win games by going tag-me against these decks. Medium says hi. RDI backed up with Maya says the same. It’s harder versus SYNC if they’re on QPM (which they probably are). Even there, it’s well within the realm of possibility. Decks like @SamRS recent SYNC run very little ICE, so sometimes if you have a serious threat to RND you can win before they can EOI/QPM enough points. Archived Memories plays a big role against tag-me Runners in that shell.

357

Timely! On the runner side I have been playing nothing but Kit for the past three weeks after she was semi-randomly selected for me by a friend. I was feeling uninspired about my recent runner decks after playing Whizzard extensively and taking him to my first tournament. I was looking for something different and I couldn’t be happier.

Initially, I went the Patron route. This is a seductive card effect but when you think about it carefully it’s anti-synergistic with Kit. I rarely ever run more than once a turn, and once all servers are iced the likelihood I would have to spend a stealth credit just to activate Patron is too high. There is some synergy with Mirror here, but I have selected Mirror chiefly for the +2 memory (this is huuuuge with SMCs and Cloaks on table) and the actual card effect is something I have only used once or twice (running in to trash a particularly bothersome asset like Sandburg). Ultimately when I stopped experimenting with Patron and Baby and just got real about understanding how to make 3x ProCo work was when my win percentage skyrocketed. ProCo is the star of the deck. If I don’t see it early I lose. If I get one in my opening hand I can often start peeling agendas off of R&D by turn 2 or 3. This card is also massive against Jinteki in that it allows you to shift the timing of your run within a turn to the third click. By ProCo’ing on 1 and 2, you simultaneously overdraw and money up, which is great to stave off a Snare! Wait, ProCo is damage protection and money? This was a big epiphany for me as someone who’s still relatively new.

Other things: Employee Strike is awesome for Kit. Artist Colony seems good but I’d rather keep all my points. PolOp is great. I hate Caprice, Batty, and ASH. I generally don’t have cash to run back in. I wish I could run 2 x PolOp.

I can honestly say I can beat almost every type of deck in the meta right now. It sometimes boils down to Employee Strike, but I can do it. Glacier is not safe against Kit. It’s absurd just gliding over four ice for $0. Asset decks sometimes lack the strong ice to keep me from RDI and Legwork win. I struggle against Jeeves and fast yellow. I was actually tempted to put in a Scrubber to make trashing Jeeves etc. easier. Trashing assets is tough as Kit for a variety of reasons not just money.

I’m going to experiment with Beth. I think 5 clicks as Kit would be cool. Here’s my list for the weekend:

Kit (Blood Money)

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

Event (11)

Hardware (9)

Resource (16)

Icebreaker (3)

Program (6)

7 influence spent (max 10-2☆=8, available 1)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Blood Money

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

358

There’s a new stealth fractor in Intervertion, 4 cost 3 str, 1 to break a sub, 3 to boost 4 and must spend a stealth credit. It’s less efficient than corroder for Eli but it doesn’t cost any influence and it’s certainly better than snowball. It should free up influence if we need it though I’m not sure what to spend it on.

In non-kit news, there’s also a stealth focused ID and kit might end up not being the best ID for stealth anymore. I don’t know what to do with 15 influence anymore so I’m have a hard time building a list for her.

359

In case anyone’s interested, Temujin does make kit viable against CtM. I’ve played a half-dozen or so games against it and I’ve been able to coast to a victory when I see the Temujin Contracts early. I don’t think you need NACH or any special tech against the deck, you just need to keep at 10+ credits while trashing all their Sensies, Bankers and SanSans. CtM doesn’t seem to care what else is in your list, it’s all about how much money you can generate and how quickly you can set up your economy.

1 Like
360

Awesome. Got a list?

361

Nothing that unusual. I just dropped the stimhacks and legwork to fit in 3 Temujin contracts. Paperclip, Kati, NACH could all be replaced as as per your individual preference as they didn’t have that high impact during the games I played. Temujin contract was never a dead card even in the non-CtM games I played so I feel pretty comfortable including 3 copies. Even when they didn’t create any remotes, I could drop it on archives and force them to spend ice defending it or let me collect the full money off the contract for free.

1 Like