Spot on with RP - I’ve only had one game against it, which went to time mostly due to Shi.Kyu (got a modified win). I also got a bit lucky with his centrals ice letting me just bounce off.
With Parasite, would you suggest dropping a Legwork or maybe Mimic for one? I’m also not really sure where to fit Diesel. Don’t want to drop Indexing as it’s almost always amazing. R&D Interface/something else…?
I’d suggest dropping the mimic. I’ve been running just femme, deus x, and sharpshooter for my sentry breakers (along with a one of atman). A one-of parasite has been amazing for me, especially since I run 3 clone chips. This lets me recur parasite, or the single shot breakers, and also lets me discard femme if I draw it so I can install it mid run. Caduceus becomes a bit of a problem, and once or twice guard has been annoying, but overall its worked very well.
That’s true, however what if you get locked out early by a sentry? i find mimic is a good catch all for the early game
Or, an Atman 2 or 3.
I tried it out last night and it wasn’t too great, got locked out by a Guard and smashed by a Komainu. Mimic also saved my ass from an SMC in my last tournament. To be fair I am not great at knowing when to commit an Atman.
So Ajar directed me to this thread after I put in a reqest looking for a new decktype to try. Around the same time I came across this idea over on BGG. I made some modification from the original. (The original was highly dependent on ProCo.)
The may be a little of the beaten path since it doesn’t use Atman. The idea is pressure R&D and then switch to HQ pressure with the end result of blowing up their hand. Reading some of the thread I can see that swapping out RDI for Indexing might a way to go. Escher might work also to soften up HQ once the corp’s rezzed enough ICE.
From what I understand Pre-Paid voice Pad seems really popular for economy right now.
Any suggestions?
Chaos Practice (41 cards)
Built with http://netrunner.meteor.com/
Kneejerking, I’d say Grimoire is underutilized INF in here. It’s just to get some additional bumps off of NA and Imp? They’ll prob. wipe them immediately. Without Parasites, I wouldn’t run Grimoire. Plenty of better MU options in faction.
While PPVP is popular, I’ve seen the rise of Opus in dex lately, which is a nice trend, as well. Diversity is good/fun/encouraged. It works especially well in CT.
Not sure about Crypsis in here. I guess it fits with Grimoire and whatnot, and will guarantee those deep dig runs, if you have the time/cash. Otherwise, your breaker suite is pretty expensive. I understand, you’re running 3 Test Run/Scavenge. If you’re going that route, why not run the heavy hittas? (Torch/Garotte/etc.)
Or morning star- mem is a bit tight, but it matches up well against all the eli’s and bastions seeing play right now, never mind hive
I’m always game for new suggestions. I sort of agree on you with Grimoire. So basically go for Memory Chips and not bother with a console then? Toolbox is expensive, Dino’s interesting, I also looked at Spinal modem and Logos.
The idea of loading up on the high end breakers to really work the Test/Scavenge combo is a good idea. I’ve already got Femme, Torch for Code Gates, if I go with Dino I could use Morning star to break mostly everything and use Femme to bypass what Morning star can’t break.
Crypsis is sort of a “None of the above” sort of answer. I saw the CT-Overmind thread, but I’m not sure I could make that work and still keep the original idea. I could probably use Atman to troubleshoot tricky ICE. The reason I wasn’t going full Atman on the breaker suite was not having the influence or MUs for Datasuckers and Parasites.
I usually have at least one Atman in my decks, just because it’s so versatile, even without Datasuckers. It can be set at 0 for garbage ICE, 3/4 for the typical stuff. Occasionally I have to set it pretty high to get through some kind of crazy-strong ICE. Just last night, I threw her out at 7 STR to walk through my friend’s Hadrian several times for the win. Whatever you do with Atman, she always pulls her weight!
I see a lot of decks that are soft to Atman set on 4. This is especially true of HB- I’ve seen players with several copies of Eli, viper, and Ichi 1.0 rezzed, and an atman at 4 is just back-breaking.
Missed the last 180 posts in this thread. You blink and then there they are… 
Just wanted to report about this deck’s performance in the 67-person Boston (technically, Cambridge) Regionals this weekend. I went 9-3 in swiss, making 4th seed going into elimination rounds, then was narrowly eliminated in my 3rd game by HB fast advance in an extremely close game. I was essentially playing Lysander and Ajar’s version of the deck, and the decklist is at the bottom of this post.
Overall, Kate lost 1 game in swiss (to a well-piloted Astrobiotics that drew what it needed before I hit the agendas). She lost 2 in elimination, both against HB. One was the aforementioned game, which I don’t view as a failure of the deck, just a combination of failure of luck (I whiffed 3 maker’s eyes on unique cards in a row for game point) a few mistakes on my part, and a quirk of the tournament rules that allowed my opponent to stymie me by actively trying not to win himself. We were approaching time 6-6 but he was 3rd seed (one ahead of me), which he knew and used to his advantage by trying to avoid drawing the agenda that would win him the game and deeply icing R&D, because he knew if I never found it, he’d win from the tiebreaker.
The other elimination loss was my only disasterous draw of the tournament, also against HB fast advance. I spent the game digging through the deck, and got at least halfway through it without a single voicepad and only 2 econ cards - a dirty laundry and a sure gamble. After the game, my opponent also said something to the effect of “this is the first time this tournament I felt like this HB deck really worked, I drew what I needed when I needed it”. I really had no chance that game.
Other than those two games, I felt the deck was firing on all cylinders. Sometimes, you’re going to have bad draws with any deck. I think it speaks to the deck’s consistency that I only had one bad draw all tourney - but at the same time, if you have a truly terrible draw, the deck is completely useless, which may not be the case with other decks.
The deck went 5-3. Against players who ended up in the top 16, it went 3-3, even with me making a number of mistakes piloting it. Make of that what you will. Getting into the top 16 with only one runner loss was a good enough performance for me, because I didn’t expect to get even close to pulling that off, and I watched many other players from my meta whom I consider better players than me end up in the middle of the pack. It also was not the deck’s fault I got eliminated when I did.
Observations about the deck:
NBN is a great matchup for it. I played against 5 NBN and only lost one of those games. I’ve also been able to win pretty consistently against NBN in previous playtesting.
I used Levy twice, both in very long games where I was sitting at game point but unable to find anything with Maker’s Eye, and had to recycle my econ and multi-access tools. I felt like it pulled its weight, but it might have been better to replace it with a third maker’s eye, an indexing, or even a noteriety just to make it easier to close out games. My alternative in both of those games would have been to start clicking for credits and spending 2-3 turns worth of credits to access a single card.
Related to that: the only time the deck seems to struggle is when the corp gets set up enough that an 8-credit Lucky Find is only enough for one run, and your maker’s eye doesn’t hit anything on that run. You only have a limited number of chances to make expensive runs and trash expensive assets with this deck, and that’s it’s biggest weakness. Is there a way to mitigate that without changing to a different deck archetype?
Legwork is amazing and you should run two.
The absolute worst thing you could do with this deck is let yourself go completely broke. It was almost never the right call, even if it scored me an agenda. Having to click up into Sure Gamble range, even with 2 voicepads out, is just too big a tempo hit for this deck, given how much it wants to draw and how much it starts to slow down late game.
I was very glad for the 2 Deus X against HB, and it being a relatively dead draw against NBN didn’t seem to hinder me.
People do not expect Cyber-Cypher, and it does a ton of work. I absolutely would not replace the 2 copies with 1 Gordian. People rely very heavily on 4-str (and 5-str) code gates, and that’s only going to increase once lotus field comes out. CC was only punished once the entire tourney - by an enigma on another server - and code gates between 1 and 3 are almost never played.
Dinosaurus was VERY situational. I only installed it 3 times, I think, but each time it was pretty critical. I chose to bring it over Atman because of memory, and I think overall it pulled its weight. I was disappointed to draw it if I wasn’t super-rich, though.
Plascrete was totally worth it, even though it was a dead draw in 7 out of 8 games. It gave me a fighting chance against a midseasons-scorched deck - in that particular game, because of the draws on both sides, he would have won very quickly had I sat back and just tried to out-econ him, so I just stole an astro and took 8 tags, then ran hard and got lucky.
You really really really really really want to draw at least 1 Lucky Find every game. Getting a long way into my deck without seeing one really held me back in a few games, especially because having one in the heap is the best way to turn SOT into money if needed.
At this point I would not change anything about the deck; I think it could have gone even farther if I’d played it better. However, I would totally make changes if someone came up with a way to get sustained econ to beat HB more consistently. 
Here it is:
Kate “Mac” McCaffrey: Digital Tinker (Core Set)
Event (23)
3x Diesel (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) ••••
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control)
3x Lucky Find (Double Time) ••••• •
2x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Scavenge (Creation and Control)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x Test Run (Cyber Exodus)
2x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set)
Hardware (8)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
1x Dinosaurus (Cyber Exodus)
2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)
3x Prepaid VoicePAD (Second Thoughts)
Resource (3)
3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
Icebreaker (7)
1x Corroder (Core Set) ••
2x Cyber-Cypher (Creation and Control)
2x Deus X (A Study in Static)
1x Femme Fatale (Core Set) •
1x Sharpshooter (True Colors)
Program (4)
1x Parasite (Core Set) ••
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Honor and Profit
Deck built on http://netrunnerdb.com.
Good job!
Were you using the Dino more for Femme or Corroder?
So … 5/6th place on a top16 in a 112 (111 ?) players tournament at the french national. I was the only one playing PPvP Kate AND Supermodernism in the top 16. I’ve lost my second game in the upper bracket playing PPvP Kate against a HB Glacier when I saw 21 (!!!) different cards with multiaccess (3 indexing, 2 legwork) and not a single agenda. I’ve also accessed to i think …6 ? 9 ? cards trashed by Power Shutdown (my opponent played 6 power shutdown against me) to only find a single vitrivius. After that point, I was totally locked out from the server and lost the game after a long and grindy game where i could have won if my access weren’t that shitty.
Well that sucks but i’m still pretty happy on my run in this tournament. I’ve won against both glacier/taxing deck and astrobiotic / rush decks and every game I lost were mostly dues either to bad opening (not drawing a single program for like 15 cards but all the econ/draw i could have) or shitty access. Overall, it was a good run for my PPvP Katman / Parasite 
I used Levy twice. Both were games where I got to 5 points early, then burned through all of my econ, SOTs, and maker’s eyes trying to get that last agenda, and just got unlucky. The alternative in those games would have literally been clicking for credits to get into servers that cost 6-8 creds to enter.
Sharpshooter I think I only used in one game - the final one against HB fast advance. I used it to get past Ichi 1.0 in deep servers cheaply and recycled it with clone chips. Honestly, they weren’t necessary, but would have been really great if anyone was playing Archer. It may have saved me from a Grim during swiss, but I can’t remember clearly.
Plascrete I only played out in one game, but it got me the win. I got hit for 8 tags by midseasons when I’d already seen scorched off the top of his deck, and I’m pretty sure he had 2 at that point. Installed both plascretes and ran recklessly, getting the last few agenda points. I could have played that one better, but I think he might have just astrotrained me if I hadn’t pulled an astro off the top of his deck and just eaten the midseasons in retaliation. This deck wants to be aggressive, so I think Plascrete is necessary against Weyland, NBN if you’ve seen midseason/scorch/SEA source, or Jinteki PE so you aren’t forced to sit back and out-econ them. Your econ is also less renewable and consistent (ah, bad draws) than, say, a Magnum Opus, so despite it’s huge econ burst potential, I don’t feel like this deck does as well in those situations as other decks might.
Quality Time: It’s a necessary evil. I really hate playing it in general, because usually when I’m digging that hard, I’m digging for econ. However, this deck just needs to be drawing, and I found it performed much, much, MUCH better once I embraced the crazy overdrawing and just dug through the deck as fast as I could. A big weakness of the deck is bad draws, and QT can get you out of those - you just have to get used to discarding anything you don’t need RIGHT NOW into the bin sometimes.
I played NBN: MN. A never-advance deck with some recent additions from yellowjackets, I only ran one Shinobi, and honestly I regretted it. I never got ahead enough on econ to flatline, so I always would have been better off with another Tollbooth instead. Philosophically, I thought it was a great idea to add pressure from another direction, but in practice I was really disappointed. Maybe it’s better if you run 2 and really commit to it? Or maybe I wasn’t playing it right?
The deck went 5-2 on the night, and I’m pretty sure I went up against 4 Kates, 1 Kit, 1 Gabe, and 1 Whizzard. The losses were to Katman (my only truly awful corp draw of the night, going through 2 Jacksons before drawing my first piece of ICE…and I still got 4 points scored that game), and Kit (the deck you can see in Apreche’s elim round 16 vid).
NBN: Making News (Core Set)
Agenda (11)
3x AstroScript Pilot Program (Core Set)
2x Breaking News (Core Set)
3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)
3x Project Beale (Future Proof)
Asset (4)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves)
1x Psychic Field (Honor and Profit) •
Upgrade (5)
2x Bernice Mai (Humanity’s Shadow)
3x SanSan City Grid (Core Set)
Operation (12)
2x Blue Level Clearance (Fear and Loathing) ••••
1x Closed Accounts (Core Set)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
2x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
1x Shipment from SanSan (Second Thoughts)
3x Sweeps Week (True Colors)
Barrier (4)
1x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof) •
1x Wall of Static (Core Set)
2x Wraparound (Fear and Loathing)
Code Gate (8)
3x Pop-up Window (Cyber Exodus)
1x Quandary (Double Time)
1x RSVP (True Colors)
1x Tollbooth (Core Set)
2x Viper (Cyber Exodus) ••
Sentry (5)
2x Caduceus (What Lies Ahead) ••••
2x Dracō (What Lies Ahead)
1x Shinobi (Double Time) •••
15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Honor and Profit
Deck built on http://netrunnerdb.com.
I think if I ran this again I’d drop Shinobi for a 2nd Tollbooth, RSVP (the other big disappointment of the night) for Ichi 1.0, and try to work in a second Psychic Field, probably dropping Shipment from Sansan.
100% Femme. She’s just so expensive to pump! I think I used Dino in 3 games, mainly to deal with Ichis, Grim, and Caduceus.
It’s possible I would have done better against HB if I’d put the Corroder on it and just used Sharpshooters or clicks to deal with Ichi 1.0, but I’m not sure.
I’m still testing without Plascretes. I added +1 Levy and +1 SOT in their place. I’ve found the Levy very helpful at smoothing out suboptimal draws, and I use it fairly aggressively.
I haven’t seen as much HB around lately, so I’m thinking I’ll go back down to one DX and put in +1 Maker’s Eye, +1 Indexing, or +1 R&D Interface. I currently have 2x Maker’s Eye, 1x Indexing, and 2x Legwork.
(I had typed out one whole long, rambling, mushy post about how I’ve fallen in love with this deck, but I don’t think you guys need to listen to my love letter, so screw that. 
)
Anyway…
I got some games in with my mates tonight, and learnt some things that I thought I should share.
I tried Paricia in the deck, cutting the second Atman. Not like I ever had 2 in play anyway. It was pretty magical against RP, since it cuts through Sundews like butter, and helps quite a bit against everything else except Caprice, which people don’t usually have any trouble trashing anyway. RP would probably be the only deck I would actively tutor it out against, though Near-Earth Hub may change that. It also doubles as budget Shutdown protection. The deck draws hard enough that you don’t really feel the deadcardness of it in other matchups, but that’s not the only problem…
Still can’t find a satisfactory solution to the memory problem. You don’t really need the 1 or 2 extra MU in all your games, but in the games when you do, you feel the pinch really hard. I’m running one Dyson currently as a stopgap because I really don’t like forking out the creds for a Cybersolutions, and Caduceus is a major pain in the ass for my breaker suite. Then again, I never seem to draw into it when it matters, so downgrading even more into an Akamatsu seems more promising, but the problem is that on paper, looking at the decklist, having only a single Akamatsu seems really, really dumb. Although when Astrolabe releases I would shove it into the deck without a second thought, holy crap that card is amazing.
In 40 games with this deck, I’ve used my singleton Scavenge only once. On paper it looks decent for resetting Atmans and Cyber-Cyphers, but I’ve rarely been in situations where it’s come up. What have other peoples’ experiences been with this card?
I feel like I need to be more aggressive with my Test Runs. Lost a game against RP because I facechecked an Enigma on the remote on click 2, letting him score a very early Nisei. Invariably, things went pretty downhill from there. I guess I just need to kick my bad Criminal habit of automatic facechecking, but still: how do you all use your Test Runs?
That’s it for this round, I guess. Just want to say that this is probably the most skill-intensive deck I’ve ever had the pleasure to play, and it’s really grown on me since I picked it up for my Regionals. Haven’t looked back since.
Well, I guess I’d better stop before I turn all fanboy-y again 
If those’re the only things using it, maybe, but I ran the 2x Femme version, and between Test Run/Scavenge money-saving and just straight-up Scavenging for new Femme tokens, it put in a lot of work.