I have a similar overdraw-happy playstyle with Kate. I QT with abandon and Levy about as often as other players QT.
Yeah,and with Astrolabe, all the time I spend during early game drawing my solutions is done by my opponent anyway. It’s a win-win.
2 Likes
I really want to test Astrolabe PPVP Kate. I’ll probably play that and Blue Sun for a while after Worlds.
QT is amazing, and it’s okay to overdraw even without levy. Unless you plan on going through your deck you can just act like the discards were on the bottom of the deck. Most of the time, you can move valuable programs to the heap and not feel bad. I’ve said it a billion times, but card draw is highly underrated and QT really does work. Especially good in PPVP because it comes at a discount or free. Drawing 5 times the normal amount for 1 click is huge.
Astrolabe is amazing.
If diesel and qt were enough draw for a game thered be no reason to change playstyles, which is what a proco deck is: a higher variance playstyle with a high click:access ratio.
Look at all of the slots that do nothing in the mainstream green deck and decide for yourself.
In a perfect meta icould play a fancy shaper that does everything, but the corp metagame demands a reactionary design shift.
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Totally agree. It’s the main reason I moved away from run events and back to interfaces + modded. Q time is a total speed boost then, as you hardly have to discard anything. If you also consider astrolabe draw, pro con just isn’t as good as it seems on paper.
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The last poster is the Devil…
I was worried coming into this topic to post my decklist that it’d be totally out of touch with the most recent discussion, but it looks like the last few posts agree with most of the design choices I made.
I’m going the magnum opus route instead of PPVP. This frees up influence (lucky find) that I can use to splash d4v1d to blow out blue sun players, and frees up deck slots to pack more “goodies”. Likewise QT and modded are a lot better.
So far testing on octgn it’s gone 4-0 against blue sun (mostly keystone), and I think 2-0 vs RP. Against NBN it’s been mostly losses, but close games nonetheless, but also they were all before I changed akamatsu into leprechaun, so I don’t really have a good sense for the matchup yet. I was going to say I wish I had room for cards like deus x, sharpshooter, and scavenge, but those are mostly good against non-NBN decks, so really I think I want an indexing or two (and the 3rd QT). Feedback welcome.
Modern Katman
Kate “Mac” McCaffrey: Digital Tinker (Core Set)
Event (16)
3x Diesel (Core Set)
2x Modded (Core Set)
2x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow)
3x Stimhack (Core Set) •••
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
3x Test Run (Cyber Exodus)
Hardware (12)
3x Astrolabe (Up and Over)
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
1x HQ Interface (Humanity’s Shadow) ••
2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)
3x R&D Interface (Future Proof)
Icebreaker (4)
2x Atman (Creation and Control)
1x Femme Fatale (Core Set) •
1x Inti (Creation and Control)
Program (13)
1x D4v1d (The Spaces Between) ••••
3x Datasucker (Core Set) •••
2x Leprechaun i[/i]
3x Magnum Opus (Core Set)
1x Parasite (Core Set) ••
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Up and Over
Decklist published on NetrunnerDB.
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I will probably get laughed out of the room for asking this, but… any chance this could actually be better as The Prof?
The main downside would be having to lose the Stimhacks (and going down to 2 Suckers), but in return you’d get some interesting benefits: Faerie, Corroder, Imp, potentially Djinn instead of one of the Leprechauns (which would mean tutoring for Nerve Agent as your HQI replacement).
Thoughts?
3 Likes
5 days late, but a friend added a Nerve Agent to his build that could come in off a test run or SMC and it did a lot of work in the pure atman build. I still don’t think it’s a good choice in the current meta. The Nerve Agent didn’t make the fast advance matchups that much better at all in experience and losing a desperado cuts consistency. Doubt atman matches up well against Blue Sun and that is probably going to be around in some amounts.
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snowball is the way to go against stacked barrier
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Even compared to Corroder? It costs 2 more to install and the first barrier costs you 1 more credit (unless it’s STR 1). Unless the first barrier was multi-sub, you’re breaking even on the second one, and only start reaping some sort of benefit on the third one.
Just about the only situation where I can see Snowball actually being better than Corroder would be a mega-fed NEXT Silver (think, 4+ subs) with a Hadrian/Heimdall behind it. Is that really such a common occurence that Snowball becomes “the way to go”?
Against double stacked Eli, it cost the same amount of cress than a corroder for no Influence. Granted i’ll rather have an Atman for that but sonetime it isn’t possible. Against Blue Sun stacking hadrian/curtain/hive it’s definitively better than corroder.
3 Likes
I’m feeling really good about the Blue Sun match up at this point. Its not scary to me. It’s a challenge to be sure, but its far easier to dissect. While its possible to lose a game if they rush and breakers don’t quite come out, if we get to the mid game we should have way better than even odds of winning; or at least my deck is capable of it so long as I make the right decisions. Essentially, I’ve learned to back off centrals. Its too hard to get into them often enough since the expensive ice can go up there without consequence and still leave a threat for a remote, whereas if you threaten the remote and just keep building up cash most Blue Sun variants fold.
NEH is workable. It’ll be rough no matter what, but my accesses are up around 18 a game against NEH, so as long as I keep my cash reserves up I should be able to get the NAPDs that I see all too often, and some of the time those astro scripts are going to be mine instead of the corps. It feels pretty strongly like a 50/50 match up, which is what we call balanced, right? The best corp deck vs the best variant of my runner and anyone could win? Glass is half full guys.
RP though I just have no idea. I’ve been playing on OCTGN under a pseudonym and I haven’t played this match up since my new build solidified. I was never very good at beating it to begin with and RP was my deck before NEH came out, so I know how the thing ticks. Any general play style tips against this? What I’ve heard, but never quite managed:
- Turn off the drip
- Get them to rez all of their ice
- ???
- Profit
Remote sniping isn’t really a solid plan because of nisei. R&D locking is mediocre because of FP/NAPD. Is their hand particularly weak?
I’m not running parasites or femme, though at this point I’d be willing to drop my stimhack for a 1inf out of faction card; I don’t feel like femme is worth it, but maybe a crescentus is? For my disposable breakers I’m running clone chip.
Wishing I had more practice against this deck…
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Not a bad insight actually. But I fear that would just be making it worse against NBN… With 3 clone chips, astrolabe, and modded+RDI/HQI/opus, I expect Kate’s ability to be worth roughly $10. Imp deals with sansan, but so does stimhack. Djinn nerve agent and faerie are definitely good though.
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I tried the Leprechaun + Opus Katman build at GenCon and used the influence on Imp, a Parasite, and a Datasucker. My list is actually posted upthread. It was decent in testing, even vs NEH, but the sequencing issues and tricky in-game tutoring decisions killed me at GenCon. I went 2-5 with it, which put me out of the cut (6-1 with RP, 42/128 in my flight, cut was top 32).
Hey Gum,
By this point I’m not sure what your deck list is.
One idea I’m toying with is an Astrolabe during the early game, traded in to a doppleganger. Grab the extra cards that astro labe gives you while NEH/RP sets up. Tradein to Doppleganger when you have the wherewithal to go after the assets.
Relatively speaking, I think the prsence of astrolabe discounts proco more than other draw engines. No tempo hit for the install and it keeps you in pace with a fast advance corp like neh/rp.
I’m not particularly worried about card efficiencies; I want to talk tactics and play style. What is the best way to approach beating RP as shaper. Lets assume you have a good supply of money from event based economies, breakers which when set up leave no holes, and event based multi access.
How, When, & Where do you apply pressure. At what point in the game do you need to force your way in against RP, what are the objectives you should try to meet to get accesses on RP to prevent the nisei-pocolypse? Are people focusing on HQ having a lot of success? Is it better to try and get that R&D lock? Just be really good at winning psi games and remote snipe? What are the tells for an RP deck that let you know agendas are pooling up? And, what are must access scenarios?
For any given “shaper control” deck, how do you “control” RP?
I don’t have a lot of practice with the matchup (used to play exclusively andy, only just now trying the list i posted), but here’s the sense I have.
Early game focus on building the rig just enough that you don’t care about the cards in your hand so you can start face-checking potential komainu/tsurugis. Parasite them if convenient, but more important is saving a clone chip or test run for killing the ice in front of sundew (probably eli) when they eventually get that set up. During this midgame it’s generally not too hard to kill all sundews, and agendas will pile up in either hq or rnd (depending on jackson usage), so watch for which central will have more profitable accesses.
Eventually they will manage to get a remote set up with caprice, some MHCs, an ELP to protect it all, etc. If they haven’t scored a nisei by then, it can be worth trying to kill caprice, but otherwise it will be a race and central multiaccess will be the only hope for the last few points.
Thanks. Food for thought and excellent content. This is the sort of stuff that’s harder to learn in netrunner and goes beyond do I put X, Y, or Z in my deck? This sort of thought process actually informs quality card choice.
Counting jackson use makes a lot of sense. What kind of credit threshold do you think needs to be maintained against RP? Is it ok to go down to zero to just all out assault; or is better to build up and maintain a 5-10 credit pool even after a burst of runs?
When playing against NEH, all out assault tends to be my play mode. Against Blue Sun, I’ll just camp their remote. It sounds like assaulting money against RP and centrals is the main thing. Luckly you need to do the later to engage in the former.