[Kate] Redefining Shaper Control Decks

Deck Archetypes
700

Definitely need to sit on a modest cushion of credits as often as possible. If you go down to 0 it lets them set up an easy window with caprice and ELP. Unless you have a stimhack in hand and that’s what you want them to think… :stuck_out_tongue:

OK, now my turn. How can a non-event-based katman build deal with the cambridge PE deck? I just lost a tense game where I was never at risk of flatlining, but they got 2 early HoKs and I ran out of cards before I got to 7 points.

Not having SOTs mean you can’t just fix the matchup by adding a LARLA. I’m also inclined to say I don’t want deus X, since I can play around flatline easily enough. But on the other hand, those early HoKs slipped through since I didn’t want to get snared on turn 1 with good cards in my hand, so maybe deus X is key for that early game. Thoughts? Overall matchup strategy?

Before this I played keyhole andromeda, which eats PE alive, so I admit to being unpracticed against PE the “normal” way.

701

I played full-on Katman (3 Desperado, 3 ProCon, 3 Atman) at Worlds last year, and ate up PE, including Hinkes, with just Deus Ex. PE is much more powerful now, but, Deus and Clone can absolutely destroy it.

1 Like
702

Yeah, I think Shapers are the best placed to deal with this. Indexing is a really good card (if you can sniff out the Jacksons - and early game you should be running non-advanced cards first click anyway, as long as there’s no Psychic Field/Ronin/Neural EMP edge case flatline) and R&D is often open or something you can pay through (Yagura, Pup) without even a breaker. Deus Ex and Clone Chip lets you ignore possible Ronin kills. Parasite handles Komainu brutally.

Criminals are probably the next best placed, with Faerie and Account Siphon.

Anarchs have Keyhole and…er…Singularity?

703

Keyhole and Vamp.

704

Net shield will save you about 10-13 cards. If you’re not in danger of flatlining, but you’re running out of cards before EOG, it tends to make PE fold and can just be slipped in. But its dead in all other match-ups. Tough call, but its how I’ve had the most luck.

I’m not running it. I think PE is the deck I’ve chosen to lose to. The decks it seems to work best in are Kate-Pawnshop or Sahsrara-Pawnshop where you can install it for the delayed easy mark in the matches you don’t need it for; or FCC pitching it out of hand (exile/professor).

Not much you can do for play style unless you’re going to encorporate expose; I also find that just digging R&D is the most effective way to beat a PE deck. There’s still plenty of damage in there, but none of the advanceable traps are live, PE has a hard time breaking a lock, and recovery is much the same. Another card that helps that is the medium import, but I wouldn’t want Medium aginst NEH, so that’s kind of out of the question.

Preventing an HOK score is pretty important though. You can let one through, but more than that and you’ll start bleeding cards.

705

I think Vamp is about as useful as Singularity in this meta, but yes - Vamp is great against PE.

706

Won my local GNK with this today. I dropped 2x modded and added 1x deus X and the 3rd quality time. On the corp side I played the blue sun mushin-grid list I posted over from the other thread.

It was 7 players, 3 rounds; I played against foundry grail fast advance (timed tie at 6 AP each), cambridge PE with plan Bs (won by recurring deus X), and another player also running mushin-grid blue sun but with punitives (won by recurring d4v1d and stimhacking HQ).

I definitely like the deus X and 3rd QT over the moddeds. The deck is about finding recursion pieces (test run and clone chip mostly) quickly, and opus makes the minor (inconsistent) economy boost of modded superfluous.

One weakness is that late game I found myself running out of stuff to be able to do – getting stuck with atmans at the wrong strengths, not being able to find the last clone chip to stimhack out femme, etc. I’d like to find room for a scavenge or two but don’t know what I’d cut.

707

Wait, a timed tie with a FA corp deck? My mind is blown.

As for the decklist, I’m not sure, modded seems as such a nice fit with mopus and the interfaces. Then again, scavenge is a nice fit with testrun and D4v1d.

From the original list: -1 astrolabe, -2 modded, +1 Deus, +2 Scavenge?

708

HBFA can build pretty intimidating centrals and don’t have the draw that NEH have to get hold of the FA tools. I’ve been close to time with my HBFA deck a couple of times, even though it’s usually pretty fast.

709

If you’re running Clone Chips, throw in a Deus Ex. Used it 7 times v. @mtgred

2 Likes
710

It can be used up to 8 times in my version and 10 in Spags version. Between that, the levy and the card draw, I feel the Kate vs Killteki heavily favors Kate. Mtgred will disagree with me but im gonna say the two games he lost on the Swiss was against Kate so take it like you want.

2 Likes
711

Levy AR Lab Access and Deus X really hurt Jinteki PE. Shapers are the best faction to deal with them.

1 Like
712

Yeah, if you don’t have the room for both, it seems that Levy alone has been good enough for me to do pretty well against PE. That, and some card draw, which you will usually be including in any Shaper deck.

713

If you just had Levy v. Mihn, you would have prob. lost without tremendous luck. Deus is super-clutch.

3 Likes
714

Plus it still has utility against HB and many of their stupid bioroids. Stupid big dumb brain-damaging bioroids :).

4 Likes
715

I was very happy to not face any Kate decks at Worlds. DX and Sharpshooter in the same deck plus recursion can invalidate a lot of the ice I play in Red Coats. The worst part is Shapers are also well equipped to deal with my “get my ice to fire” tech (Inazuma).

I used to run a 1-of Corporate Troubleshooter to stick Heimdalls vs DX, which was awesome, but there just wasn’t space in the Worlds list.

1 Like
716

A bit more agro than control, here’s my write up for my world’s runner deck.

I’ve had a lot of “luck” against NEH with this deck, including against one of the T16 players. It’s a compromised deck, though. It’s not going to be good at dealing with glacier long term if it has to make a lot of runs. You should instead be trying to snipe remotes if you go against glacier. This is how you beat red coats/blue sun. Just save & take money. Hit remotes and occasionally legwork if you believe they’re holding agendas, you give up on R&D.

Against NEH or other fast advance decks, just get what you need and hit hard everywhere.

I’m not a great pilot and never have been, but this is a great deck. Enjoy!

QuickTime

Chaos Theory: Wünderkind (Cyber Exodus)

Event (15)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) ••••
3x Lucky Find (Double Time) ••••• •
1x Stimhack (Core Set) •
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
3x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set)

Hardware (8)
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)
3x Prepaid VoicePAD (Second Thoughts)

Resource (7)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
3x Professional Contacts (Creation and Control)
1x Sacrificial Construct (Core Set)

Icebreaker (7)
3x Cyber-Cypher (Creation and Control)
1x Faerie (Future Proof) •••
1x Mimic (Core Set) •
2x Snowball (Trace Amount)

Program (3)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)

15 influence spent (max 15)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Honor and Profit

Deck built on DarkRunner.

Note, a friend of mine traded out faerie & stimhack for +1 legwork, +1 ninja. Deck can’t be locked out and you can now lose 1x clone chip & 1x sac construct for kati/sharpshooter/armitage. With that build, I might honestly lose a lucky for 2x stimhack because ninja can be really really expensive. It was really only week 2 of playing the deck and I’m not sure he really had the nuance of it down, so he didn’t perform as well, but we had the same record at the end of the day. I never really dropped, just went up and fought not to go down too much. Whereas he dropped all the way down and had to fight his way back up.

Another thought, future experiments are going to involve taking that cyber-cypher into criminal with the central only breakers and faerie’s galore. I think there’s a deck there. Either ken/gabe, not sure yet. Possibly even silhouette to help combat the jinteki craziness and plan out breakers. I’m done with shaper for the next year, at least for a while. I really need to get used to other runners and figure out how to combat them as a corp from the runner’s side of the table.

[size=24]:: Choice Breakdown ::[/size]

[size=18]Economy[/size]
This thing has a huge percentage of it as economy and that means that almost any card you draw will help you keep running. No opus, because it’s just too slow in shaper. Other builds can afford it that have passive economy. So, recurring credits, or situational burst credits such as compromised employee. The thing is that 2 credits for a click isn’t good enough. VoicePad econ gets well over that, and prof con eases the hurt of having to constantly be drawing cards.

3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
3x Lucky Find (Double Time) ••••• •
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
1x Stimhack (Core Set) •
3x Prepaid VoicePAD (Second Thoughts)
3x Professional Contacts (Creation and Control)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)

[size=18]Multi Access[/size]
Just event multi access because prepaid makes it relatively free. You might argue that interfaces offer a way to establish a stronger luck. I would argue need a way to pay less than 4 for them. This isn’t a kate deck. Same old would be welcome if there were space to recur these, or even levy. Most games against NEH don’t go that long though. The argument for Legwork #3 is hard to ignore, but it means losing economy to get it, or the faerie package (which I would disagree with).

2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) ••••
3x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set)

[size=18]Protection[/size]
You can’t ignore scorch. Play it down against nbn unless you’ve seen biotic/architect. Play it down against jinteki almost always. Play it down against weyland always. Play it down against HB CI. You’re losing against PE unless you win via multi access.

2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

[size=18]Breakers[/size]
Quick, influence free for the most part. Mimic for architect. It’s a must break. I only lost games as NBN when mimic was on the table at worlds. Faerie for anything greater than strength 3. Notably Grim/Archer. You could argue this should be troubleshooter, but how are you getting through morphling? There aren’t any data sucker’s in this build. You shouldn’t be running through strong sentries more than a few times per game. Faerie is also excellent vs komainu/tsuguri. The deck wants 2 more sacrificial constructs, but you’re not going to find space for them.

Cyber-Cypher is cheap to tutor and install and comes with the strength of torch. Its the best for pounding central servers and great for remote sniping. Weak to a player who can just spam remotes with ice, but if they do that, you should be able to pick agendas out of centrals.

Snowball is just a necessity, no mem for battering ram. There are situations where its uniquely powerful, but its mostly just a breaker you can use. If you’re running appropriately, it might cost you 6-8 credits over the choice of corroder including the install cost. You’re probably saving more than that off of cypher/faerie/mimic.

3x Cyber-Cypher (Creation and Control)
2x Snowball (Trace Amount)
1x Mimic (Core Set) •
1x Faerie (Future Proof) •••
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
1x Sacrificial Construct (Core Set)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)

[size=24]:: Weaknesses ::[/size]
Shaper in general does not f with the corp. They’re pretty linear. Get stuff and break in. You can often bring in parasite or data sucker to disrupt plans. This deck doesn’t do any of those things. Its a very honest deck. Get in and see lots when you do. But that means that a corp on a strong start can only be interrupted if you harry their servers forcing them to rez ice and stay poor. That’s hard to do, so you really are relying on that honest plan, which often means taking a win earlier as might not get one later.

Limited big sentry breaks means that eventually you may run out of steam. A player who knows your deck (why I was reluctant to share before worlds) will and can string out your code gate and sentry breakers or play the never advance game in a remote masquerading econ assets as agendas.

Poor starts. Its possible to get bad hands with this build. Its a general runner weakness, but I had games at worlds where my multi access was in the last 10. Never had a problem getting breakers, but Prof-Con doesn’t always show up and that can leave your economy a bit anemic. This thing is like a cannon from the 1800s, if it fires you’re going to get a giant bang; but a wet wick could leave you cursing.

Because it can be so potent it’ll steal games from NBN players who know what they’re doing, but it can fizzle against others. I can see why a lot of players went for a consistent andy build, but they often suffered from missing breakers in my games, and that’s a problem I never had.

5 Likes
717

With the 5fth datapack now available I feel it’s a good time to revisite the Double CyCy version of the Voicepad deck, with the inclusion of shaper Dog Breaker instead of Snowball / Corroder / Inti.

Blitz Running PPvP Kate

Kate “Mac” McCaffrey: Digital Tinker (Core Set)

Event (24)

Hardware (9)

Resource (2)

Icebreaker (7)

Program (3)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to All That Remains

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

What can be adjusted:

  • ProCon instead of Diesel/QT, who free 2 deck slot for probably 2 Daily Cast. Doable but make the deck way slower, which isn’t great against NEH.
  • Ninja instead of the third legwork. Good against Grim/Archer, dead card in every other matchup.
  • Maybe 2 sucker instead of the third legwork ? But then, i’ve to cut one card, probably the second SoT.
2 Likes
718

Arguably Grim and Archer get dealt with by reoccured sharpshooters.

719

What do you think about a 1-of atman in here? Set on 4, it deals with a lot of problems, but maybe Lady and cyber-cypher deal with those same problems? This deck certainly gets its rig up fast and cheap, but it looks like it might have a lot of trouble with blue sun.