Kit: Painting A Morning Star

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Shaper - Painting A Morning Star

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

Event (15)

Hardware (11)

Resource (6)

Icebreaker (8)

Program (5)

10 influence spent (max 10)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Double Time

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

—The Concept—

Pressure like a Criminal should early, rig up like a Shaper can late game.

It is my belief that the whole point of Kit’s ability is to encourage you to pressure early like a Criminal does, and build your rig along the way (as opposed to the Shaper have everything up nicely first) to deal with problems the Corp throw up.

The result is “Painting a Morning Star”, a deck centered on quick draws, ice negation, and a fast economy.

—Quick Draw—

Diesel and Quality Time are the nuts and bolts of the deck, for they essentially enhance your speed and synergize with Kit’s ability. Kit wants to take advantage of the window of easy breaking her ability allows as much as she can. As the game goes on, her ability becomes less and less useful. There are many ways a Corp will inevitably get around your “free inside job” every turn, so you better make sure you have other tricks up your sleeves when that comes, and that leads us to…

—Ice Negation—

Like a proper Criminal, facecheck ice like nobody’s business early. Only plonk down your breakers when there’s no other way. Even when you have your first breaker out soon enough, still facecheck. Criminals can do this because of Faerie. You can do this with your arguably more expensive but flexible Shaper equivalence of Sharpshooter, Deus Ex, SMC and Clone Chip.

Why facecheck? Pressure, and you want them to rez stuff. That’s when Morning Star hits the table (via SMC, or better Modded out ) to join your Torch in negating a huge chunk of the Corp’s ice. Forcing them to rez their sentries early goes along with your later installed Paintbrush.

Treat Paintbrush as a troubleshooter, and not as something that is central to your breaker suite. The thing about Paintbrush is that it is very unwieldy clickwise in the context of you only having 4 clicks per turn (which is the problem with so many Kit decks out there wishing to use only Decoder + Paintbrush). Morningstar synergizes with Paintbrush in the sense that it extends the time you have to go without needing a Paintbrush. And when you finally do need both, you can break stuff like Ichis for 1 cred and a click. The delay and roundabout synergy is important because it allows you more runtime before you have to slow down and bring out the Paintbrush.

The single Atman is for emergencies, especially when you meet bloody Chimeras. Smart Chimera placement by the Corp can really mess with a Paintbrushing Kit. Otherwise, treat Atman as a flexible last resort Femme if the boardstate is right, but more often than not consider your other options first since breaking Atman out too early will kill your economy.

—Fast Economy—

Your economy is meant to synergize with your quick drawing capability. That’s why you have Modded and Daily Casts. I cannot overstate the importance of the burst from Lucky Find, and they are completely worth the price of 6 influence points. Kati is for long term credit generation.

—Tips & Thoughts—

• Looking for an opening with either Sure Gamble or Lucky Find is often a good option.

• The main “puzzle” for this deck is click management within the constraints of the 4 you only get per turn. That’s the main issue with so many Kit decks out there that try to only get by with a Decoder and a Paintbrush with AI for support. It is my belief that you simply need 2 different types of breakers to keep pace with the corp. Code Gate + Barrier was the way to go for me, since you have so many anti-sentry facecheck options in Shaper. All economy options in this deck are built with this “puzzle” in mind too. That’s why you don’t get Opus or Armitage.

• This deck hates Data Raven. It’s a time sink ice which compounds the problems of the “puzzle” mentioned above. You should only go tag-me if you are really sure the game is in the bag.

• FAO is terrible in Kit. Don’t bother.

• Even more so than usual, establishing RnD locks against Fast Advance decks is a priority. Killing that SanSan early, even if rezzed, can be a problem since you’re not running Magnum Opus.

• On that note, be smart about killing assets. You can’t afford to do it mindlessly as if you had MO.

• There is a distinct possibility that Morning Star will be your first breaker before Torch, as some players (mistakenly) ditch their Code Gates once they see you’re Kit and think you’re going Yogasauraus or something. This is good for you. Morning Star + Paintbrush can get you far too if the corp lets you get away with it.

• The hardest thing I have found while piloting this deck is the early game (first 10 turns or so), where you have to balance your aggression and drawing. This is especially true in the case of Rush/FA decks where it might become a race to set up Torch/MS against Biotic and/or Sansan nonsense. When practicing with this deck, focus on this part to hone your gameplay.

—Tweaks & Variants—

• A reasonable Resource distribution tweak can be 2 Dirty Laundry, 2 Daily Casts and 2 Kati. You get a little less consistency but more flexibility.

• Test Run + Scavenge + Femme

You can try a variant like what mediohxcore made, which was dropping a Lucky Find for a Femme and something else and cutting for Test Runs and Scavenges. The deck becomes drastically different with those changes, and you get pretty good answers to annoying Tollbooths and really big nonsense like Wotan and Janus. Paintbrush becomes even more redundant in that build too since you have a Sentry breaker. It’s a different more tricksy kind of playstyle you can look into if you are interested in that.

• Deus Ex, Sharpshooter and SMCs

Feel free to adjust the number of these programs as you see fit. Note SMC is also to grab your Morning Star in a pinch. You can replace with useful things like Infiltrate and Exploratory Romp instead. Running into an Agg Sec is the only trap that really hurts, but since your primary goal is RnD lock, Infiltrate should be less useful.

• Net Shield

a) Honor and Profit.
b) Caprice bloody Nisei encouraging all those Jinteki decks flying about.
c) You will draw through your deck very quickly, and with no Levy’s, a silly death by a thousand cuts is possible.
d) Of course, it’s more of an insurance card than anything else and you already have Deus Ex, so feel free to replace if you want an Exploratory Romp.

• Chakana

Chakana is not a bad choice, you can switch out a Net Shield for one of these fancy ring things. The timing to break it out is a bit hard to pin down though. Use at your own discretion.

• Escher

Do not really like it, though I do find myself wishing for it when I see stacked big bioroids or Tollbooth capping stacked sentries .The 3 cost is off-putting, but you can jam a one-of Escher in this deck somehow if you really want. 2 will be too many. My second choice after Exploratory Romp when considering what to swap Net Shield out for. Think of Escher as a time-buying card in the midgame.

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