It has me excited enough to try it. I just am having trouble finding slots and putting something together.
Here is my first pass. I don’t know exactly how to feel about it or how to improve it.
Stimhack should probably be Employee Strike.
Sec Nexus Smoke
Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net
Event (10)
3x Cold Read
3x Diesel
1x Stimhack ●
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (10)
2x Clone Chip ★★
1x Plascrete Carapace
2x R&D Interface
3x Rabbit Hole
2x Security Nexus ●●●●● ●
Resource (7)
2x Net Mercur
3x Personal Workshop
2x Temüjin Contract ●●●●
Icebreaker (3)
1x Blackstone
1x Dagger
1x Refractor
Program (10)
2x Cloak
1x Clot ●●
3x Magnum Opus
1x Misdirection
3x Self-modifying Code
13 influence spent (max 15-2★=13, available 0)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law
Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.
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I think this is a fascinating approach to a stealth Shaper deck. That’s the fun of theorycrafting, right?
A few thoughts:
I think you’re going to run into memory problems with this setup. With MOpus, Clot, Misdirection, and Cloak, but with an icebreaker suite that requires 3 MU, you don’t have much room for your support.
As far as economy goes, especially since you’re going all-in on developing link and Nexus without Kate’s discount, do you think there might be room for Power Tap here? Might provide more drip economy throughout the game, especially if you pair with Citadel Sanctuary instead of Plascrete.
I don’t know, the more I think about it, I wonder if this just isn’t as effective as Stimhack. There’s a big difference between 9 free credits vs. 4 free credits. Works great for pumping the stealth breakers efficiently, but otherwise it’s just 5 fewer credits. No influence cost or brain damage, so there’s that, but not sure how impactful it might be – at least as far as a link Nexus deck goes.
MU is almost certainly going to be a problem. I probably need to drop the decoder for ZU, just so I have the MU for my utility programs.
Ideally, you get a drip like power tap from both net mercur (which you can use to pay for the trace) and personal workshop. Its not as strong, but it is something.
Citadel is probably worth the slot over Plascrete.
I agree that Stimhack is probably just better. Right now I am just seeing if a mix of the two is viable. It probably isn’t, but it might be worth it.
Had the same thought about Zu.13 that you did, but then felt super bummed because Refractor is easily the most efficient of all the breakers in your rig, and also much more so than Zu. 
Here is my current experimental build.
Fists of Fury, Breath of Smoke, Heart of fire.
Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net (Intervention)
Event (12)
1x “Freedom Through Equality” (Democracy and Dogma)
3x Diesel (Core Set)
2x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
1x Indexing (Future Proof)
2x Modded (Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
Hardware (6)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
2x R&D Interface (Future Proof)
2x The Gauntlet i[/i] [color=#4169E1]●●[/color]
Resource (11)
1x Beth Kilrain-Chang (Blood Money)
2x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Ghost Runner (The Spaces Between)
1x Hunting Grounds (Data and Destiny) [color=undefined]●[/color]
2x Net Mercur i[/i]
1x Patron (Salsette Island)
3x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money) [color=#4169E1]●●●●● ●[/color]
Icebreaker (3)
1x Corroder (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
1x Dagger (Creation and Control)
1x Houdini i[/i]
Program (8)
2x Cloak (Creation and Control)
1x Clot (The Valley) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
1x Misdirection (Martial Law)
1x Paricia (Creation and Control)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
13 influence spent (max 15, available 2)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
The two daily casts will likely become cold reads. The patron may become a personal workshop.
Actually I may cut modded to get me 2 personal workshop and 3 cold reads
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What is your strategy going to be with Cold Read?
use it to get gauntlet down for nothing as well as my breakers since everyone knows what breakers i am running. us it the same way I make mercur runs now. Facecheck an ETR.
I want to do a bigger rig since having access to paricia and misdirection gives me more viability against multiple matchups.
I like the ideas here. I think 2x PW and 3x Cold Read is a neat idea. You also might be able to swap out Dirty Laundry for Cold Read. They serve a similar function in terms of economy; Dirty Laundry pairs a little better with Temujin in many cases, but you can use it to pull off things on PW while you also do a Temujin run.
Another possible smoke deck. My premise is to make the cmt matchup from hopeless to, at least, decent.
So, here we go:
1 Paricia
1 Cloak
3 Sure Gamble
2 Salsette Slums
1 Clot
1 Blackstone
3 Temüjin Contract
1 Dagger
2 Net Mercur
1 Inti
2 Film Critic
1 Houdini
2 Astrolabe
1 Employee Strike
3 Self-modifying Code
3 Diesel
2 Clone Chip
3 Cold Read
2 R&D Interface
2 New Angeles City Hall
3 Daily Casts
Cutting nach and fc can help a lot but they are too useful overall. Inti and Blackstone are the price to pay for the inclusion of 2 slums, but blackstone is only a liability vs hb, which any smoke deck can reliably beat.
Anyway, the main point is to have at least SOME anti ctm hate on the table asap. So slums and estrike, possibly, but cold read is also a possible hate-card (2 credits to trash the sensie and 2 for the trace). Besides that, cold read has been proven useful as a mini stimhack when I need to install something from smc. I am not sure if cutting 2 daily casts for personal workshop will be a good idea or not, considering that I do not have a lot of installable hardwares and programs
How do we feel about packing Opus? Cold reading with SMC into opus costs only 3 creds. I suppose that does jam you pretty hard away from Astrolabe…
I am curious if it is worth slots in a deck that runs The Gauntlet or Mirror.
The last iteration of my Smoke deck in the attempt to have a good matchup vs ctm and asset-heavy decks.
1 Net-Ready Eyes
2 Net Mercur
2 Cloak
3 Sure Gamble
1 Clot
1 Blackstone
3 Temüjin Contract
1 Dagger
1 Paricia
1 Houdini
2 Astrolabe
2 Dirty Laundry
2 Lucky Find
3 Self-modifying Code
2 Citadel Sanctuary
3 Diesel
3 Clone Chip
3 Cold Read
2 R&D Interface
3 Daily Casts
Hate cards are mainly paricia, cold read and especially sanctuary which, even at 0 link, is very, very useful. Lucky Find provides extra money in case you got hit by CA. Generally the deck seems very rich.
I played a couple times against ctm on jinteki and the deck performed definitely better than other, older decks I tried
This is very similar to my deck except for a few cards. I’m tempted to try Paricia, just wasn’t sure about memory since I’m going to be testing Misdirection now. I also run “Freedom Through Equality” and Maker’s Eye for more impactful runs, but I can see R&DI being a great alternative.
Any thoughts on Houdini vs. Refractor? Especially for charging Net Mercur on turns where you have extra recurring stealth credits lying around?
How important has Clot been? I have been neglecting it recently, but wasn’t sure if that’s a bad idea.
Paricia is nice, but I can see memory issues if you play misdirection. Speaking of the latter, my limited experience with it has been a little bit underwhelming. Clearing 4 tags for 4 c and 2 clicks is nice, but when i tried I didn’t have enough burst economy to recover quickly from HHN or Midseasons. I might try it now with this deck but that would be the 42nd slot and I have no idea what to cut. Maybe a single daily casts…
RDI vs maker’s eye is just personal taste, RDI gives me more of a rd lock than maker’s, and I don’t play any recursion.
Clot is always super useful against hb, BS and yellow decks, even without installing it, the threat of it is sufficient to slow the corp down.
Lastly, refractor vs houdini…I haven’t played refractor in a while but it seems to be the better card between the two.
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So how has the quest for a Smoke build that can fight asset spam gone? My attempts have been pretty awful. I think I am going to try your build Jamesgrety.
To be honest, it’s going well. It’s o not quite like whizzard with slums, but I’ve fond that Matchups against IG54 and gagarin are more winnable than I thought. I’ve aso updated the list:
2 Cloak
3 Sure Gamble
2 Deuces Wild
1 Net-Ready Eyes
1 Clot
1 Blackstone
3 Temüjin Contract
2 Net Mercur
1 Film Critic
1 Paricia
1 Houdini
1 Switchblade
2 Astrolabe
1 Dirty Laundry
3 Self-modifying Code
2 Citadel Sanctuary
3 Diesel
2 Clone Chip
1 Stimhack
2 Cold Read
2 R&D Interface
1 Patron
3 Daily Casts
I’ve cut Lucky Find for more draw power, as diesel and astrolabe weren’t enough. Patron and Deuces Wild provide extra draw, and the latter sinergizes well with Temujin ( gain 3 and make a run) and helps vs sync and ctm when you haven’t found Citadel Sanctuary yet.
I’ve added stimhack, which is always super good vs defended sansans or bankers/sensies + MVT. It’s different from cold read, which you want to use it either to trash a naked asset, to get an smc discount or to get an agenda in a 3-ice deep remote and you need a lot of stealth credits.
Swtichblade over Dagger and Blackstone over Corroder in the icebreaker department. Swticbhlade helps immensely vs gagarin, as breaking tour guide for free is a huge deal. Blackstone over corroder is mostly a matter of influence, but I think Blackstone works better vs blue sun stacking barriers. Eli is a little bit annoying, but net-ready eyes helps a lot.
Right now I am at 41 cards and no idea what to cut, maybe a single daily casts. Playing on competittive Jnet I’ve found that the deck has a suprisingly good amount of winnable matchups, the worst being gagarin. It’s definitely good vs ctm, just for citadel sanctuary alone, deals with glacier decks very well unless they play foxfire and it performs well vs SYNC and russian NEH. The Boom Sun matchup is really interesting, because stimhack and cold read can stop OAI combos and film critic shuts off the midseason plan.
Net damage decks and especially PU are problematic, just because of the small decksize. Indexing could help but I think rdi works better in most matchups.
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My baba yaga deck’s been doing alright. The rig takes fewer slots than pure stealth, so you can really jam the econ. I’m also back on Pro-Co.