Smoke and Mirrors -- A Scovak Thread

Decklists
203

I could use some help from some other Smoke players on ways to improve my list.

I really love Smoke and Shaper stealth in general. However, I’m struggling lately with this list, as I think it’s generally solid but I often find myself feeling spread so thin against a variety of decks.

Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net

Event (16)
1x "Freedom Through Equality"
3x Cold Read
3x Diesel
3x Lucky Find ●●●●● ●
3x Sure Gamble
3x The Maker’s Eye

Hardware (6)
2x Astrolabe
2x Clone Chip ★★
1x Net-Ready Eyes
1x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (8)
1x Film Critic
1x Hunting Grounds ●
3x Net Mercur
3x Temüjin Contract ●●●●● ●

Icebreaker (3)
1x Blackstone
1x Dagger
1x Refractor

Program (7)
3x Cloak
1x Misdirection
3x Self-modifying Code

13 influence spent (max 15-2★=13, available 0)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law

Some specific thoughts and questions…

Cold Read: I love it in theory but have found it lacking in practice. Meant to be used for trashing assets, finding breakers with SMC, or a Hail Mary run late game. Feels too limiting. Used to be Dirty Laundry, thinking of switching back.

Lucky Find: I wanted more burst economy to support Temujin, but not sure this card is my most efficient use of influence.

Maker’s Eye: Might swap out 1 for R&DI. Better with Indexing but not sure what to drop for it?

Hunting Grounds: Meant primarily for Data Raven and Tollbooth; also helps against Komainu, Thoth, Pop-Up Window, and Turnpike.

Breakers: Really digging this suite. With NRE, Blackstone is actually really sweet and I like that he keeps his strength for the run. Dagger has been doing fine for me, especially with NRE.

Misdirection: Great for the HHN plan or clearing tags on my turn, such as by taking multiple tags by running and then clearing. Works great on Midseasons when they don’t immediately follow up with Scorched or BOOM!, but no proactive tag prevention.

I played a few games against an Argus BOOM! deck last night and just couldn’t keep tags off, because as soon as I cleared some with Misdirection from Midseasons he just used HHN. Couldn’t find Film Critic reliably but it helped when I could.

I just don’t know how to make Weyland and NBN better matchups. I like a lot of these cards and combos, and maybe I’m just struggling because I’m rusty and haven’t gotten many games under my belt across deck archetypes in the past few weeks, but I’m not sure how else to improve this list. Any ideas?

204

The first thing I see is the Clone Chip.

Is it there in case stuff gets trashed…?
What about Sacrifical Construct?
Or is it there to get extra value from SMCs? That’s generally an ineffienct (but effective) use of it.

I feel the Lucky Find could turn into Dirty Laundry, and one TME into an Indexing… My problem is figuring out something you can use that six influence on. NRE feels a little loose with having a bunch of cards that you tend to need, so you can’t just be taking random damage all the time… But if it’s working for you then that should be fine.

205

Clone Chip is meant to be used for increasing setup time for SMCs, and emergency breaker recursion if I faceplant into a program trash subroutine or they pull off Batty to do so. I don’t use it very often, but I feel very cautious about having no program recursion in my deck. SacCon could probably help with the protection part, but having repeated use of SMC is particularly helpful now that I’m packing Misdirection.

If I really needed to, I’ll use the Plascrete to absorb the NRE damage on install. But otherwise I try to wait for when I have dead cards in my hand, like an extra Astrolabe or Net Mercur. I’m actually more concerned about NRE getting targeted by Best Defense when I’m at 0 tags, and I don’t have a way to get it back currently. I suppose SacCon would help protect NRE if needed, so that’s something.

I similarly am not sure what else to spend influence on, probably because I’m not sure what else I could fit that would be worthwhile. If I add Daily Casts instead of Lucky Find, maybe I can make room for Career Fair, which also works well with Net Mercur and Temujin? But then I still have 3 influence left (or more if I drop Clone Chip).

206

Parasite, no question.

1 Like
207

Agreed. If you’re committing to Dagger over Switchblade and Blackstone over Paperclip, multisub ICE will be problematic; Parasite handily deals with those, albeit at a temporary MU crunch. I do like NRE a lot with stealth, but Best Defense is everywhere.

With your current resource loadout, I don’t think you need Career Fair. Using the influence for Clot give you more utility for the Clone Chips as well as a FA counter. The spare deck slot could be used for a Levy.

For multiaccess, if you’re running Freedom and Maker’s, you absolutely need at least two Indexing. That also puts more value on the Levy. You could also forego Parasite for a Medium and two copies of The Powerglove/Gauntlet, but that line may warrant adding a couple Modded’s and may be a bit slow.

1 Like
208

Has anyone tried the atman sucker shell in Smoke? You can reliably run Houdini or refractor over Cyber-Cypher.

And you can always use that stealth credit on Atman?

Or is Atman-Sucker just straight up better out of Kate?

209

The Sorceress Supreme

Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net (Intervention)

Event (11)
1x “Freedom Through Equality” (Democracy and Dogma)
2x Cold Read (Martial Law)
3x Diesel (Core Set)
2x Indexing (Future Proof)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (5)
2x Astrolabe (Up and Over)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
1x R&D Interface (Future Proof)

Resource (15)
1x Beth Kilrain-Chang (Blood Money)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Film Critic (Old Hollywood)
2x Ghost Runner (The Spaces Between)
1x Hunting Grounds (Data and Destiny) [color=undefined]●[/color]
2x Net Mercur i[/i]
2x New Angeles City Hall (Future Proof)
3x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money) [color=#4169E1]●●●●● ●[/color]

Icebreaker (3)
1x Corroder (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
1x Refractor (First Contact)
1x Switchblade (Up and Over) [color=#4169E1]●●[/color]

Program (6)
2x Cloak (Creation and Control)
1x Clot (The Valley) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
13 influence spent (max 15, available 2)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law

This is what I am running right now. How can I tune it up? Does it need Paricia?

2 Likes
210

I don’t think it needs paricia, cold read and ghost runner + net mercur are enough imho. Other than that it’s almost card-by-card the list I am currently usign, except that my last pip of influence went to e-strike rather than hunting grounds, because it helps so much vs ctm and PU, and I run 3 indexing,1 sot and 1 levy just to cycle back the goodies

211

How is your economy holding up? My Smoke list is pretty similar, and I was finding that I was having a hard time with economy. I recently found space for 3x Career Fair, and it helped immensely – lots of ideal targets (Net Mercur, Daily Casts, Temujin) and quite a few 2-credit resources as well.

I personally dropped Clot a while back and haven’t had many problems, but that’s a personal preference. I also stopped using Ghost Runner and focused on Cloaks, because it’s more reliable with all of the anti-resource and tagging tech out there lately.

I personally have had no qualms with Dagger. Works pretty smoothly for me.

212

whats your console

213

This is what I’ve been messing with and I like it a lot. A lot.

Smoke Stealth

Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net (Intervention)

Event (14)
3x Diesel (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control)
2x Lucky Find (Double Time) ●●●●
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set)

Hardware (5)
1x Akamatsu Mem Chip (Core Set)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) ★★
1x R&D Interface (Future Proof)
1x The Gauntlet i[/i] ●

Resource (11)
1x Film Critic (Old Hollywood)
2x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)
3x Net Mercur i[/i]
1x New Angeles City Hall (Future Proof)
1x Salsette Slums (Salsette Island) ●●
1x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
2x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money) ●●●●

Icebreaker (3)
1x Blackstone i[/i]
1x Refractor (First Contact)
1x Switchblade (Up and Over) ●●

Program (7)
3x Cloak (Creation and Control)
1x Misdirection (Martial Law)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)

13 influence spent (max 15-2★=13, available 0)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

Salsette Slums feels very, very good in the current FiHP meta.

Current consideration is to swap 2 Lucky Find with Modded, put in a Corroder for Blackstone and Aaron Marron for NACH with the influence, remove a Maker’s Eye and put in another R&D Interface. Misdirection could easily be a Net Shield, or any other card as a tech slot.

Edit: Oh, also, the remaining Maker’s Eye could become an Indexing if the above happens.

214

So blackstone saves influence but looks terrible based on the meta.

215

Blackstone feels terrible every time I have to use it. Played an HB today and just clicked through their Eli for the majority of the game until near the end. Huge motivator for getting the influence from Lucky Find for Corroder. Hoping Modded will make up for a decent chunk of that missing econ. Paperclip would be even better but Gauntlet has won me so many games and that’s the only other place I can think of to get that influence if I also include Aaron Marron, who seems too amazing not to have right now.

216

You can use the recurring credit to pump up Darwin at the beginning of your turn. Darwin, David & e3 is all she needs!

217

I run 2x Astrolabe. I think the draw is too important in the current meta, and it really helps me keep up with a rush deck when they play a lot of assets. At the very worst, it’s 1 credit for 1 MU.

As for Blackstone, I’ve been running it for a while and I actually think it’s just fine – if you run Net-Ready Eyes or some other way to boost strength. If you can get it to Str 4 reliably, it’s actually quite cost effective, and much more so if they ever stack multiple barriers on a server (which I guess comes up less frequently these days).

Blackstone + NRE = 2 credits for Eli, 7 credits for Data Ward (ugly but same as Paperclip), and fairly solid against other barriers out there if you’re looking to save influence.

1 Like
218

I love the build Code! I am going to be trying something similar with Blackat and Sifr. Blackat does a ton of work if you can invalidate ice strength.

219

I think you mean Darwin, SIFR, and E3…

220

I think you mean Sifr and Atm0n.

1 Like
221

Sifr + Stealth is good too. Lets you save a stealth cred on Refractor, Switchblade or your Barrier breaker.

The switchblade synergy is particularly potent.

2 Likes
222

Poking the thread. I have been testing and it seems fine, but I often wonder if Stealth is already basically invalidating the strength of most ice and I am not wasting my time with Smoke in this direction.

I do love Sifr + breakers. That one cred for three subroutines is next level. But it comes at the opportunity cost of astrolabe.