I agree. There is no need to use Sifr in smoke if you stick to the regular (Corroder, Switchblade and Houdini/Refractor) stealth rig. Astrolate is also too good to be cut for Sifr. Cutting astrolabe will force you to add some extra-draw in the deck or to use Mercur as a draw option, which is far from ideal imho.
Can I get some feedback about ideas for tweaking my Smoke stealth deck?
Smoke Stealth
Event (13)
1x "Freedom Through Equality"
3x Career Fair ●●●
3x Diesel
2x Indexing
3x Sure Gamble
1x R&D Interface
Hardware (6)
2x Astrolabe
2x Clone Chip ★★
1x Net-Ready Eyes
1x Plascrete Carapace
Resource (11)
3x Daily Casts
1x Film Critic
1x Hunting Grounds ●
3x Net Mercur
3x Temüjin Contract ●●●●● ●
Icebreaker (3)
1x Dagger
1x Paperclip ●●●
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
There are a few cards I’ve been toying around with trying in here, but don’t know how I feel about them: Patron, Salsette Slums, Peace In Our Time, The Gauntlet, Multithreader, and Aaron Marron.
I think I’d really like to try The Gauntlet, and I can drop Paperclip and go back to Blackstone to make room – I like the breaker, and it works adequately with NRE. If I drop Hunting Grounds (which has not been widely used in my deck anyway), I can fit in Aaron Marron, which helps against Breaking News, extra tag prevention (good against NBN and Weyland broadly), and offers accelerated card draw even if they don’t have any tag punishment.
Do people think 1x Aaron Marron is a good splash in here? Anyone else been running Gauntlet, and how is it treating you? I really like the idea of stacking Gauntlet + R&DI with FTE and Indexing. Really helps accelerate my stealing plan. I’m just not sure if the lost draw from Astrolabe will be too much of a hindrance.
I’m not sure you can convince me to run Dagger over Switchblade with Smoke + Mercur. Not sure the 2xCC are worth inf with no Clot and a self recurring breaker. NRE seems unnecessary.
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In my opinion you are wasting 3 influence on career fair. It helps speed up your set up, but those 3 can be clot + e strike, for instance. Also, the deck seems low on cash, if the corp shuts down temujin - which will happen - your main source of income is daily casts and sure gamble. I would put dirty laundry and cold read if I were you, as well as a single copy of beth.
Lastly, since you play Film Critic you might as well play NACH just to improve the CTM matchup.
PS: Aaroon Marron imho is not worth it, since it’s not tutorable
Those are fair points, but I think it comes down to personal preference. I haven’t tested Switchblade yet, but I know I have had no real issues with Dagger. If I drop Paperclip for Blackstone, NRE definitely becomes more relevant (saves a lot more money against ice, especially versus Eli and 8-strength barriers) and so do CC. I try to set up very quickly, so I can use CC for SMC recursion, which especially helps if I need to use a SMC to find Misdirection as anti-HHN tech.
I have run decks without CC before, but I really hate running decks without any program recursion. A single damage to snipe a program from my hand, or any single program trash effect, and I could be locked out of a server for the rest of the game. I’ve been burned by that before and it feels bad.
These are really good points, too. I do think that my deck is meant to be more aggressive and rush, and if I can set up a soft R&D lock and have Gauntlet out, plus threaten a remote, then Clot is kind of a moot point. I haven’t been missing Clot lately. E-strike might be handy, I hadn’t considered that recently.
I tried Dirty Laundry for a while, seemed fairly good but wasn’t as efficient as I’d like it to be. I tried Cold Read and really didn’t like it, just seemed not to flow in this deck. I also tried Beth and found that the corp generally sat at 5-9 credits when I played, and it wasn’t as impactful when I found it later in the game.
The Career Fair really does help with econ overall, there are plenty of 3-credit resource targets during a game (Temujin, Net Mercur, Daily Casts). However, I might try swapping them out for 2x Peace in Our Time and 1x E-Strike, and see if that helps more with my money issues.
Thanks for the tips. If anyone has any thoughts on The Gauntlet or could give some feedback on how it runs, that’d be helpful, too.
Agree that Switchblade just feels tremendously better in Smoke than Dagger, but I would add a single Atman.
Right now you have no answer to Mythic stuff like Mother Goddess, plus Atman can help you get through those awkward spots when they’ve managed to keep you off Stealth credits early. It won me a game yesterday, because Atman-3 allowed me to get through Architect+Ichi on R&D without spending 4 stealth each time to Switchblade. Also if you’re keeping the Net Ready Eyes, you can Atman-3 and make him 4 when needed, which will cover a big range of important things.
You probably don’t need all 3 Cloaks, but I understand if you don’t believe me.
I was on Blackstone for a while, and it’s serviceable if you really need the influence, but what I found was Smoke really, really wants all her breakers to have “1c pump strength” on them, so early game you can do nonsense like “run Archives, use Smoke recurring to pump just to put one on Mercur”. If you have the “2c with at least one stealth” pumps, you’ll have to pay a real credit every time you do that. That’s also the reason I went back to Refractor from Houdini.
Once you’re set up with 5c on Mercur and 10c from your Temujins and Casts, you might prefer the Houdini or Blackstone, but early game you’ll really with you had the “1c to pump”
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Can you elaborate on why you didn’t like Cold Read? I was a little skeptical at first, but playing with it now it’s a favorite. Early game it’s beautiful for “make a run on a naked remote I wanted to check, fire SMC free and install a breaker for discount of 2, plus put a credit on Mercur and I don’t have to trash anything.” Against asset spam it’s great for “4 free trashing credits and a Mercur”, and late game it’s great for that glory run they didn’t think you could make (I closed out a game yesterday with it)
Also if your Beth is making them sit at 5-9 credits all game, that’s amazing. You’re keeping the Corp low and getting an Underworld Contact that you didn’t have to run link for.
I don’t mean to drag your personal choice deck back to “these are all the good cards everyone plays, just play these good cards”, but I wonder if you’re missing some of the advantages to these two. Beth and Cold Read are some of my favorite cards in the deck…
2 Likes
Yeah, my friend runs Excalibur in his deck and it has been pretty annoying to deal with. I think Atman is a neat idea I hadn’t considered.
I absolutely don’t need all 3 installed, pretty much only ever have 1-2. Currently I’ve been running 2x Astrolabe, so my final rig vs. NBN and Weyland has been my 3 breakers, 1 Cloak, 1 Misdirection and I’ve never wanted for stealth credits. But would you recommend cutting 1 from the deck, or does that hurt consistency with finding it?
I agree about the ability to use 1c to pump Net Mercur. But you can do that with Dagger (or Switchblade) and Refractor, so if I have Blackstone instead of Paperclip it’s kind of a moot point, right?
This might have been due to the fact that I only got to test it across 5-ish games, and it could’ve been influenced by the particular decks I placed and when I drew the cards…but every time I had it, I didn’t have a good opportunity to use it. I had 3x and just played against people who iced every server, so there was never an opportunity to use it. I used it a naked remote and twice lost the card because it was a Jackson that they fired.
Maybe I just need to test it more, but I found that it was more circumstantial than Dirty Laundry and I ended up dropping it for Daily Casts. My struggle before adding Daily Casts was that with 3x Temujin and 3x Sure Gamble, I already had plenty of burst econ, but no good drip econ other than Net Mercur.
If I wanted to add Cold Read, I’m not sure what I would drop. 3x Career Fair and then put Paperclip back in? I suppose Paperclip is better with Cold Read – that way if I absolutely need to, I could trash Paperclip instead of being forced to trash another program.
Yeah, I know it’s generally solid. But at 1x, it’s going to show up in the mid- or late-game a fair amount of the time. At that point, clicking and paying 2 to install to reap 3-5 credits before the game ends is pretty underwhelming. If I were to run Beth, I would probably put 2x in and really try to install her as soon as possible to reap more credits/draw over the course of the game.
I guess I’m just running into issues with the deck slots and influence to fit all of the cards that everyone else is suggesting. I know part of my issue is probably either my runner style or lack of skill, but I have consistently struggled to play Clot, E-Strike, and Beth in this deck in a way that makes as big an impact as everyone else says they should have.
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Yeah, I run 2 in the deck. I actually won a small tournament yesterday with 1 in the whole deck, but I’m putting the second one back. You can see up above in CodeMarvelous’ decks he runs 2x and I think that’s right. The only time I’d ever install the second one is if I wanted to feed it to a Cold Read or if they had a real nightmare server with 3x Sentries you can’t let fire and Atman isn’t helping.
It’s mostly an issue in the early game, when you’re looking to get Net Mercur started, so it’s a question of how consistent you want to be about it. If you have Blackstone and Mercur in your opening and it takes a while to find your other breakers or SMCs, it might feel bad. But you’re on 2-of-3 with the 1-pump, I was on 1-of-3 and found it hurt. You might be fine with just Refractor and Dagger/Switchblade.
Those are probably going to be your best matchups, the glaciery decks that hope to win through ICE. Asset spam will be your harder matchups, and the Cold Reads will help there. But even in the glaciery stuff, you can still Cold Read into a barrier and use it to SMC out a breaker for free then bounce off the server. “Click for 4 plus gain a Mercur credit” is better than a Sure Gamble.
As for what to drop, yeah my two cents would be drop 2x Career Fair for 2x Cold Read and switch Dagger to Switchblade. And if you drop a Cloak like mentioned above, that’s another slot. The 40-card deck definitely makes it feel harder to find the slots, but it also makes a bunch of your 2-ofs feel more like 3-ofs. 2 Cloak is not the end of the world, 2 Cold Read is enough, 2 Indexing, etc.
My philosophy has been to make it “good enough” against glacier (which I expect to see less of these days, and Smoke is going to wreck anyway) and focus instead on shoring up the matchups against Fast Advance and Asset Spam. I’m personally on Corroder and Clot rather than Paperclip and Career Fair, and I’ve got the Cold Reads and NACH to help a bit against asset spam and tagstorm. Your Meta May Vary though, and I’m not trying to just turn your deck into my deck…
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Maybe this is anathema, but has anyone tried Paintbrush in Smoke?
It seems pretty good with a few breakers… Here is what I am trying this weekend.
Paintbrushing
Ele “Smoke” Scovak: Cynosure of the Net
Event (10)
3x Diesel
1x Notoriety
3x Peace in Our Time ●●●
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (7)
2x Clone Chip ★★
2x Mirror
2x R&D Interface
1x Plascrete Carapace
Resource (13)
2x Beth Kilrain-Chang
3x Daily Casts
3x Net Mercur
1x Ghost Runner
2x Patron
3x Temüjin Contract ●●●●● ●
Icebreaker (4)
2x Cerberus “Lady” H1 ★★
1x Dagger
1x Houdini
Program (5)
1x Cloak
1x Clot ●●
1x Paintbrush
2x Self-modifying Code
11 influence spent (max 15-4★=11, available 0)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law
I might be starved for stealth with only two per turn, but the ability to paintbrush and run a stacked server with some combination of Lady, Dagger/Switchblade and Houdini sounds appealing.
Trade around a few cards and you could probably trade your Dagger in for Switchblade and have two breakers that can get through ice very cheaply.
Edit I completely forgot about Cold Read… Cold Read and Lady sounds good too!
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How has Peace In Our Time been working for you? I am reluctant to include it because of the drawbacks and restrictions.
So far it solves one of the fundamental problems of Stealth which is bursting up to past hard hitting range.
It also will enable you to gain the extra click from Beth slightly more often.
If the meta was more glacier, it would probably be problematic. As it is not, you get a lot of utility out of the paintbrush ‘click’ that Beth gives you.
I haven’t tried Paintbrush, but I have tried Tinkering.
It’s pretty good if you have Switchblade and Indexing, but I think the effect is pretty bad with your breakers? The Tinkering / Paintbrush effect is best if it lets you break something repeatedly with Yog or Switchblade, IMO (and Indexing is the only in-faction effect where it’s good to break ice repeatedly in one turn). It’s still OK as a trick to let you contest a remote, but I’d prefer to build to maximize its effect if I’m putting it in a deck.
One caveat you may have missed regarding Paintbrush/Tinkering is Tinkering is until the end of the turn, while Paintbrush only lasts until the end of the next run that turn. This may explain my breaker suite just a little more.
The breaker suite was selected because I want a combination of effects to accomplish two goals
1.) Facechecking nasty sentries/code gates - Both Dagger/Switch and Houdini do this very well and for few real credits.
2.) Allow me to make one or two larger, sustained runs per turn (usual shaper modus operandi). Lady pulls double duty as a discount breaker, switch/dagger let me break something super taxing on the cheap and anything that isn’t too taxing becomes more economical as houdini lets you break multiple code gates in a row on the cheap.
Add to that, that you will likely want to make one big run on R&D anyway per turn and you have probably just made back the stealth you need to get into HQ thanks to mirror.
IMHO the click tax of using Paintbrush is alleviated through Beth and the continued ability to click for a credit savings on pumping or breaking ice. If I click a piece of ice into something and I save more than two credits on pumping or breaking, then it seems worthwhile.
With your breakers the way they are, your typical Paintbrush value is probably, like, between 2 and 3 credits.
You might as well just play Kati Jones. Similar efficiency, and now you don’t need MU so you can just play Astrolabe.
Pity. I agree the suite probably needs some tweaking, but I anticipate slightly better savings than merely 2 or 3.
I guess I could do Morningstar, Refractor, Dagger and probably get pretty great returns. Even with my ID stealth cred, its a bit of a smasher with paintbrush and net mercur.
Playtested it today. It wasn’t worth it after all.
Turns out you basically should run Astrolabe in Shaper right now or you are doing it wrong.
Which is too bad, because before CtM and Museum decks, if you had told me shaper was getting a 3 cost console with 2 mu that put stealth creds back on R&D runs I would have immediately have thought Desperado.
Maybe there is a medium deck in there somewhere. But I don’t know if you can make up for the draw easily enough.
Killer Queen - Dynamite with a Laser Beam
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 (6)
2x Astrolabe (Up and Over)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]★★[/color]
2x R&D Interface (Future Proof)
Resource (16)
1x Beth Kilrain-Chang (Blood Money)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Film Critic (Old Hollywood)
1x Ghost Runner (The Spaces Between)
3x Net Mercur i[/i]
1x Salsette Slums (Salsette Island) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
2x Scrubber (A Study in Static) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
3x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money) [color=#4169E1]●●●●● ●[/color]
1x The Turning Wheel (The Liberated Mind) [color=#708090]●[/color]
Icebreaker (3)
1x Corroder (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
1x Dagger (Creation and Control)
1x Refractor (First Contact)
Program (5)
2x Cloak (Creation and Control)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
13 influence spent (max 15-2★=13, available 0)
41 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
2 Likes
This is what I am thinking of running for tonight’s stream.
Is it guaranteed to blow my mind?
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