Switchblade taxes stealth credits faster than dagger. One of the points of Smoke is that she will be able to slap down a SMC and be able to run any server and still be able to break whatever she sees. With switchblade you need another source of stealth installed to be able to do that, which slows down her ability.
I would use the influence for a parasite or two instead, since it is low-strength multi-subs that are the biggest problem.
Yeah, Switchblade taxes stealth credits faster, but Dagger taxes on the real money. I think it depends on the econ of the deck which should be used. Scovak makes Switchblade a lot more attractive, though, since she gets the first credit for free.
40 card deck.
Recurring stealth credit.
15 influence.
For some reason, my mind goes right to cutlery. Using Dai V and Tinkering, you can just cut up all the ice, recur it with all the stealth breakers that cost no influence, and use sac cons to prevent your stuff from being trashed on a facecheck, or losing your stealth credits breaking without cutlery involved. Or you can just use not Dai V and just keep the servers at a respectable height and use mirror to make multiple runs each turn and use notoriety. Cause I know people want to run it in this ID.
Both switchblade and Dagger should be viable for Smoke. It’s way too early to say that one of them is superior.
Mirror and notoriety actually has a wee bit of synergy, as you get a credit back after the r&d run to use on the hq run.
Uh huh, totally. Dagger might be better with mirror, but switchblade is probably better for hitting big servers. As long as you can find a silencer, I think. You’re right that it’s way too early to tell. Anyone do any testing?
But in Smoke it taxes the real money no harder than Mimic. Mimic is excellent. I’m confused as to how this does not make Dagger a good card in Smoke? With a good econ and efficient other breakers, money should be plentiful.
The problem with Switchblade is the extremely limited nature of Stealth credits, of which my posted version of Smoke has 18c of non-Smoke sources available. To get more, Cloaks or Silencers need to come in, and these take valuable slots and/or Influence.
Furthermore, there is the fact that there just aren’t a whole lot of playable Sentries that have a huge number of subroutines. What do we have? Archer, Komainu, Brainstorm, Tour Guide, Ichis, Vikram, Tsurugi, and maybe NEXT Gold? All of these cost 2c Stealth from Switchblade. Half of them don’t even require Stealth from Dagger, and most just 1c Stealth + 3-5c real.
No… I think Dagger should be played over Switchblade because there are no situations on which in pays more Stealth, in most cases it is only paying a handful of real cred to get through, it is hard to lock it out entirely by stacking Sentries, and there’s very little setup needed to make it work. Plus, it costs no Influence.
I think there’s going to be people expecting to run up against switchblade when they see Smoke regardless, and if they stack sentries, she’s going to have a hard time either way. Got to consider the counter play as well, makes it hard to tell.
Sure there’s counterplay. There always is. But stacked Sentries are a significantly worse problem for Switchblade.
Credit wise, you’re paying more for dagger, no matter the strength. Switchblade doesn’t need much more than a few cloaks and net ready eyes, or datasucker to be efficient. Mirror would help make early repeated runs. You have a good point though, it’ll probably depend on the style of the deck to be honest. Fast decks probably want switch, 1 big run style decks want dagger. What do you think?
I would have thought fast decks wanted Dagger? For the easier setup.
But the cost of breaking things with dagger is more expensive, that’s what I’m saying. You might be totally correct though, I don’t really play stealth
There seem to be two different lines of thought for Smoke.
A) leveraging her intrinsic stealth credit into early aggression. Not necessarily going full Stealth.
B) Increasing the power level of mid- and late-game full stealth rigs. Smoke also helps expedite the set-up process with her slim deck and intrinsic Cloak.
I have always played Stealth in a non-aggro mentality. I liked CT because the slim deck mitigated my perceived downside of stealth rigs—setup time. Same reason I’ve excited about Smoke, with the bonus of a built-in Cloak. I think Dagger fits better in A and Switchblade in B. I think the meta is a bit rough for aggro right now which is why my mind returned to B. I prefer not to run too much in Stealth until I have built up a decent amount of my board. Once your credits are invested in Programs and Hardware, you become a lot more resilient to tags
Very nicely put. I think this is the duality most people are kind of coming to grips with.
I for one plan on going pretty firmly in the direction of B, especially since both Rumor Mill and Pol Op basically counter the only weakness Stealth had to glacier.
I also would love to explore a bit of the deck space offered by this ID, rather than immediately reach for the tried and true shaper build.
We will see what shapes up. I am optimistic about not using Dagger (because I really don’t like the card) but I will grudgingly accept it in two months if I am just getting stomped with switchblade.
Switchblade is also just one of my favorite breakers. Gorgeous art, and super badass in every way. Archer? Okay, I’ll pay 2.
I really like Escher in Smoke as well, especially if you use switchblade, blackstone, and mirror. You can funnel all the barriers to R and D and spread out the sentries so switchblade doesn’t get taxed as much.
<3 <3 <3 Smoke + Darwin = Forever Love <3 <3 <3
I’d like to see that list. What else do you run?
And for all the talk of switchblade versus dagger, I haven’t seen a list with switchblade in it posted here yet.
This one would be too janky I guess, or a Notoriety (slow) machine ? Smoke is a famed women after all 
Classic bait and switch(blade).