Smoke - Cynosure of Stealth Creds

This deck plays clear outs:

Get into a position where you can run R&D twice or more in a single turn with an Indexing in hand. Play it to run R&D, and pray for an agenda in the top 5 cards. Put it on top the deck, refresh a cred with Mirror, then run for free points. Whenever you run out of Indexing, use Levy AR Lab to throw them all back in your stack.

There's a number of problems here. The first is obvious:

What if you don't find any agendas in the top 5?

The solution is simple: keep track of your opponent's draws. Once they've drawn five times, it's time to start running again.

Second is even more apparent:

How do we get into R&D?

This has a multi-part answer:

How do we get out our breakers?

Getting your breakers out is often a matter of tutoring them with SMC. Your decoder costs 1 cred, your killer costs 3, and your fracter costs 4. SMC's ability costs 2 creds and can be activated mid-run. This means that if you have 6 credits in-hand and no breakers installed, you can run an unrezzed piece of ice and know that you can tutor whatever you need. Better yet, each DZMZ subtracts one off that number.

You also have Clone Chip handy to either re-use SMC or to pull back breakers from the heap if you lose them. Losing breakers is very, very bad for you though: this deck has ONE copy of each breaker, and no AI. You need to use SMC and clone chip whenever they come up, and you need to get out your Sacs.

But how do we pay for the breakers?

It's especially worth noting that every breaker in this deck loves stealth creds, and Switchblade actually requires them. Your only non-stealth breaker is Paperclip. (An older version of this deck actually used BlackKat, but when you math it out, Paperclip is better on pretty much all ice other than a

Get Cloaks out early. Get Net Mercur on the table and pump it up with creds. It is legal to run an unprotected server, pump a breaker using the stealth cred on a Cloak or on Smoke during the paid ability window to put a cred on Net Mercur for free. Do this whenever you have a spare click and an unused stealth cred.

What about big ice?

Ice Carver can pay off immensely against ice that's just out of reach, like Strength 4 barriers and strength 8 sentries. If you can get a Career Fair in hand alongside an Ice Carver, you can have insane long-term savings. For Strength 4 barriers, BlackKat goes from a cost of 3+ credits per run to just a single stealth credit.

You also have a single Parasite which might get you out of a pinch. At minimum, it's a great way to bully the corp, especially if they try to slow you down by putting ice on R&D. Parasite is generally better used for removing ice/stealing clicks than for just decreasing strength.

Do we have any good counters?

Yes! Just don't take any meat damage.

Feedback filter counters net damage. Misdirection cleans tags.

What about econ?

Telework can buy you some easy credits. Daily Casts gives some easy long-term payoff (especially if you can combo it with Career Fair) Prepaid VoicePAD makes every Sure Gamble and Dirty Laundry incredibly busted, and makes it easier to play Levy AR if you ever need to.

Lastly:

Why these three breakers?

BlackKat is just a worse version of Corroder. Unless you can pump it full of stealth credits, which you can in this deck. Switchblade is an incredible card, but only if you have lots of stealth credits on-hand, which you will. Refractor is cheap and powerful, which works great alongside SMC.

(A version of this deck that runs Paperclip might be smart. BlackKat is as-good-or-better in any scenario where you have your entire engine running, but Paperclip is better until then. Does that mean it's worth swapping, especially since it might allow for the removal of Ice Carver?)

I think that covers the rationale for every single card in this deck. You'll need:

• Revised Core
• Flashpoint
• Lunar
• Creation and Control
• Sys Gateway
• Sys Update 2021