Competitive Smoke

Ark1t3kt 381

Sorry guys, I don’t have time to do an in depth write-up, but hopefully this covers it.

When I saw the ID when she was originally spoiled I immediately knew that it was incredibly strong.  I maintain that the recurring credit is a Kate-level econ boost (or even better in some situations.)  The recent release of Net Mercur has only made this stealth engine faster and more inevitable.

I’ve been playing stealth throughout my years of netrunner, doing the rounds with stealth Haley, Andy, and even Adam, lol.  I can tell you that if stealth had any weaknesses then, Net Mercur and Smoke solve them all.  A bold statement, I know, but after testing this ID for two months steady, I feel that I have the right to make such ambitious claims.

I originally tried this deck with Pre Paid to fully leverage Mirror, but paying a whole nine influence for my econ engine was simply too brutal.

Of course, the deck is infinitely richer with Temüjin, and after I tried this new resource-based econ package, I never looked back.

 Some important points that I found out during testing:

- Switchblade is better than Dagger with Net Mercur

- Astrolabe is simply better than Mirror (sorry guys, but having the mem for two Cloaks isn’t actually necessary with Mercur) - Scrubber and E-Strike are necessary in the current meta, and Networking is almost as necessary because shaper sucks shit at dealing with tags (most of our econ is resource based) - Net Mercur is fucking insane

Some of you may be questioning the fact that I only have one of each icebreaker, and no clone chips.  Feel free to make changes if you want, but I find that in a forty card deck you don’t have luxury slots – anyways, I’m a crim player at heart, so I’m fine with running on the edge – Levy is all the recursion I need. ;)

I am currently testing a version in which I fit in three daily casts, and I will update the deck if it turns out for the better.

 After two months of experimenting with Smoke and refining various decks I am confident that this is very close to the optimal set up.  I think that this is definitely an archetype to watch out for in the future, and is extremely powerful.  It was built to face the top tier decks at the moment, so don’t be surprised if it loses to PU or something.  With practice, it will win against Jammy HB, CTM, Food Coats, Sol, Rush Argus, and Palana.
Of course, comments and suggestions/criticism are always wholeheartedly welcome, and I encourage all of you to test/make changes to this deck.

Smoke is truly a beast…

12 comments
6 Nov 2016 TheFool

What are your thoughts on adding Beth in there? I run it on my Stealth Kit and it helps a lot. List looks solid though. Can't wait to try it :)

6 Nov 2016 Pinkwarrior

@Arkitekt I think your right on alot of points you don't need 2 Cloaks. Employee Strike is an essential card.

The point i don't agree on is sharper sucks with tags and that all their econ is resource based that's just how you built the deck. Shaper is the only faction in the game that can easily have a program based econ Magnum Opus is a great card for econ and is searchable and with bigger MU consoles is easy to accommodate. They also have Rabbit Hole to help stop tagging in the first place and have Artist Colony to deal with the Exchange of Information plays all in all shapers in one of the best seats for dealing with tags Imo.

That all been said I do like your deck list your going to have to be careful against the Rig wreaking decks that have been poping up lately tho thanks to Ark Lockdown been a card.

6 Nov 2016 onibaku06

I like it.

I wonder why you would choose Earthrise Hotel over ProCon or Diesel/Quality Time? Shaper has the best draw options in the game.

Astrolabe is a good call in the current meta, but Mirror also does some work. Having two cloaks and two breakers out and still being able to have SMC for makes the deck more aggressive.

6 Nov 2016 Myriad

@onibaku06I think, really the only argument you can make for Cloak over Astrolabe is if you are running Parasucker in Smoke. Especially with this set up, Smoke doesn't need very many stealth creds to get by.

Changes I would make would be to drop Ghost Runner and drop Earthrise for patron.

Next pack, you might need the extra mu for misdirection, which saves you the MU from Networking.

6 Nov 2016 Snake Eyes

Is your plan to scoop if any of your breakers get hit?

6 Nov 2016 Snake Eyes

oh nm just caught the levy. okie that'll work for it.

7 Nov 2016 Myriad

Meant mirror over Astrolabe.

7 Nov 2016 Ark1t3kt

Hey everyone, I apologize for the delayed reply. First of all, not sure why the description came out all weird, lol, hope it wasn't a problem when reading. Anyways, thanks for all the great feedback guys, and keep it up with Smoke!

@TheFool In early iterations of this deck I tried a one-of beth, but I found that when playing against yellow she didn't do too much work (NBN often likes to ride pretty close to the ground when it comes to econ.) Don't get me wrong, beth's a great card, but when your building a deck this tight in slots, every card kinda has to be actively winning you the game in order to be justified.

@Pinkwarrior You're right, I may have misspoken when I said shapers suck at dealing with tags. However, rabbit hole does occupy three slots of the deck, which are extremely tight. It is mostly for this reason that I decided on networking - I needed to condense my way of dealing with tags into a single card. I have also tested with a proxied misdirection for quite a while, and I just cant handle the MU cost because it forces me to either run Mirror or some kind of chip, which I certainly don't want to do. As for Magnum Opus, it's just not my style. Like I said, I'm a crim at heart, and spending a couple turns at the beginning of the game just clicking for creds isn't aggressive enough for me. Yes, rig destruction is very potent against this deck, but I'll put it this way; Criminals have been doing fine in the meta despite rig shooters, and when playing Crim as soon as a card gets trashed it might as well have gotten lock-downed. If there's one thing that playing blue has taught me, it's how to win games without a rig. Again, I expect most players of this list to exchange the networking with a Clone Chip if they're not comfortable with this play style.

@onibaku06 The intent of Earthrise Hotel was to include clickless card draw to complement diesel. It also provides another career fair target. Since I posted this list, I have been experimenting with an updated version that also runs Daily Casts, and having clickless econ and draw is really nice when playing against corps that try to compress your clicks (Palana, Rush, CTM, etc...)

@Myriad There is definitely a case to be made for Misdirection, however I have proxied it for a while in testing now, and I simply cannot afford the deck slots for extra MU (I really don't want to have to go back to Mirror.) For this reason, I think that networking is actually better than Misdirection in this niche case.

7 Nov 2016 Rahrhino

Sorry if this a silly question but why do you deem Switchblade as better than Dagger? I see that Corroder instead of Blackstone alleviates some of your stealth reliance but is a minimum 2 stealth credits to break almost any sentry working okay? Are there particular pieces of ice you are predicting which make this choice better?

8 Nov 2016 Myriad

Due to Net Mercur, you really only need your id ability to break pretty much any sentry in the game.

And if you have two stealth creds base you can get through pretty much anything no problem.

9 Nov 2016 Ark1t3kt

Also, I find Switchblade particularly nice against Tour Guide when playing against some sort of Hot Tub Time Machine variant. My choice of Corroder is not based around alleviating my reliance on stealth creds, of which I always have a surplus. I simply don't think that Blackstone is an efficient barrier breaker. With so little barriers being run, I don't want to pay four to install my refractor. Furthermore, the barriers that are seeing play right now are Vanilla, Resistor, and Eli 1.0, all of which suck to break with Blackstone. Believe it or not, when playing this deck stealth creds are often easier to come by than real ones!

9 Nov 2016 Myriad

I wouldn't bother with Blackstone unless I am also packing Datasucker. It lets you boost up to 4 strength reliably or pump it to appropriate numbers.