Hey guys. Down The White Nile, the second pack of Kitara, has now been completely revealed, so here’s a rundown of some thoughts on the new cards. I’ve also theorycrafted a deck for each side to try and explore some ideas and new stuff! Click the images below for a closer look at the cards.

Acacia: Viruses are shaping up to be the theme of Anarch this cycle. Freedom Khumalo was recently revealed as the new Anarch runner to be released in pack 5 and so far we’re seeing a ton of interesting new virus designs. Acacia has the same trigger as Fester, a card that never saw play, but has a significantly higher upside. If a good Freedom deck involves generating a huge amount of virus tokens, this could be a big burst of econ. The “may” part of the trigger also lets you push your luck a bit with it and removes the option for the Corp to play around it by purging only a few tokens – which is generally a win for the Runner anyway.

Plague: Speaking of a huge amount of virus tokens, here’s Security Testing for viruses! The design space we’re seeing with cards like Yusuf and Freedom is using viruses as an alternative source of economy. Datasucker is the earliest example of this concept and FFG are really going deep on it now. Tapwrm and Cache sort of count, but they just generate normal money. Noise died for this! I’m really excited to play with this mechanic because it’s potentially very powerful, but every Corp has a built in way to stop it (as well as the freely available CVS). Once Freedom comes out this will be a very cool concept to explore.

Wari: Lol Wari. Doesn’t really do anything except maybe return one unrezzed ICE to hand, which you’ve already presumably spent some effort exposing.

Credit Kiting: My favorite part about this card was the rampant unfounded speculation that it was the new Account Siphon. Anyway, right now the main decent combos are like…Femme and Security Nexus, with the spoiled Amina looking pretty good too. Works nicely with Citadel Sanctuary. Big Crim anyone?

Kabonesa Wu: She’s finally here! I’m always a big fan of IDs being hinted at then showing up in a later cycle. This looks like a pretty dang good ID for combotastic Shaper Bullshit (TM). The key to maximum value here is making sure the program you installed is either a one-turn kind of thing (Sneakdoor Beta springs to mind) or that you have a way to trash it or put it back into your hand/deck. SMC is the obvious combo and makes this ID practically rush-proof since you’re guaranteed access to all your breakers turn 1, as long as you have the money. Brahman is also a very interesting possibility – pull whatever you want out, use Brahman to break ICE efficiently and dump the Kabonesa’d program on top of stack. Brahman featured in the second place Runner at Worlds, so there could definitely be something here! Scavenge also works, as do edge cases like Grappling Hook. Speaking of which…

Kongamato: Hey look, something that combos really well with Grappling Hook! It’s also probably better, because you can break one-sub ICE and it doesn’t take up any MU. Also it has a trash icon, so maybe it’s good in Geist and you can make some weird Geist deck that just bypasses everything or breaks all subs for free or something. Here’s a way of building Kabonesa that uses some of these synergies:

Toolbox Kabonesa

Kabonesa Wu: Netspace Thrillseeker

Event (10)

3x Diesel

3x Scavenge

1x Stimhack ●

3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (6)

1x Astrolabe

3x Clone Chip 🦄

2x Cyberdelia

Resource (10)

1x Kongamato

3x Daily Casts

3x Professional Contacts

3x Sacrificial Construct

Icebreaker (8)

1x Brahman

2x Cerberus “Lady” H1

1x Cyber-Cypher

1x Femme Fatale ●

1x Gordian Blade

1x Na’Not’K

1x Paperclip ●●●

Program (11)

1x Clot ●●

1x RNG Key

1x D4v1d ●●●●

1x Equivocation

1x Grappling Hook ●●

2x Paricia

3x Self-modifying Code

1x Tapwrm ●●

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

45 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Down the White Nile

The gameplan: We’re aiming to combo Kabonesa with Brahman and Scavenge primarily. To that end, there are a bunch of low cost programs that can be either used as Brahman food or tech for a specific matchup. Grappling Hook and Kongamato are there because they’re new and it’s interesting to test; same with Equivocation and RNG Key (although this could actually be amazing). Programs like D4v1d, Lady, Femme and Cyber-Cypher help us get additional value out of Scavenge and Clone Chip fills our restricted slot for the same reason. Clone Chip also leads to Clot and Tapwrm being strong includes. Finally, Cyberdelia is there because there are a ton of programs and we might have MU problems.

Takobi: Very similar to Datasucker and has the same trigger condition as Cyberdelia, a card that I missed the “once per turn” part of and thought was much better. Like Cyberdelia, this seems like something that would work really nicely in run based Smoke as it functions like a source of extra stealth credits that don’t trigger Net Mercur. With Parasite out of the game, this could even be better than Datasucker in some situations (fully defended centrals, stealth breakers/breakers with weird pump break points).

Emergent Creativity: A fantastic card for Adam, and great to see 5 influence on there (which is happening much more this cycle). An unlimited hardware and program tutor is no joke, especially since you can use it any time – lowering the install cost with programs trashed from hand is just a bonus. One of the Sneakdoor crew is a gun Adam player and has convinced me that Adam is really close to actually being amazing. This and RNG Key could be a huge deal for the rogue bioroid.

RNG Key: Hey, they forgot to put influence on this Adam card! This synergizes very strongly with Find the Truth and allows Adam to power through his deck quickly. Outside this use, it also works extremely well with Equivocation, a card that has seen a reasonable amount of play. This could be a bit of a sleeper.

Jinja City Grid: This is potentially bonkers click compression and lets you vomit out a scoring server very quickly with the Clearances. Ultraviolet Clearance gets even more insane if it’s draw 4, gain 4, install 4! It works nicely with Asa, getting yet more install triggers, although perhaps CI would be better to maximise your Clearance value. The rez/trash ratio is very powerful. That said, there’s not really a reason to play it without the Clearances which makes it pretty useless out of faction in general. Here’s a deck I threw together to try and maximise the click compression from these new cards.

Nightdancer: Essentially a must-break code gate as giving the Corp two free clicks is more or less game losing a lot of the time. Interestingly, with clicks remaining the Runner has no incentive to let this fire at all! It does unfortunately match up fairly poorly with Black Orchestra and Gordian Blade. Could be interesting as part of a click denial strategy with Ikawah Project.

Click compression CI

Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers

Agenda (8)

1x Corporate Sales Team

1x Elective Upgrade

3x Ikawah Project

3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (5)

2x Jeeves Model Bioroids

3x MCA Austerity Policy

Upgrade (10)

2x Bryan Stinson ●●●●● ●

3x Calibration Testing ●●●●● ●●●●

3x Jinja City Grid

2x Strongbox

Operation (13)

1x Biotic Labor

3x Enhanced Login Protocol

3x Hedge Fund

3x Ultraviolet Clearance

3x Violet Level Clearance

Barrier (4)

1x Bastion

3x Vanilla

Code Gate (7)

1x Enigma

3x Fairchild 3.0 🦄

2x Nightdancer

1x Turing

Sentry (2)

2x Architect

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Sovereign Sight

The gameplan: Squeeze as much value as possible out of your clicks while denying the Runner clicks as much as possible. Credit to the author of this list which the initial shell was taken from. Jinja + the clearances helps us quickly construct a scoring server and we can then use our various click compression tools (MCA, Nightdancer, ELP) to get out in front of the Runner. Bonus – ELP will clear Employee Strike!

Bacterial Programming: I…yeah. This is one of those mega shenanigans cards that I really haven’t figured out yet. Stacking your deck in exchange for losing or scoring a 5/3 is pretty cool but I don’t know why you’d play this over Obokata or GFI right now.

Aimor: This is quite bad but people will play it in Skorp or PU for a month before realising it’s bad.

Jua: Cool idea and potentially a pretty disgusting facecheck early game. NBN’s theme this cycle seems to be some kind of super-tempo where you’re constantly making the Runner reinstall their stuff or just not be able to install it at all. The trick is going to be turning this into victory.

Threat Assessment: The most obvious thing here is the outstanding synergy with CTM’s game plan. However, as a long time CTM player it’s not actually obvious whether this makes the cut and it’s going to need some serious playtesting. If this gets played click 1 it’s extremely unlikely a Runner will take the tags, but sometimes you really just need to get the tags to stick and putting a card back onto their deck won’t cut it. I think this could have worked extremely well when we still had Breaking News, because it’s another way to fork the runner by making it more expensive to challenge the Breaking News. In the current metagame it’s possible that the interplay between SEA Source, Closed Accounts and Hard-Hitting News is just more valuable. The spoiled NBN ID could be solid with this though.

Economic Warfare: Now this is nice in CTM! More generally, it’s good in any deck that’s aiming to tag you up, like Gagarin. A number of asset based decks cut Hedge Fund anyway – why not try out Reverse Hedge Fund? I think this will end up seeing a ton of play.

Forced Connection: The trace and 0 trash cost make this pretty mediocre, but the Upgrade subtype is interesting. Could maybe be comboed with Casting Call in Argus but the current popularity of Film Critic makes that a pretty bad plan.

SSL Endorsement: This is a very strong effect, especially on a neutral agenda. It even says “may” to let you play around Tapwrm! It’s a real shame that Film Critic kills this along with the other 5/3s we’ve seen in this cycle.

NGO Front: This is some busted stuff right here. It gives you the same payout as Melange for less clicks and can be IAA’d for essentially no downside – the runner might or might not spend a ton of money on your ICE, but you’re getting paid either way. It’s a huge boost for glacier in particular but works in basically anything. Interdiction does hard counter it (to some extent, they still have to run through your server) and sees some play, while Hacktivist Meeting is a soft (but quite strong) counter that is currently very popular. Expect to see a lot of this.

Distract the Masses: Gives the Runner money, unplayable. In all seriousness this is kinda ok but probably won’t be around much.

Another interesting and exciting pack here with a few cards that have the potential to be real game changers. I also realise that I’ve done Shaper and HB decks two articles in a row now, but that’s just because they’ve got the new IDs. There’s a lot of exciting stuff coming up that I can’t wait to play with!