Since Creation and Control there has only been one broad style of Shaper play, a set of choice programs tutored for and supported by recursion, dirty tricks and tools to deal with the ice your rig is unsuited to breaking. Today’s jank is an attempt to approach playing shaper from a different perspective altogether.

This deck is an attempt to play Shaper in a more redundant-card, consistent Anarch-y style. While high-redundancy anarchs have the power of wildly situational power plays and an extremely efficient rig if/when they manage to establish it, Kate playing this style instead has access to consistent, reliable threat which doesn’t require a lot of investment. My goal for jank decks at the moment is to feel solid against astrobiotics and replicating tax decks, I feel these two are the strongest and most consistent players on the scene right now, so that is what this deck is tuned to face.

Dollar Shop Kate works on a few core ideas. Maximising draw consistency by keeping cards cheap (a large amount of 1 credit programs and hardware, hence the deck’s name) and immediately valuable to allow you to smoothly get through your deck to access your tools. Rapidly getting a simple, old fashioned 3 part breaker rig online to threaten any server, then building up support that allows your cheaper breakers to compete with a mid/lategame ice field. Remaining secure against various corp disruption strategies, especially now Will-o-the-wisp is on the scene is an important goal of this deck- partly through maintaining a good credit pool to limit the effect of trace based attacks, partly through card redundancy and partly through information gathering.

__________________________________________

‘Dollar Shop Kate’

Identity: Shapers: Kate “Mac” McCaffrey

Cards: 45 / 45

Influence: 15 / 15

Event (11)

3x Dirty Laundry

3x Hostage ●●●●●●

3x Sure Gamble

2x Test Run

Hardware (8)

3x Akamatsu Mem Chip

2x HQInterface ●●●●

2x R&D Interface

1x The Toolbox

Program (17)

3x Cache ●●●

3x Cloak

3x Dagger

2x Datasucker ●●

3x Inti

3x ZU.13 Key Master

Resource (9)

2x Aesops Pawnshop

3x Ghost Runner

1x Kati Jones

2x Professional Contacts

1x Woman in the Red Dress

Decklist from Little Chiba

________________________________________________

Let’s talk about what this deck can do. Using an extremely cheap breaker suite (it can be set up for 2 credits over a few turns) lets you keep your money available while developing your rig, or lets you develop your rig after having to spend all your money on something like trashing assets or paying off a big trace. Unfortunately, it doesn’t let you run cheaply or often against a taxing ice suite, so the deck needs to pack tools to mitigate that.

The simplest way of doing this is dedicating a large amount of the deck to economic tools to ensure you can just brute force your way through problems once set up. Professional Contacts is the core of this deck’s economic engine, meaning you can draw smoothly and build your economic position while doing it- no awkward hiccoughs and tough decisions from Quality Time. Professional Contacts also makes multiple card based economy stronger. For example, in this deck Cache goes from being 2 clicks for 2 credits ( click to draw, click and 1 credit to install, 3 gain) to 2 clicks for 4 credits (click to gain 1 and draw, click to install, 3 gain). You can then sell it to Aesop’s Pawnshop for an effective value of 7- better efficiency than Lucky Find. Aesop also turns a variety of other cards into more attractive prospects. Ghost Runner supports Dagger very well, and if you choose not to use the last credit and instead sell it, it ends up netting you 2 real credits and 2 stealth credits for a single click. You can also simply sell your Inti or Zu.13 Keymaster and install another if you have spares in hand, turning them into a click for 3. Staples like Dirty Laundry, Sure Gamble and Katie Jones add some simple, reliable muscle to this economy to give you a buffer to keep things moving (and get over the initial hiccough Professional Contacts creates.).

To augment this Cloak, while essential for Dagger, can also be used to pay for any breaker if needed and Datasucker synergises particularly well with both Dagger and Inti. A few Akumatsu Memchips let us install these extra programs as they arrive using Kate’s discount. A couple of Test Runs are in there to make sure you don’t end up stuffed for the one of the three types you don’t have and the corp’s ice suite seems to be entirely comprised of…

If things are going well, or we’re playing a corp that gives us a little time to build up, a singleton The Toolbox and pairs of HQ Interface and R&D interface let us harness that spare money and extend its value. I feel like toolbox can be particularly good here since we’re always going to be spending a fair amount on runs due to our small breakers, those two extra memory spaces let us install more Cloaks and Datasuckers to further improve efficiency and 3 base link can really mess with a corp who’s over invested in multi-subroutine tracers like Caduceus, Viper and Shinobi. Depending on how my trial runs go, I might consider adding a second, cutting a Cloak or an Aesop’s Pawnshop.

To round everything out, Splashing in a playset of Hostage will nearly guarantee I can get my critical economy connections rolling in good time and lets me reduce redundancy to save space for other cards. If I draw my Professional Contacts and Aesops Pawnshop early, I have one copy each of Katie Jones and Woman in the Red Dress to dig up. Katie needs no introduction, but WitRD is more interesting- Many of the current decks rely on making random accesses with no knowledge of what’s in the hand very unattractive, and WitRD takes away some of that position of strength. It can cause the corp to panic and over-flood their hand and it’s a simple way of gaining a lot of information without having to do anything actively. I stand by the concept that information is THE most valuable commodity in Netrunner, and this deck isn’t the best at gathering it. WitRD goes a long way to mitigating that weakness against the decks where it is essential to know as much as possible like supermodernism and killer Jinteki.

How do you play this deck? Smoothly. Keep setting up, keep probing. You may require a couple of turns to get going, so don’t be over-aggressive and drain your credit pool in the first couple of turns. Wait until you’ve fired off a Sure Gamble, gotten your contacts online and are ready to rock. Then start applying gentle pressure and find the cracks in the corp’s game- they will be there. As things heat up you should find your economy stable and consistent while your tools force the corp to invest in high cost defenses or fall apart. Use this to continue your development and, unless the corp has a very smooth power curve themselves, you’ll be able to begin more aggressively exploiting them. You can also tailor your connections to fit your meta- low ice decks can be attacked with John Masanori, glacier bluffs or supermodernism can be messed around with Raymond Flint.

Run smart and stay thrifty!