@TheBigBoy’s “perfumeshop” deck feels strong. I’ve only played it a few times (and I’m not very experienced with crim), but it really lets you develop a huge credit advantage and headlock the corp. As per usual with criminal, mistakes can be very costly.
Plus, pheromones!
The deck is definitely fun and powerful, but I don’t think it can ever truly be competitive. It’s too easy to counter with silver bullets and has no room for Plascrete.
That said, if you’re meta is not on all tier 1 all the time, you could probably put up results.
I’m going to re-visit it when Political Operative comes out, since it deals with A LOT of your problems.
I’ve been revisiting Criminal decks - particularly @cerberus Endless Waltz. After playing so much Anarch (and even Geist), I really miss the draw options. I really miss the draw options. About the only time I felt my deck was flowing was when I had Earthrise Hotel ticking.
I don’t think Drug Dealer functions well with typical ‘good stuff’ Criminal - with Faust, sure, I can see that. But there are better Faust decks elsewhere.
Outside of Lawyer Up (a card always barely on the verge of playable) Criminal doesn’t have draw. But it does have ways of resolving draw order problems (Mr Li, express delivery, etc.). But are there any cards that might benefit from resolving draw order problems like this?
yeah it’s because of that painful lack of draw that I still play Andromeda, 2 earthrise, symmetrical visage AND john masanori, so as to get draw and money engines going one way or another. Lack of draw really kills crim (and all the other shortcomings…let’s see how pol op goes)
I have always felt that that exact draw package you just described is perfectly viable for glacier heavy and even NEH FA metas when playing a Stealth Andy deck.
If anything I am excited for Pol Op. It can at least help us snipe upgrades on HQ in order to help us liven up HQ pressure.
Won a small GNK yesterday with the Ken list I mentioned several posts above. It was a super-tiny GNK of 8 people, but we did 4 rounds because why not. It went 3-1, losing a close match against RP, mostly to a play error of mine early in the game that resonated throughout the entire rest of it. I find that of the couple games I’ve lost with this deck over the last 2 weeks, most are lost to small play errors; I rarely feel shut out of the game.
However, the RP game could have been saved if I had more long-term econ. I burned through my entire deck, and in the end was taking 4 and passing every turn, which was pretty bad (clearly). A change that might be good is to go -2 Medium -1 Stimhack, +2 RDI +1 Levy. This retains the multi-access runs on RDI (which makes the otherwise-single-access Dirty Laundries and High Risks more worth it), but at potentially lower numbers, and also gives me the ability to recycle the deck, almost PPPVP Kate-like. I really only burn through most of the deck in the longer RP or HB matches, but usually win before I would need to Levy, but adding in a Levy would at least give me the option.
Another option might just be to add in a Kati Jones in place of a Siphon or a High Risk. That would take care of a longer-econ game by banking on Kati, but might also make the deck more reliant on shaking tags. Right now, it’s set up with few resources so that if I need to go tag me, I can.
Either way, the Stimhack should probably go. I have it in there as a remote threat (or a way to get another Medium run through a taxing R&D), but I rarely actually play it. Same with Femme, actually. I wanted a Femme as an answer to things like Tollbooth, but I hate actually installing the damn thing. 9 Credits is just bonkers.
I’ve only lost a couple games over the last two weeks: one was the RP match I just mentioned, and the other was a SYNC Butcher game where I decided that I should access what I was already 90% sure was a double-advanced Shattered Remains. This blew off the 2 Plascretes, and then I thought it might be a safer play to draw up to 4 cards to make him have 2 scorches (he wasn’t on Traffic Accident for some reason) to kill me rather than run a Maker’s Eye to possibly win the game. The possibility he had 2 scorches was high, but I thought it seemed like it might have been safer. I was wrong on both counts; the win was on top of R&D, and he had the meat in hand.
Other than the above, the deck feels pretty darn nice. It’s not quite PPVP Kate, but at times it feels close.
How often can you land High Stakes Job? It seems likely (really likely) you’re going to draw one, maybe two, before you have a full rig. I’ve tried that card, and even as a 1-of it gets discarded far too frequently.
All the time, actually! To land it, you usually only need to be able to break Code Gates or Barriers, since Sentries almost never end the run. Obviously if you’re going against someone who might have program trashing as an outer ICE, a sentry breaker is probably needed. If you look at their credit pool and think through what they can actually rez at a given moment, there’s a lot of fairly safe plays you can make with it even early-ish in the game. Against HB, where you can click through a lot of their ICE, running it click 1 is usually the best idea. Vs Jinteki, if they Celeb Gift early and then drop an ICE, you’ll have a good idea of what you need.
Early Medium plays can help a lot as well, because you know what ICE they have coming. If Medium is doing a lot of work, sometimes they’re forced to play the ICE they draw on R&D if it keeps me out (or even just taxes me more). Find/play the right breaker, then fire one off. The 6 cost is a lot less toothy with some Terminals in play.
Obviously this is a card that gets easier to play in the later game, but if you look for openings and get information, it becomes much easier.
Okay, but you also need a ton of money too. I look at that list and I see 3 Sure Gamble, 3 Dirty Laundry. So unless you’ve productively landed an Account Siphon (where I agree High Stakes Job starts to shine), where is all the money coming from?
Let’s say you’ve optimistically played a sure Gamble and two Dirty Laundries for +12 credits with Ken’s ability before we start needing to play our first High Stakes Job. We need to have installed a barrier breaker (+10) and a Passport (+9). Can I play High Stakes Job now?
I need to be pretty sure I can break whatever ice is down for 9 credits after adding our starting 5 cancelling the High Stakes Job play.
This is without considering that I probably need to have installed Faerie or Mongoose too, since sentries will now wreck me. Mongoose isn’t cheap to use or install. I haven’t accounted for Special Order and I’ve looked at best case (cheapest) breakers.
It seems like unless you see 2 of those 6 money cards early, or a land a Siphon, you’re treading water.
It’s actually impossible to say. This card relies so much on the game state and the matchup that it’s not possible to simply say “Yes, at 10 money with 2 breakers, this card is now playable (or it’s not).”
Similarly, I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass and say that it’s always easy to play. There’s some games where I discard one early, sure. There’s games where I have to do the gross play and do a Same Old Dirty Laundry on an unprotected server to get some cash going. It’s one of the reasons why I’m considering dropping a High Stakes for a single Kati.
its called high stakes job for a reason 
I won a 24-person Store Championship Saturday with this list:
Faust Gabe
Gabriel Santiago: Consummate Professional
45 cards
Influence: 12/12 ●●●●●●●●●●●●○○○
Event (18)
3 Account Siphon
2 Drive By
3 Easy Mark
2 Emergency Shutdown
1 Employee Strike ●
2 Fisk Investment Seminar
1 Inside Job
1 Levy AR Lab Access ●●●
3 Special Order
Hardware (10)
3 Desperado ○○○
2 HQ Interface
2 Plascrete Carapace
1 R&D Interface ●●
2 e3 Feedback Implants
Program (9)
1 Breach
2 Datasucker ●●
2 Faust ●●●●
1 Mongoose
1 Passport
2 Sneakdoor Beta
Resource (8)
3 Bank Job
3 Drug Dealer
2 Same Old Thing
Good job! Love the x2 Drive By!
I’ve been running wild with this on j.net. It’s super, duper unrefined and was built in a janktastic fever dream, but it turned out to put on crazy pressure. Only been playing it for a few days, but with some revisions there might be potential:
Janktown: Population, Leela
Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist (All That Remains)
Event (28)
3x Account Siphon (Core Set)
2x Bribery (The Source)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Drive By (The Underway)
3x Fisk Investment Seminar (The Universe of Tomorrow)
3x High-Stakes Job (Kala Ghoda)
3x Inside Job (Core Set)
2x Kraken (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x Unscheduled Maintenance (The Spaces Between)
Resource (11)
3x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set)
3x DDoS (The Universe of Tomorrow) [color=#FF4500]••••• ••••[/color]
3x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)
2x Security Testing (Honor and Profit)
Icebreaker (3)
1x Alias (Honor and Profit)
1x Breach (Honor and Profit)
1x Passport (Honor and Profit)
Program (3)
3x False Echo (Opening Moves) [color=#32CD32]••••• •[/color]
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Kala Ghoda
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
The DDoS/Echo interaction is strong, but it might be a bit of a red herring at literally all of your influence. DDoS into High-Stakes Job, though, is absolutely nuts (it’s not usually worth it as a strictly econ play, but making 6 credits in the middle of your DDoS shenanigans turn is baller). FIS can be… fussy, but it’s also a really, really great tool for controlling tempo. Ideal times to play it:
Anyway, if I get interested in polishing this up, first steps are:
Nice! This look close to my version of this deck. I’ve felt that NBN FA is the weak point of this deck, due to very little R&D multiaccess, what did you face?
An interesting little deck I have been running with Leela Patel. A little janky, needs some refining but I’ve been having somewhat of a success with this deck.
Tantic Dance 1.0
Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist
Event (17)
2x Account Siphon
2x Dirty Laundry
3x Fisk Investment Seminar
1x Hostage
2x Inside Job
1x Legwork
2x Special Order
1x Stimhack •
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (6)
2x Astrolabe ••••
2x HQ Interface
2x R&D Interface ••••
Resource (10)
2x Bank Job
2x Gang Sign
1x Kati Jones
3x Same Old Thing
2x Security Testing
Icebreaker (5)
1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
2x Gingerbread
1x Mongoose
1x Passport
Program (7)
3x Crescentus
3x Panchatantra ••••• •
1x Sneakdoor Beta
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Kala Ghoda
Deck built on http://netrunnerdb.com.
The main function of this deck is to be aggressive with Leela with Panchantra/Gingerbread. Using other cards like Inside job early game to bypass unrezzed Ice and Cresentus to derez Ice on the fly after breaking that Ice. The Gangsign/HQI is a fallback if I get locked out of the centrals and to put pressure on the corp not to score so fast.Downside to this is if the corp gets the funny idea of keeping some snares in hand and/or scores out a Breaking news with 3 QPM in hand. Sneakdoor Beta used early-to-mid game as a way to get the corp caught off its feet before trashing it for other programs.
Originally ran with just the Panchatantra/Gingerbread combo, I added some other Icebreakers in order to span out the span of the game in order to go late game. Plan to switch out Hostage with another Kati just because I only have one connection I can tutor with it. Plan to also include Breach to extend that out and going 46 cards.
Haarp kill, NEH fastro, NEH turtlebacks…lots of yellow in the KC area and surrounding environs. One weird NBN glacier kind of build. There was one Blue Sun, too. Edit: 1 HB, actually, in the Top 4. Forgot about that until just now. e3 makes the HB matchup easier.
This is the exact opposite of what I’ve been seeing in Seattle. There are about 3-5 NEH at each SC from around here, and a couple SYNC sprinkled in, but for the most part, people have been switching to Weyland and sometimes Jinteki to deal with Faust. That said, the Corp winning decks from SC’s in the area have been Tenin (pre MWL), NEH (Me! So innovative!), Haarp, and RP.
Around here, people have decided to deal with Faust by doing what I do: score 5 points in a single turn. (;)) Edit: That is to say, they just switched to NEH Fastro and decided to race to 7.
I think you drop Echo; it’s not high-impact enough to justify the influence. Honestly, if we’re going full jank, I’d rather see the in-faction Forged Activation Orders to trash the ice via DDoS. (That’s how that interaction should work, right?) You could use the Bribery slots for that. Also, I don’t know why you don’t have Emergency Shutdown; it seems like that would go really well with DDoS and High Stakes Job.
My list runs Bank Job over Security Testing. For every match where I wish, “man, if only these were Security Testings instead,” there are 3 matches I’m glad they’re not. Bank Job also pairs remarkably well with Dirty Laundry and HSJ.
I’m surprised you don’t have a Sneakdoor. It seems pretty clutch.
And I agree with all of your points on Fisk. I used to have Symmetrical Visage in my list, and it got better once I switched to Fisk. Whenever they’re in a tight spot click-wise, you pop that and suddenly they’ve got tough choices to make. Bonus points if you pop it then draw into a Siphon - life gets bad when you’re at 0 credits and drawing into your 9th card. And I actually have decked people with Fisk, twice. Game durdles out, and you can tell they’re sitting on a Jackson, waiting to pop it; they drop to 2 cards in R&D, and you Fisk. Bingo! But it’s hardly a common use of the card and I wouldn’t argue that anyone should include it on that basis alone.