Faerie doesn’t work, because it’s not a trash cost. Same reason you can use sacrificial construct on it. If it did, Aesop’s-cache would find a second home.
Bunch of crabby old ladies in here. Play B&E, play Autoscriopter, play Forger and link, run a bit less, set up a bit more, Siphon for 0 tags and +4 cards, recur crescentus and parasites, and most likely win 100% of games with this ID.
On the LARLA issue. If you go B&E full suite, fall guys, street peddler, clone chip, same old thing. You already have 21 draw. If you also go Decoy, forger, crescentus, muertos gang member you could go to 33 cards that give you draw. So I think he could cycle through his deck pretty fast.
So, I am a criminal-minded player, and I think @hhooo raises some of my concerns around Geist. In testing, I found that there’s a lot more “skornergy” at work here than synergy. He’s not at all bad, but I just want to temper expectations around him. Exile has a stronger ability and I think he’s OK. Geist will end up around the same, IMO.
A few observations from my—admittedly limited—testing with him.
The B&E stuff takes a fair amount of setup to be worthwhile, and then it is disposable, losing power all the time. It’s terribad against glacier, meaning you pretty much have to play regular breakers, meaning you have (probably too much) marginal deckspace used by B&Es. If you use them for early pressure against weak ICE, you are getting a cycle-draw, which is nice, but I am not convinced that it is better than having a permabreaker.
While there are some intriguing picks on the list of [trash]-cost ability cards, many of them are super-narrow, costly in influence, or underwhelming, meaning that your deck is full of cards you don’t necessarily want. Avoid that trap.
That said, you can attack ICE with him: Clone Chips for Parasites and Crescentus felt pretty strong. I think the Shaper Ladies (Kate/Hayley) and Reina do that better, but it’s definitely a pretty nice way to land siphons. If Siphon were as powerful as it used to be, he’d be awesome.
Don’t get suckered in to the forger/decoy approach to dropping siphon tags. It’s not worth including those cards in your deck. You may as well use NACH.
I’d run HQIs, UC, and LARLA, as you can cycle your deck pretty quick if you do any of the normal criminal drawing—which I think you should. In any case, it felt like you had to pick a server to win in, and given the criminal toolbox that seems like HQ.
I’m really not keen on the B&E suite, and I’m not playing a Crim console that isn’t Desperado. Gonna try something like this (probably bad, needs a couple anti-Scorch slots, maybe Utopia Shard).
Geist Headlock (45 cards)
Event (14)
3 Account Siphon
3 Emergency Shutdown
2 Inside Job
3 Special Order
3 Sure Gamble
So basically this is the Criminal version of Chameleon jank? Oh, I am SO there!
Okay, first of all I’m gonna need Savoir-Faire, Scheherezade, and some Stimhacks. It’s not quite SMC/Clone Chip, but I can totally make Geist draw enough cards to make this happen. Extra economy is Gorman Drip and Fall Guy. Utopia Shard and a Disrupter gives you your damage protection. Box-E for the console, maybe a Grappling Hook for emergencies, and I think we’ve got one heck of a solid jank deck here!
