Yeah, that’s the real problem. Shapers are brutally efficient and Anarchs have workarounds. Criminals are supposed to have bypass but they kinda…don’t. Inside Job is great, but Femme is expensive and DDoS was printed in the wrong color.
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like the comparison… but needs femme
Well, Shaper have the best overall breakers, and Atman.
Anarch have d4v1d and parasite, so they can deal with codegates fair well, except lotus field, and then, again an AI comes and saves the day (faust).
Also, the tools they gave to criminal to help breakers are really weak, (grapling hook or copycat). Criminal needs a solid breaker to play around it, something similar to Atman.
I was thinking that Criminal could use a bypass AI. Make it costly or only usable once per run, but having a flexible bypass ICE could help criminal. Keep it unable to bypass the anti-AI ICE, but it keep in theme with the criminal flavor of not dealing with ICE directly but avoiding it one way or another.
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A neat idea. I’m imagining a Knight-esque thing. 7 or so str, pay 2 per subroutine to bypass, can only be used once per run. That way it’s somewhat pricey and it doesn’t let you run stuff like cutlery or break oversighted ICE. It also makes chaining siphons against anything with more than one sub fairly inefficient.
As an alternative to the once-per run clause, you could have it give a tag after the bypass. That’s an interesting design space.
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Yeah, that was something I was thinking; makes using it have a meaningful cost while still being usable.
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A breaker that gives a tag on failed run? Or a charge card thing, where you need to pay up front to use like Crypsis, per run.
The new noisy breakers, I like it. No need to even do the AI bypass thing IMO. They could just make a full set of them and have them all at least above average efficient at breaking their corresponding ICE. The tag would keep the flavor criminal and the downside real. That would actually be really neat. It would open up cards that haven’t seen very much play before like Lawyer Up or Paper Tripping and make tag hate cards like Closed Accounts worth slotting into non-breaking news decks.
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Considering that FFG is introducing more and more ways to discourage floating tags and we have a bunch of unplayed tag-removal like Networking and the cards you mentioned, I think it’s a pretty neat concept.
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Import Comet for speed tag clearing with networking!
Actually, if you take 1 tag per run and 2+ per turn, it wouldn’t be that bad…
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I think the comparison for Mongoose is Mimic, and it is a superior choice for Criminal. I’ve been running Mongoose instead of Mimic in my Leela build recently and it has done its job, saved the influence, and given another nice boostable option. I like it because it saves your faeries for when it really matters, isn’t the garrote horror cost, and avoids Mimic-disasters.
At the point where they’re stacking assassin and ichis, regular rig crim should be able to get a Fem out (looking at you, assassin), which will take care of cheap sentry double stacking just fine. A runner can only hit nasty sentry stacked servers a few times anyway. If that’s happening all over the board, then the problem isn’t Mongoose.
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I’ve been trying to think up how criminals can get into servers without breaking ice subroutines. Balancing that against both rush and glacier is kind of difficult. All I can think of in the Crim portfolio is derezzing and bypassing.
Derezzing is difficult. It needs to be easier to pull off, both in limited quantities in the early game, and as a constant annoyance in the late game.
Dreamworm
Program | 1MU | 2credit
Criminal •••
Install hosted on an unrezzed ice.
Trash: Derez host ice. If used during a run, the corp may then rez an ice, paying the rez cost.
This helps early aggression, and, as a bonus, plays into expose effects.
Poppy Field
Resource - Virtual | 3 credit
Criminal ••••
When you pass an ice that has a lower rez cost than your number of credits, you may pay X credits. If you do, derez that ice.
X is increased by 1 for every 3 credits of the passed ice’s rez cost.
This one is about nuisance derezzing. It won’t help you get in, but it turns 1-2 cost ice into steady drains on the corp econ. 3-6 cost ice might also get derezzed by this, but it gets harder to justify using this on expensive ice. Ultimately I might be under estimating the numbers, and it should be 1 for every 2, but repeated derezzing needs to be a part of the criminal portfolio. Also the wording is terrible, and I’m sorry for that.
Bypassing is in a weird place right now, you’re more likely to see it in shaper thanks to Femme being 1 influence. Inside job is great in the early to mid game, but there’s not a lot of reason to use it later. Let’s see if there’s a way to keep the threat alive.
Fast Twitch Training
Resource - Genetic | 3 credit
Criminal •••
The first time each turn you pass a piece of ice, you may pay 2 credits to bypass the next encountered ice.
I’m not sure about this one. Against a rush deck, it’s a 2 click, 7 credit, 2 card combo to get in a double iced server with inside job. That might be too easy, so we could increase its install cost. Against glacier decks, it should pull its weight after a few turns.
Direct IT line
Hardware | 2 credit
Criminal •••
Install only if you’ve made a successful run against HQ this turn.
Trash: Bypass the next encountered ICE. If the ICE was rezzed this turn, you may pay 1 credit to place Direct IT Line in your Grip instead of trashing it.
This might snowball a bit too well with repeated derezzing, esp Poppy Field above, but getting more than 1 out seems rather click intensive. I imagine that you’d end up playing icebreakers anyway against a glacier deck, and other decks may not durdle enough for you to care about recurring this guy an insane amount.
The last thing I can think of that the designers have hinted at are non-icebreaker ways to break ice. Things like D4VID or Grappling Hook, that just ignore the usual numbers all together. But that doesn’t seem to really be a Crim thing. So what else can Crim do to trick their way around servers?
Anarch has two things in addition to ICE destruction–forcing ice to stay unrezzed, and raising the rez cost of ICE. Neither of those things show up in Crim–they instead impose additional costs, and only for a short time. Maybe there’s some design space there? Or maybe limiting corp actions, like in Unscheduled Maintenance? I just don’t know.
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I like these, and your main point, that there’s not enough Derez in Criminal, much less repeatable Derez, is spot on. Right now, Derezzing is harder than just Destroying ICE. Limitations are placed on how you can Derez ICE, and often you need to break some to do it first. Destroying ICE is as simple as Parasite and wait, or Immolation, or Cutlery. Can you imagine Cutlery that derezzes instead of destroying? That’d be Criminal as heck, and Ken would love it.
However, Fast Twitch Training is going straight into every Kit deck ever. Hope you like triple icing all your servers! Running three of them and calling it a day for her influence is probably even feasible.
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FTT is definitely unbalanced in Kit–putting it even up to 5 inf may not be enough. I should have thought of that. I do really like the idea of having a criminal card that makes a glacier corp completely rethink their board state, and I don’t see Crim cards coming out for that. Anarch and Shaper are both excellent at it, though. Maybe that’s why they’re played so much?
A derez run event would be fun, and probably would be balanced even if it triggered the derez on encounter.
I’m still puzzled by Damon’s idea that Criminals can just sneak around ICE. I guess there’s running on a non-iced server to access an iced server, with Sneakdoor Beta? But again, that doesn’t help against glacier corps. I just feel like there has to be something other than derezz/bypass for late-game criminal for them to have a solid niche of their own.
He’s said in interviews that sometimes he forgets what cards are already in print, as well as changes that were made before printing. He may be referring to things that don’t exist anymore or are in testing.
Otherwise I honestly have no idea. There’s really not enough bypass/derez effects to make that work.
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…
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Currently there is a breakerless apocolypse leela deck in london going around. Between feint, ddos, inside job, femme, gang sign and sneakdoor, and leelas ability there are plenty of tricks to get around ice in crim i would say.
@rojazu Interesting! Is there a list posted anywhere? I’d love to take a look.
@hypomodern I believe I originally heard that on TWA when they had him on to talk about the MWL. Kinda made me take pause.
Yeah, that’s where I heard it too. He was explaining that he wouldn’t be so great in tournaments because he has difficulty remembering the current state of the meta.
I enjoyed some Leela DDOS Apocalypse shenanigans, but once the corporation knows what’s up it is damn hard. And once you pull it off you often go, “that was cool! Okay, now how do I win…” (that was in reference to the above deck - maybe it doesn’t play apocalypse though)
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