Best deck vs CTM/IG Prison/Asset Spam?

As CtM, I found Sec Test Criminals to be my worst matchup, followed by high-link runners, with Whizzard + Slums in 3rd.

The criminals are much, much tougher than whizzard for CtM, particularly if they have any link. High link negates all of the trace effects, including the CtM ID, Resistor (CtM’s best ICE), and any tagging ICE that isn’t Data Raven. Whizzard with Slums can avoid ever triggering the CtM ID, and prevent recursion of important assets/upgrades. This sounds bad, but in most cases, whizzard either falls behind on trashing, and I am able to score out, or he goes broke and I land tags on him (and trash slums).

I don’t think of myself as a top player, but I at least made day 2 at Gencon playing CtM. I beat all 3 on my way there, but the criminals I only beat due to unforced errors.

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What would you say is optimal strategy for these Crim builds against CTM?

Get rich really fast, Siphon, trash everything, stay tag-free.

It’s very dependent on start, and it can swing badly if you get BN into EOI for a GFI (acronyms!).

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Last night I had a decent start (albeit no Desperado), but ended up getting nearly shut out by the end. Early enigma scoring remote gave me issues (only answer is Femme) followed by an HQ of Booth into Raven to shut off Siphons. Despite having Networking and Temujins all game I eventually ran out of money. Booth is good. I never landed a Siphon all game, not finding one until Booth was rezzed on HQ. I tried to keep Sensies and Bankers off the table but a PAD was ticking nearly all game behind ICE that I just couldn’t afford to trash.

It can be difficult to keep up with trashing every asset, especially if you’re trying to make money and build up link, breakers, and long-term economy. What’s the order of importance for trashing assets in these decks? Money? Draw? Whatever’s cheapest?

Sensie then bankers then everything else.

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I’m no expert, but:

  1. Bankers/Sensie (depends on boardstate)
  2. Everything else.

But it depends on the board. Preemptively hunting down Sensie and Bankers is not a bad plan if you can.

I’d suggest a remote code gate breaker that isn’t Femme? :wink: Femme is actually great in this matchup as it takes care of Data Raven or Tollbooth. It can’t be wasted on Enigma. If TollBooth and Raven are on HQ, that’s a lot of money and two of their best ice from a mere handful wasted on HQ. Sneakdoor and Legwork can clean out agendas.

Ideally, don’t steal GFI. It’s not crazy to include Data Dealer, but it depends if we see News Teams re-appearing.

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First, there are a variety of CtM decks out there. I play something closer to a ‘Tempo CtM’ deck similar to a list published by @TheBigBoy.

Against most CtM, and certainly my deck, having lots of money, and landing repeated siphons will do a lot of work. Trashing SSCG is always important. Credits are nice, card draw/bury (via Sensie or DBS) are very powerful, but SSCG is the real ‘trash or lose’ card in my variants of CtM.

Keeping the strong money lead is important. Going down to ~10 trashing is ok if you aren’t opening yourself to midseasons (and you have a way to bounce back from 0 after shedding HHN tage). Networking works well to clear off tags cheaply.

Keep your eye on the win condition. All of the CtM variants that I know of win by scoring out. Keep an eye on how the corp is going to score and deny them that avenue. Maintaining a credit advantage will keep you from getting tagged. High link (3+) is also very strong, as it will make the trace-on-trash very cheap to dodge. Don’t take a tag on last click. I won my only day-2 game at gencon from someone who did this.

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All of this. The builds that are strongly in on EoI find it hard to score out without at least one GFI, and knowing that helps you fight them. Dragar says Data Dealer isn’t crazy not because you want those 9 creds (although they’re obviously nice), but because the best thing you can do with a stolen GFI is usually to get rid of it and get rid of the possibility of the corp swapping for it. This is also one of the reasons DLR is good against CtM - you can put the agendas out of play without putting them in your score area.

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Yeah I’ve been slotting Data Dealer in a few decks to sell off GFI. I think I should play Rex instead of Passport. Maybe Peacock. Idk Passport seems bad these days. It’s only reasonable use is to Siphon through Enigmas in the early game I think

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