Criminal Strategy

Hello everyone, I really like criminal, but I can’t really figure them out. all I can tell is that they are trying to get money. any ideas of how to use them? :thinking:

I own System Gateway & System Update 2021.
here is a deck I made, but I can’t win with it.

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Thanks found it helpful!

So there are a few holes I could pick in your deck that are likely limiting you in games, and I’ll cover those in a second, but let’s talk about general strategies first. I will start by saying that I’ve found that most runners within the confines of just Gateway and Update tend to play best the same way, regardless of faction, and variation between runner decks becomes more noticeable only once you get into Startup and other larger formats. But specifically here, I would say that you want to be aggressive early, using your Mayflies to safely facecheck ice, and follow up those runs by using Mutual Favours to fetch the correct breakers afterwards. Once you’ve assembled your program rig, you should look to use your run-based economy cards to keep the pressure on central servers whilst always making sure you have enough money to get into the remote, if needed.

Being able to get into the remote is important, since you’ll no doubt have noticed that you have no tools for multi-access from R&D, so your lategame strategy is usually to keep the corp afraid of trying to score from the remote, before sweeping up anything they have stuck in HQ with Legwork/Docklands/Sneakdoor.

Now regarding your deck, my first thoughts are that you’re probably running out of resources (the concept, not the card type!) quite easily, and you end up having to click to draw/gain credits quite a bit? My suggestions here would be to look at ways of maximising both.

For draw it’s pretty straightforward, you should look at either Earthrise Hotel (and if you do, you probably want to play Career Fair since it will really help with both the former and Red Team) or Diesel to help there.

For money, I think the biggest change you could probably make here are your icebreakers. Sub-optimal breakers will drain your money much quicker than trying to squeeze more cash into your deck (although doing both is always beneficial!), and neither Marjanah nor Gordian Blade are particularly good. IMO the best breaker suite in the format is Cleaver, Buzzsaw and Leech(es) and whichever killer you have in faction, but Unity and Corroder are also reasonable options that don’t cost a ton of influence.

Both of those breaker suites are around 8 influence, and your current setup (2 Gordian, 2 Egret) is 10, so the switch is pretty straightforward there. Meanwhile, cutting the Test Runs (which are a big money sink and not necessary when you have Mutual Favour) should get you the influence for three Diesels. Given all that, this is where I ended up with your deck:

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Thanks for the tips! I like the changes you made :blush:.

Thanks a LOT for your ideas! i played the new updated deck on jinteki.net and got 4 agenda points turn 1!