I think it is well worth considering what the loss of Jackson, and half the 3/2s, does to HQ pressure, and one-shot ‘tricks’ to get into the remote.
Don’t forget that Crim just got a better version of Feedback Filter. Critic only costs 1 inf, whereas the Temujin money to pay for Feedback/Caldera is blue and A-A-ron gives you paid-ability draw to dodge execution while being useful in other matchups where Critic isn’t.
Don’t really disagree with your other points though.
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I do want to say that I wish they’d kept Crescentus instead of Emergency Shutdown… Still, I’m happy at least one of them was kept.
I can also say that ‘Derez all the things’ strategy doesn’t work well without Account Siphon.
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In a world without Kati Jones, they are still the richest.
I think apocalypse decks could be direction for criminal to go.
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Another criminal deck that actually scares me after rotation is Gang Sign Leela.
With HQI evergreen and Corps with no access to Jackson, this sort of build seems really strong.
It is…
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I thought it odd that we’re going to keep Demo Run considering all the Anarch multi-access is gone, Imp is now in core and getting more support, and Demo Run wasn’t played anyways, but it might make for a decent splash in HQI criminals.
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And if you add Maw into the mix it makes it even worse.
The counter argument is without Siphon you cannot wait for the Corp to score an agenda, access and steal another from HQ through Gang Sign + HQ Interface and bounce two ICE on HQ. Then on your turn you Siphon them at least once and remove the tags with Aaron.
It still works out in Leela’s favour as the Corp has to spend the time to replace the ICE on HQ. It is just not as brutal because the Corp does not have to recover financially as well.
After playing some Core 2 + Rotation tonight, I believe that Criminal is still good. They just have to be tricksier. Leela seems strong, Temujin is always strong. Geist can do some work, too.
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Geist might be good because of Spy Cams. They are more selective with their runs which is great because of the general lack of R&D multi-access. Plus Deep Data Mining combos with their cloud breakers – not that I expect that to be run out of Geist but it might be.
Many Geist decks didn’t run Siphon either. Rather devoting more slots to get their rig online.
I am worried about the fact that Criminal is supposed to be the “money faction”, and lots of their tricks require a lot of money, but at least in the core-set-only pool, they will be a lot less rich, having lost Desperado and Account Siphon.
In the full card pool, they of course still have Temüjin, but that costs influence. Maybe High-Stakes Job also becomes more popular, especially with all that de-rezzing going on?
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This depends with what the meta replace those with.
They may have “banned” those two cards like that, just to reprint them later in a more balanced way. I remember Lukas complaining about Desperado that should cost 5c (if my random access memory serves).
I think Temujin is on MWL because of in faction Syphon. “Banning” Kate / Noise / Parasite and with Cresentus rotating out, this may make Clone chip out of MWL (because no need then : who fears Egret spam ?), I expect those Core pool choices to make lots of impacts on MWL.
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Aaron is also a lot more balanced without Siphon.
I don’t think Siphon will come back in a tweaked way. Self-tagging is firmly in the anarch wheelhouse.
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Well… we kinda know that Siphon will come back:
Amoral Criminals happily divert corporate funds into unmarked private accounts
But maybe it will be something like “Gain up to 10 credits. Trash an installed card every 2 credits gained”. We’ll see.
Reference:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/9/11/sovereign-sight/
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That might as well just be flavour and not referencing any specific card.
They may split the effect of econ gain and denial, that combination is what made Siphon so powerful.
Given that derez is econ denial that’s still a crim thing. But I don’t think they’ll reprint either Siphon or Vamp in a recognizable form.
I still miss Edited Shipping Manifests. Gain ten, corp loses one. Just to show that a corp credit is nothing like a runner credit.
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Hey, that was one of my hobby horses during the early days! ESM is the OG Siphon, and it is a way better play experience IMO.
Except for Code Siphon, anyway…