[Express] Disappeared Clone: The Ken Tenma Experience

Deck Archetypes
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With the NAPD Most Wanted List in effect and the release of Kala Ghoda, it’s time for the Express to ride again! He’s got the additional influence, so he can still fit in Desperado without too much problems, and Public Terminal is basically an influence-free Prepaid with a Mac discount for him. Plus, Kala Ghoda gives him another econ run event.

It’s definitely time for Express to get his own general deck archetype topic.

At the 34-person Store Championship last weekend (pre-MWL), there were two Top 8 Express players (a local guy named Ben, who made it to Top 4, and @hypomodern).

I’m going to try Express with some new KG tools based on @TheBigBoy’s excellent Faust Gabe pre-MWL deck in combination with the Public Terminal/Cutlery suite from @CodeMarvelous / @Cerberus.

Anyone else trying out Express? What’s working for you? Has @xiebelvoule been brewing with him, since he’s won 2 store championships last year? Anyone else I can tag here?

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Quick downer before we move on: @xiebelvoule just announced in our local forum that he’s quitting Netrunner. We’ll see if it’s permanent, but I can tell you that he’s got good reasons to be frustrated. @Legate_Damar, hopefully you’ll stick around for a bit!

I won a post-D&D GNK with a DDoS Ken list that I’ve been tweaking off and on since. Here’s the current brew. High-stakes Job does a tremendous amount of work and fuels the multi-run event power turn. DDoS/Inside Job is gross and unfun to play against, especially with Siphons flying.

Current weird change: I swapped out a Desperado for a Utopia Shard to see if it helps with Haarp. It’s basically untested. It was originally 2 Desperado, and either a third Public Terminal or second Plascrete.

I believe that Ken has a tremendous amount of potential post-MWL. I intend to play him a lot through Mumbad, and likely beyond. Someone’s got to carry the torch in our area.

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Bummer, you never want to hear that a good player is quitting.

Thanks for your list. DDAS/Inside Job seems insane and DDOS makes HSJ limitation trivial. Great idea.

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I have been playing this list over the past week or so… great in a yellow meta.

High stakes and bank job combined is insanely good. I will test your DDOS idea as early pressure whilst setting up is an issue and you really need to make high stakes stick (-1 corroder -1 retrieval -1 Makers to make room for +2 DDoS +1 inside job)

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Prepaid Temma performed pretty well in the Worlds 2015,I wonder how about that deck now,did u just switch PPVP with Public Terminal?

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Well, run events + public terminal are obvious, and that’s what I was on.

Here’s my original list, in it’s MWL compliant form. Big props to Niles @hhooo for the outline.

Hhooo’s got a high-stakes job?

Ken “Express” Tenma: Disappeared Clone (Honor and Profit)

Event (24)

Hardware (5)

Resource (6)

Icebreaker (11)

15 influence spent (max 17-2☆=15)
46 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Kala Ghoda

On the pre-MWL tourney day I cut Breach for a 2nd Corroder (yay 2 extra influence), and cut the passport and the 2nd special order for two Emergency Shutdowns. I figured Faust would see me through trouble. I will note only that this cost me in the elimination round, where I couldn’t find a special order, +draw, or a decoder and just had to watch HB play solitaire.

But in general, the list stays rich and with drug dealers has plenty of draw, enough to lock remotes while the HQ and R&D multiaccess keeps windows open. HSJ is a monster of a tempo swing, especially after Siphon. If yellow meat damage remains popular I may reverse my decision to run no scorch protection at all (and I did get flatlined in a game where I decided to gamble on my opponent not being on 2xSE yet and press for the win, coming up with 6 AP instead of 7 and yes, the butcherboy had 2xSE). Otherwise the sheer amount of money you have and judicious running keeps you safe, and staying on 6 cards on the corp’s turn prevents cheap TA + SE tricks.

This is not a “blitzkrieg” Gabe/Andy style deck, this is more about controlled aggression: all of your run events are huge threats, which means the corp has to play it safe, which means you have some time to threaten their remotes and/or FIS at an inopportune time (i.e. when they are broke, you are rich, and they already have five in hand), potentially flooding them out.

You often have to sit on HSJ for a turn or so, but there’s never been a game yet where I haven’t landed both of them, usually discounted via public terminal and enhanced by desperado and Ken’s ID, turning them into “Pay 4 to gain 14 and an access affairs”. Delicious!

I haven’t needed the Levy yet, though I was tempted in one game where I was leaning on Faust and had 2x Drug Dealers out.

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This is my current Ken list. I swapped out a Levy for Indexing, and recently slotted in High-Stakes Job, but haven’t gotten to test either much yet. Also considering Run Amok for Indexing. Anyways, it’s been ridiculously good at going form broke to loaded in a single turn, and is REALLY good at opening up surprise scoring windows. The deck has basically been my go-to “I feel like winning today” deck. Still testing it out a lot since replacing Prepaids with Public Terminals, though.

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Are there any high impact lists that trade out Despy for Doppelganger? On paper, I could see that console doing a lot of work out of Ken, either after a Siphon or HSJ on a lightly iced server to get into a heavily guarded one for no clicks. I guess the obvious drawback is that you can’t use a run event for the second run so siphon into ME for one click wouldn’t work…

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I think the problem with Dopple is having that second run ready to go immediately, especially without an event to go with it. Plain runs lack the impact already, so just running again would be a waste of resources.

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Yeah, I was thinking about switching out Multi-Access from run events to hardware to make use of that second run, but then why play Ken?

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Basically this. The problem with running multiple times a turn isn’t the clicks that are spent, it’s the credits that are spent. If Doppelganger read something like “2 Recurring Credits: Only use these credits during the second run of each turn” then it would be WAY better.

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I like the list. Looking at it, it occurs to me that, interestingly and unexpectedly, Sure Gamble seems to be the least-useful card in the list! Not that “gain 4 credits” isn’t useful, but when Dirty Laundry is often at least as good and many times it’s better, you’re dealing with something spiffy. Do you think it’d be worth dropping one (or more!) for anything else? Do you ever wish you had a second Inside Job, or a 1-of Data Dealer, or a Plascrete, or something?

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Here’s my updated list. Not enough glacier around to justify the Levy currently.

Nocturnal Expressions

Ken “Express” Tenma: Disappeared Clone (Honor and Profit)

Event (25)
3x Account Siphon (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
1x Emergency Shutdown (Cyber Exodus)
3x Fisk Investment Seminar (The Universe of Tomorrow)
2x High-stakes Job (Kala Ghoda)
2x Inside Job (Core Set)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit)
1x Retrieval Run (Future Proof) [color=#FF4500]••[/color]
1x Scavenge (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]••[/color]
1x Special Order (Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
3x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set) [color=#32CD32]••••• •[/color]

Hardware (6)
3x Desperado (Core Set) [color=#4169E1]☆☆☆[/color]
3x Public Terminal (Honor and Profit)

Resource (6)
2x Bank Job (Core Set)
2x Drug Dealer (Old Hollywood)
2x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

Icebreaker (9)
2x Cerberus “Rex” H2 (All That Remains)
2x Corroder (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]••••[/color]
3x Faerie (Future Proof)
2x Femme Fatale (Core Set)
14 influence spent (max 17-3☆=14)
46 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Kala Ghoda

Still no issues with 2x Rex as the code gate solutions. I could see putting some Quality Time in here, I do like that card in Crim. Scavenge and Ret Run Femmes + Inside jobs make remotes really tough to pull off, and Femme is brilliant at turning on HSJ, although you can usually create situations just through normal Crim play to turn it on. This deck is definitely one of the stronger ones I’ve been playing post MWL.

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Heh, I played two JRPs, two HB Foodcoats, and one butchershop on the tournament weekend… glacier for days :). Rematch vs. one of the foodcoats is the one I lost for want of a decoder–had four or five code gates rezzed by midgame, gross :). I fisk-flooded the top seed’s JRP to set up a glorious legwork into a five agenda hand. Good times. I think all the glacier players were expecting run-based criminal to be an easy matchup.

Scavenge is neato, and I’m considering cutting the faust to free up two inf too. I can’t see how you get by without 2x Special Order though :).

@Brodie I think that if we see butchershop/whatevershopwerecallingitnow everywhere still a plascrete would be worth it. I don’t think I’d cut a Sure Gamble, though. Probably the Faust, then go 2x Corroder instead of 1x Breach.

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So glad to see this thread pop up! Been playing a lot of ken recently - high stakes is the Real Deal ™ imo, and Ken is just the criminal to capitalize on it.

My current (probably bad) list:
Ken High Stakes (45 cards)
Ken “Express” Tenma: Disappeared Clone
– Event (23 cards)
3 Account Siphon
3 Dirty Laundry
3 High-stakes Job
3 Hostage
3 Inside Job
3 Legwork
2 Special Order
3 Sure Gamble
– Hardware (5 cards)
2 Desperado
3 Public Terminal
– Program (8 cards)
1 Corroder
1 Eater
2 Faerie
1 Femme Fatale
1 Gordian Blade
2 Medium
– Resource (9 cards)
1 Dr. Lovegood
1 Drug Dealer
1 John Masanori
1 Kati Jones
3 Same Old Thing
2 Security Testing

basically all the influence is spent on breakers and mediums - after playing a million Ken decks with 3x TME, I’ve begun to feel that leaning too heavily into his ability is a bit of a trap (after all, the 17 influence is why I’m here, really). I love being able to make really high value HSJ, DL, and IJ runs on RnD and really press the advantage that criminal can build up.

Eater does work - lets you do shit while you rig up, and since for Ken that means running, it’s really nice to have this safety valve for when something nasty gets rezzed on a simple DL or HSJ run.

last off, 3x hostage and a bunch on one-of connections are my attempt to save deckspace but still get the toys I want. A lot of games I end up going tag me and many of these become dead cards (though poor corps will rarely take the time to trash drug dealer) but overall I’ve been pretty pleasantly surprised by this setup.

TLDR; this list is probably a lot slower than most crim decks like to be, but it has some solid anti-rush tools (as crims do) and boasts a really mean final rig that can keep chugging long after lighter-weight crims run out of steam.

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Medium and 3x Inside job is a direction I’ve explored with Crim (Leela and Ken) in the past, it’s certainly worth looking at again. Medium’s interaction with Security testing is excellent. My main concern here would be Hostage without any really high impact connections. To run a hostage package, I’d start out with Procon, Data Dealer, maybe even Film Critic. I think you’d be better off in this list just playing 2-3 Kati, 2 Dealer, cutting Lovegood, and playing a second Masanori if you want it. Hostage needs to be saving you influence IMO to be worth it.

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thanks, I think I knew all this, I just needed to hear someone say it. I might keep one and the doctor and go to 2 dealer 2 kati- it might just be my playstyle but I hate paying for drug dealer and getting both out feels really good. Probably should just drop the whole idea all together though - I often go entire games playing one or less of the connections.

medium is hot and I swear by that part of the deck - imo it’s a much bigger play than TMI.

as far as cards I’d love to have room for: emergency shutdown, retrieval run, utopia shard, singleton FIS (situational but crazy during a deep medium lock or to generate a rich legwork environment if you get locked out of RnD). I really feel like i’m just dipping my toes back into crim, trying to build this from the ground up. I think there’s a lot to discover with ken + HSJ creating a truly ridiculous econ engine.

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Went 5-0 tonight at a casual meetup with a variant of this deck. I slot 2 plascretes and 2 quality times instead of the fisks and an inside job, and prefer earthrise over drug dealer (just because 6 cards for 4 credits seems way better to me than 6 cards for 7 credits that you cannot turn off) and i always go tagme so the plascrets are just great insurance if you cannot keep them poor enough.

I have to say im always glad to see quality time and it is much less situational than fisk. As corp im nearly always happy when i get fisked except in extreme circumstances when im poor and flooded.

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sounds good - looking for a way to fit plascrete in myself. What are you cutting for the QTs?

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Influence spend at the moment is 3 TME, 3 Desperado, 1 RR, 2 Corroder, 2 QT

1 Like