Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

I took a single Mongoose Crim to 3 regionals and I didn’t find stacked sentries to be a problem at all. For one thing, glacier is not as popular as fast advance, asset spam, and kill right now. Also, if the game has gone on so long that the corp has multiple sentries rezzed on HQ, and you’ve also used up your faeries, you probably have enough money for Femme Fatale now. I’d much rather install a Femme and get the permanent econ advantages its bypass abilities give you than install a second Mongoose that I use once or twice. And don’t forget about clicking through Ichi, paying through Assassin, and Inside Job as other ways to get through sentries.

In my experience, corps almost always stack sentries when they see I use Mongoose. In fact during most of my test games I’ve had to get at least 2 Mongoose to guarantee HQ runs, in one it went pretty late into the game and I had my get my third as well. Finding room for both Femme and Sneakdoor Beta would help a ton against that.

Cheers for the advice guys.

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You also need a hell of an economy if you’re having to break 2 sentries with Mongoose on a run. It’s not really efficient (exceptions are Komainu, Tour Guide, Rototurret, Cobra) without sucker support, and very few Crim decks are running that any more.

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There were 44 Criminal players at Worlds, making up 22% of the field.

In the top 1/3, there were only 7 players (14%).

In the top 16, there no Criminals at all.

What happened? Andromeda had performed well in testing versus a variety of corp decks, particularly CTM. The field was probably as friendly as it gets for Criminals, with plenty of open servers.

So what went wrong? I can think of a few options.

Did Anarch’s over-performance just push Criminal out? (i.e. Criminal didn’t do badly, but Anarch did way better.)

Was it just an unlucky day for blue decks?

Or had something fundamentally changed between testing and live performance?

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I did well with Blue over the two days (11-3 record) and in the end was the finest of margins away from the cut (a timed win vs a win). In the 3 games I lost I got to 6 points in each game but couldn’t find the win despite a loaded medium. I also made some serious play errors in one of the games vs CTM.

Deck is very strong, but requires a certain playstyle that doesn’t suit a lot of players.

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Your deck has a very unusual feature!

3x Sure Gamble
3x Career Fair
3x Dirty Laundry
3x Daily Casts
1x Kati Jones
3x Security Testing
3x Temüjin Contract

19 money cards, plus Siphon and Desperado. That’s a ton. Almost half the deck is money, and three more of the cards are draw. Was this common?

i have no idea if that is common, but in testing this is how you beat CTM :slight_smile:

account siphon, desperado and datasuckers are also economy cards

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I’m not sold on this one. In my experience as CTM player, it’s harder to play against Whizzard with Slums, than against Andy. Also I don’t play Pad Campaigns and play enough ICE to cover centrals, so they need to SecTest my political assets.

My problem with Andy is the lack of draw package, that is available to Whizz (3 cards vs 9). Surely, you have a robust start, but after a few turns you start to run out of steam. Also, anarch rig with NRE and Ice Carver seems superior to what criminals can import.
All in all, the only strong card that Crims have gotten in a while is Temujin Contracts. But it seemes, that you will have more benefit from importing Temujin to Whizzard, than from importing anarch breakers/suckers to Andy.

CTM is the tempo ID, and nobody does tempo better than Andy.

Lack of draw is an issue but Special order gets you past the gear check, I do look more and more for earthrise in my opener these days.

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We’re not disagreeing. A runner can perform well without being the best.

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Well, if we agree that Andy and Whizz are equal against CtM, I can’t see why I should play Andy over Whizz. Once again, why I think Whizz is better - id ability that helps you pack less econ, more powerful rig, access to medium in faction, rumor mill, good draw options, parasites, recursion,… You can’t import all that in crims. On the other hand, Crims only have Temujin and Siphon as powerhouse cards (well, let’s say desperado as well), and you can easily import one or another in Whizz (for different archetypes).

I’m really not arguing this point! I’m trying to engage in discussion as to why Crim was so under-represented in the stats. (If it matters, I agree with you!)

You’re currently arguing the case that Anarch is better, and simply over-represented, and of course that over-representation had to come at the cost of Criminals and Shapers. That might well be the case.

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I think that’s basically the point. Andysucker is by no means a bad deck, actually it’s quite good - but Whizz is the same style, just better. Why should you pick the second best for the big tournament? Shaper can do things Whizz can’t, but Whizz can everything Andy does. :confused: Similar with DLR decks - DLR Leela is nice and all, but DLR Maxx is just better.

Also, Rumor Mill already pushed people more in direction of Anarch, and with Obelus they got another crazy good card just before Worlds - and other than Temujin, that one got printed with 3 influence.

I didn’t go to Worlds, but my experience leading up to Worlds was that Andy-sucker’s Foodcoats matchup is terrible.

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double medium is in my limited experience the answer, though I am not playing suckers. I think many of the best players went wiz, and had some of them gone crim, we would have seen some in top 16. But with temujin out of wiz and siphon out of wiz you just had crim lists with better cards and a powerful anarch ID

That was not my experience at all. Granted, I rode the middle tables all day and was on Peregrine (which breaks FC3 as efficient as anything else), but I don’t really see how non-AI Whizz deals with their ICE any better?

my win rate vs ETF in testing was >80% with strike andy and 3-0 over Icebreaker & worlds main event.

ETF was a massive ruse and a lot weaker than folks expected

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With the help of Ice Carver and NRE?

Funny note: with those and suckers, I was breaking Little Engine on RnD for +5 creds each run once. That was hilarious.

yes, this and ice destruction and trashing assets for free, and rumour mill, temu whiz suffers to gear checks and some of the specific hate (power shutdown etc).

Really fascinating to read the divergence of opinion on this.