Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

Without Mimic/Sucker, News Hound is kinda absurd vs Criminal. And Targeted Marketing shuts down Siphon. It’s not easy for classic Crim at all.

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I was a dedicated Crim player for most of 2016, with Mongoose as my primary sentry breaker. In many hundreds of games, stacked sentries were an issue in only a few. Most of the time I could click through Ichi, or use a Faerie or Femme, if they stacked them.

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The issues with Mongoose are often more economical than raw lockouts (though they can happen). Cortex Lock, for instance, costs 5 to break with Mongoose without any support. You can fill your MU, of course, to solve this problem. But that takes time and money and you presumably want to run before you’ve filled your entire MU up. Desperado makes this problem worse!

Similarly, Turnpike costs net 4, and Data Raven remains a Femme target if you need to get in. It does handle Jinteki sentires well, and Cobra.

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powertaps actually act as excellent support for mongoose given the vast majority of good sentries are tracers (the main exceptions being cortex lock, architect and tour guide - the latter two mongoose is pretty good with)

3x powertap reduces the net cost of:
Ichi from 5 to 2
News hound from 5 to 4 (or -1 if you float the tag and use the castle to clear)
Turnpike from 4 to 2 (or -5 if you float the tag and use the castle)

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Agreed. Datasucker (and if you have 2+ Datasuckers, Gingberbread starts looking tasty) also works. But this is for a more glacier than asset heavy matchup I think. And we are still in the age of assets.

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Yes! Power Tap (or link) acts as an pseudo-killer to deal with many sentries, or at least mitigate the costs of breaking with mongoose or Femme. Breaking Ichi with Femme isn’t fun, but Power Tap at least makes it reasonable.

The cumbersome nature of Femme + Mongoose does mean that you really want to know what ICE is on the board before it gets rezzed; a surprise second Ichi before you install Femme can cause some problems.

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Mongoose’s main competitor, Mimic, can’t break Cortex Lock at ALL without support though. It also costs 4c for Golden and 6c for Femme. The whole point of Cortex is that it’s a real pain in the ass until you fill up your MU.

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Cortex lock is annoying, but the real problem is News Hound. Also, there’s a lot of Cobra out there, and a double cobra server is very dangerous for Criminal.

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Are we still feeling blue about blue decks? Andy sucker is more alive than its ever been, and Temujin makes all blue decks stressful to play against.

I honestly believe that Powertap Andy (w/Desperado) is the best deck in the meta right now. Its so hard to beat it as corp and still maintain viable matchups vs Anarch.

Laurie, Chris Dyer & I have taken down 3 separate store champs with it in the last week alone.

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My local meta is mostly glacier and kill, so my brother and I have been winning with my nexus versions (since paying to break DNA tracker sucks).

I absolutely believe that @rojazu’s list is better against CtM, but that deck isn’t getting played in my meta; which is reasonable now because I’ve been cleaning up on them in the cut for over a month now.

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For those who have yet to see the newest Criminal ID coming in Terminal Directive…

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Credit to Scott Awesome → https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAwesome1/status/813971609937580032

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Very cool card. However I know a lot of people are avoiding all spoilers for this box, so it might be good hide it under a blur.

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A good target for Rebirth, but maybe not that good for building a deck. Andy -> Scott, looks great :smiley:

I dunno, we already have Leela and Gabe as great targets for Rebirth, but people started cutting rebirth from their Andy decks because they wanted to keep the link. Steve has the same problem of being link 0.

Link is more important now that CtM is dominant though, it won’t be forever.

It would be interesting to see if he, and the other blue cards in Terminal Directive, turn out to have a greater impact for Criminals in general compared to their actual big box.

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Gabe and Leela are “ok” targets but not awesome. This guy is like by far more powerful. Triple Siphon looks great for me!

Rebirth into Leela is amazing against glacier and fast advance and those decks will come back someday. Using Steve’s ability on siphon is dangerous as they can remove it from the game…

Yeah, but you choose Siphon and another Siphon.

Then when you find your third one, do the same thing again. Voila, 5 siphons without using any other cards.

And I’m pretty sure this is Level 1 Steve Things. I’m pretty sure you can move on to another level by giving the Corp a ‘choice’ that ends up being poor no matter which one they choose. I’m also fairly certain he wants a ton of card draw combined with events. (Also, disposable income cards like Bank Job, Daily Casts, High-Stakes Job, etc… This is in opposition to the traditional Criminal setup that looks to make money from SecTest/Desperado, so I for one like this a whole lot.)

Seriously, this guy looks like he should’ve been in the big box instead of Ken.

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