Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

Program-specific recursion isn’t insanely important, but being able to recur Faeries and the Breaking&Entering Suite, rechage Rexes, and replace Femmes would all go a long way towards helping crims out. It would even allow for Crescentus lockdowns if they had some more reliable options as a blue version of parasite recursion. Obviously criminal doesn’t have as much built-in tools that rely on recursion, but saying it wouldn’t be played at all is probably not completely accurate.

Furthermore, it would allow criminal decks to run 1-ofs of various breakers without much worry - criminals have decent ways to get specific breakers if needed (Special Order, Mr. Li, Express Delivery, Drug Dealer, etc), but they still need to run multiple copies anyways out of fear of getting them sniped.

I think that, in theory, the Criminal mindset is “the easiest place to get agendas is from HQ, because I’m crushing their economy via Siphons and derez, and their remotes aren’t safe, so while they’re scrambling to get their defenses up, agendas pile up in HQ.” The problem with this is that fast-advance doesn’t bother with remotes and Caprice/Ash glacier knows that Criminal doesn’t realistically threaten their remote, so agendas don’t really pile up in HQ as much; meanwhile, as ice rez costs have trended steadily downwards, both Siphon and derez have gotten weaker. The end result is that R&D pressure is even more important to Criminals now, because the thing their faction is good at is no longer as effective.

To add insult to injury, the downward trend of ice rez costs makes efficient, reliable breakers necessary. The Criminal answer to Tollbooth isn’t “break it efficiently,” it’s “shut that bad boy down.” But that answer isn’t applicable against Archangel, let alone Crick. Turing, either, really. A bunch of strong code gates with low rez costs have debuted, and Criminal just doesn’t know how to respond to that.

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2 Corroder 0 Clone Chip is better in Crim than 1 Corroder 1 Clone Chip. The reason Crim plays multiple breakers of one type is not because they can be trashed. Anarch plays multiples of breakers too, and they play Deja and Chip. Recurring trashed programs is a secondary or tertiary use of Chip, not primary.

Recurring small programs is nice but not having SMC or a good suite for that or reason (Rex is both inefficient and doesn’t suit Criminal playstyle) makes it a lot worse. If Crim had SMC in it then yeah sure we could recur that and could play one-ofs like Crescentus maybe.

The reason Shaper runs singletons of breakers is SMC +Clone Chip, not just Clone Chip.

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Yeah, those are all definitely good points. Why do criminals run multiple breakers of one type, though? I feel like at the moment it’s because they have pretty inefficient breakers right now, so they need various breakers for various niches.

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To find them all in time. Special Order only solves part of the problem. With limited card draw in faction, running 2x Fracter and 2x Decoder makes sense.

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Uhh, you have to make a successful run on HQ to install PolyOp. So, maybe not the solution to Caprice on HQ? Sure, you can install it before they lay down the Caprice, but you want to use that PolyOp to trash something crucial, such as Sundew, that Caprice is going to shut you down.

It’s plenty easy enough to get HQ runs early. You can even use Pol Op AND Sneakdoor!

Using Pol Op on a Sundew sounds foolish, but I suppose if you really had to?

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I agree with your overall statement, but this statement seems a bit off to me. In my experience, Anarchs usually run one of each typed breaker(fracter, killer, decoder) and Clome Chip OR they run multiples. Maybe my view is a bit skewed, due to my unhealthy amount of MaxX playing, but all 3 of my MaxX decks that are currently in my rotation of decks (DLR, Big Rig/RegAss, and Devils Food Cake) run one of breakers. So does Timmy’s Whizzard.
Criminals, however, have consistency issues anarchs solve with Wyldside, I’ve Had Worse, Inject, and Earthrise. Criminals are forced to relay on stuff like Visaage, or in case of Endless Waltz, clicking to draw. So I guess my point is, you can’t really use the anarchs use of one of breakers as justification to only play one of breakers in your criminal deck.

Have you tired Mongoose instead of (as well as) Mimic? Have you got any thoughts on that as a breaker?

My only input here is that Mongoose is tight with NRE/Sucker. In Professor, anyway.

Are you running 1x breakers with an AI breaker, such as Faust? Because having 1x of each breaker with an AI is much closer to 2x of each breaker.

In AI suites, the 1x breakers are usually only needed to deal with Swordsman and Wraparound, or to save some cards in the case of Faust decks.

can’t speak to it in his leela build (or in any leela build, I suppose) but I do think mongoose has a place in many criminal decks, especially where influence and cardslots are tight. it has decent-not-great efficiency and pairs really well as a complement to femme that can be played much early and make you “safe” from sentries, similar to having faerie/mimic out.

the other direction to go is to pair it with faeries, and use mongoose to “protect” your faeries until you really need them.

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Yes, in 2/3 I am, but this only furthers my argument that you can not use anarchs as an example of how many of each type of breaker you need.

It’s really good to draw your breakers in a faction that has no way to tutor them at instant speed.

If you draw one of your breakers, then special order can get a new breaker.

Mongoose is a card I don’t like for this reason. Spending one less inf isn’t worth the downside of needing two breakers for one type of ice, especially when that breaker is less efficient than Mimic against most ice anyway.

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But what are you using for the abundance of Ichi, Raven, Gutenberg, Assassin etc? Those are the most common sentries right now as far as I can tell, and Mimic doesn’t touch any of them. Mongoose only handles one, but it does something at least. Or is spending more inf on sucker (and still needing two programs for one ice type) really better in your opinion? Honest question. I’m almost thinking of going back to Escher Ken because of the ridiculous sentries seeing play now.

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So each of those is a Tracer.

Just saying.

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Dat Gingerbread + Mongoose meta.

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I had a Sol deck with nearly all tracer ICE. I matched up against a Pancha-bread deck and pointed out to my opponent that there was no need to add the Tracer subtype to my ICE… she was running on a 4-deep all tracer R&D server.

It was just too damn expensive to break all that ICE.

That said, most of those tracers were sentries >strength 4, because my meta is almost all Mimic, and that seemed like a good way to keep them out. It still didn’t work.

I cry myself to sleep every night as I remember a world with a 3str Ginger. ;_;

@BubbaTheGoat I played a Sol Improved Tracers deck for a while too lol. Did you run sub boost? That card was MVP. Str 6 4 sub Vikram, or Gutenberg Str 7 ETR was too ridiculous. News hound just beats decks so easily for the first score. That’s the #1 reason to run Sol.

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I never used Improved Tracers, I just used most/all tracer ICE for what was otherwise a glacier deck. The idea was the cost:rez ratio was good for all of those ICE, and surveillance sweep made the subs impossible to ignore (Draco).

I’ve looked a Sub Boost a lot, but always shied away from adding Barrier to my high-strength Code Gates and Sentries. The idea was Corroder was too efficient, so I’d stay away from anything that Corroder could break, and gravitate to high-strength Code Gates and Sentries (Archangel, Assassin, News Hound, etc) since the breaking costs of those were all very high.

I considered Rutherford Grid and Improved Tracers, but I stuck with SanSan and Astro and never experimented… now I feel as though I’ve missed out!