I’m not sure if you can make anything amazing with three more influence … currently my influence spread is Paperclip, Gordian, Keyhole, Temüjin x3, Strike x2, Film Critic. The last one is kinda flexible, I personally like Film Critic a lot.
The only thing I’d l really ike to add is a Feedback Filter. The PU matchup is horrible if your breakers/Special Orders hide in your deck. Scrubber or a third Strike would also be nice, but currently I don’t miss them. The problem with all of those is: I’m not sure what to cut. I can maybe make room for one of them, but probably not three - and then I rather keep the Gordian. So right now I’d rather replace the Passport than the Gordian.
I think with 2 strike you’re already teching pretty heavily against PU.
Keeping Gordian is a legitimate choice if there’s nothing you’re dying to put in though. Corps will be expecting Crim to drop it, so they may stack code gates.
Here’s what I played for the TD launch event tonight (casual play in a core+TD meta). I think it was pretty good, and Mammon + Dean Listers is even more bonkers than I was expecting - it’s better at getting into remotes than stimhack! I recommend going up to 3x on both. LLDS Memory Diamond is a bit pricy, but it helps your memory while you wait to draw your 1x Desperado, helps your hand size for Dean Lister, and undoes the brain damage that Stimhack does.
Mammon is just fantastic design btw - an even more interesting AI drawback than Eater and Faust (ok Faust doesn’t really have a drawback). You have to run aggressively to get the corp to rez ice, so you know how many Mammon counters to put out next turn.
Nah Skorpios doesn’t help against Faust one bit. The runner controls what cards they trash to Faust, they’re certainly not going to trash a card they want to recur later.
Ice is pretty beefy these days (until TBB publishes a deck with Sifr at least…) so the runner might not have a choice about which cards to hold back if they NEED to get in somewhere. Still, they can discard one at a time and try to bait the corp into RFGing something they don’t mind losing before they discard something better… or bluff them and throw away the thing they want to keep the most first, hopng the corp will assume there’s something better coming along later!
So for a scrub like me trying to keep up with the latest and greatest, can I get an explanation of sorts re: inversificator in Andy decks? How does that usually play out? Feels expensive to get going, but then is it about controlling ice a la fairchild, dna tracker, tollbooth etc by putting them on servers that I don’t care about and forcing the corp to keep playing ice or just let me get through whatever crap I put in place instead?
The 6 install cost and having to cut one of my two mediums is scaring me, but I am currently considering it. So convince me. @anon50033301?
[quote=“firesa, post:489, topic:6796”]
cut one of my two mediums[/quote]If you don’t play Gordian Blade (and have some other solution to stacked high strength code gates you mentioned), then likely you don’t need the Inversificator. It’s good as a Gordian replacement, giving you many possibilities - moving annoying code gates somewhere you don’t want to run, replacing rezzed code gates with unrezzed ice to force the corp to spend more on rezzing, putting easy to break code gates on servers you want to run frequently.
Inversificator Andy is great. You have so much money that you don’t really care about the install cost and the ability to rearrange ice is quite strong.
Maybe this is true of Shaper and Anarch, as well, but it seems like Criminal has a fair number of IDs that are tricky to play against if you do not know how to play against them, but much less impressive once you work that out.
Leela, for me, is the prime example. For a while, I lost to Leela regularly and did not really know how to cope with her ability. Then, once I figured out a few simple changes in my play style, I found her much easier to beat. I suspect Los is similar. I’ve only played a couple games vs. Los, but I’m already picking up on the fact that I need to think differently about how I play ice and when I rez it vs him. I think if I ever get to the point where I figure out the right approach, he will seem much less bothersome.
Geist is similar in that he does not play like a conventional Runner, although his weakness seems to be less about play style and more about deck build match up problems.
Andy, of course, is a contrast to these points. So, I expect is Steve. I suspect Steve will be the “vanilla” Criminal once Andy rotates, although perhaps that title will go back to Gabe.
I’d like to take a moment to recognize how much the meta has changed since this thread first took off. A year ago, posts in this thread were doom and gloom about how criminal was essentially unplayable at a competitive event, with only a few good matchups, but no where near the raw power of Faust Whizz.
Now there are multiple viable criminal ID’s and decks, with Criminal the most represented runner in the top 16 at GenCon.
I’ve been feeling good about Criminal since late 2016, but now I think the community can recognize that we are well around that corner.
I agree that Criminal has been good for longer than most players have noticed. But, I’m not sure what you mean by this:
Andromeda has been in 5 of the T16 and took the top spot, but Whizzard was in 9, and 2 other Anarchs took the other 2 spots. Still a very strong showing for Blue.
I feel like crim is still strong. Shaper got the best turn on rotation, and anarch got the worst, but I feel like Criminal is still pretty reasonable with a number of viable decks.
That said, I’m not convinced that corps are going to do a lot more scoring behind ICE than they were before. 3/4 corps have in-faction FA (sorry NBN), and defensive upgrades are still pretty weak post-Caprice. Both Clot and Film Critic will be very relevant in the next meta, which isn’t great for criminal.
I think without Account Siphon in the world, Crisium becomes at least a little less attractive.
As for me, I’ve been playing some with a deck based off of one of @Benjen’s Los decks. Sadly, Compromised Employee went away, so the ICE rez payoff is less, but it’s still a pretty good deck.
15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Revised Core Set
En Passant is a pretty hilarious punishment once they decide that an ICE isn’t worth rezzing any more. It’s also perfectly fine to run, break an ICE, shut it down with Rubicon, then En Passant it away forever, working kind of like an all-purpose cutlery. Id’ like it to maybe have a little more R&D pressure, because sometimes Equivocation is on the bottom, but other than that it plays pretty well.
