Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

Netrunner General
502

I think you forgot your Moose.

3 Likes
503

My stab at it would be something like this:

Gabriel Santiago: Consummate Professional
45 cards

15 / 15 influence: ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

Event (16)
3 Career Fair
2 Employee Strike ●●
3 Fisk Investment Seminar
1 Mad Dash
1 Rebirth ●
3 Special Order
3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (2)
2 The Gauntlet

Resource (20)
2 Aaron Marrón
3 Aeneas Informant
3 Bloo Moose
3 Daily Casts
3 Earthrise Hotel
1 Film Critic ●
3 Temüjin Contract ●●●
2 The Turning Wheel ●●

Icebreaker (5)
1 Aumakua
1 Femme Fatale
1 Inversificator ●●●
1 Mongoose
1 Paperclip ●●●

Program (2)
2 Sneakdoor Beta

The deck retains its high econ and resource focus, and doubles down on HQ pressure to make the corp protect it and capitalise on flood. Obvious rebirth targets are Los, Leela or Cambridge depending on the matchup/board state.

In truth however, the loss of Andy’s blistering start, Medium, Siphon & Desperado may well be too much of a hit to bear.

1 Like
504

I like your breaker suite. I think Inversificator is really good right now, especially with Temujin.

Are you comfortable with no Inside Job/Spear Fishing? I often end up cutting it, since most people will assume you have it, and the threat is often as good as the real thing.

505

you hit the nail on the head, as always the threat is greater than the execution… corps should be double ice’ing remote before scoring against criminal, especially as they now have at least 3 additional slots (no siphon) and the obvious candidates are shutdown/inside job.

the good thing I can see about this build is there are multiple vectors of attack meaning the corp needs to spread resources across all servers rather than a strong remote and rnd.

1 Like
506

And in spreading ICE around, you can push annoying pieces of ICE with Inversificator more easily. I like the same approach.

I think I’m still on Maxwell James, since he fulfills a similar Inside Job role to get into a remote enough of the time, and can double as a little econ denial. Also, IP Block is popular, so the 1 link can at times be appreciated.

1 Like
507

just another thought but it may well be that the best “good stuff crim” in the new meta is actually Adam, who comes with built in RnD & HQ pressure cards and wont be rueing the loss of Siphon + Desperado; and he comes with a better console.

5 Likes
508

Almost funny how many cards the new ban/restricted list knocks out of this deck. Criminal really have been kicked in the teeth by Core 2.0 and the b/r list.

509

You know, I never see it, so it hasn’t really been an issue. I do agree, though, it takes a pretty big hit from it.

Let’s just pretend that I’m really good at future proofing my decks?

Speaking of, here’s the “The spoilers are totally real, guys,” version of the deck that I threw together.

Shut It Down, Turn It Off

Los: Data Hijacker (Station One)

Event (19)

Hardware (3)

Resource (18)

Icebreaker (5)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Revised Core Set

1 Like
510

Aaron is ded as well?

2 Likes
511

Oh, whoops, I thought he was just restricted. Those should probably be Fisk Investments anyhow. Let’s just pretend that’s what it says, and maybe it’ll come true.

Uuuh, ignore any messages saying the post may have been edited.

1 Like
512

I really like Equivocation here. How about replacing Liberated and TW with equi and 3x econ like Peace, Deuces or the Deuce-like TD-events?

513

I really like Equivocation right now as well (my Leela deck plays one and it’s great), but I’m worried that changing the Liberated into anything else will lower the econ too drastically. Peace would prbably be fine, economically, but in a deck where I’m trying to deny the corp credits through de-rezzing ICE and occasionally killing it, giving them free hits of 5c seems maybe self defeating. Deuces and Process Automation feel like too little econ. Getting a buck or two per card just doesn’t do much.

It’d probably be better to go -1 Passant -1 Wheel +1 Equivocation, and then maybe add an Emergency Shutdown or something for the last slot. That way I have 2 potential R&D pressure tools in 1 Wheel, 1 Equivocation, and still have 2 Passants that can be recurred through the SoTs.

2 Likes
514

In a deck where you can often drain the corp 1-for-1 (Rubicon), wouldn’t Peace be more like Sure Gamble 4-6?

515

That’s probably true, but generally I’d prefer to have the corp broke than play more Sure Gambles. Plus, I can’t run the same turn I Peace, giving them an opportunity to leverage that money before I can come drain it again.

516

Dropping an en passant seems like a good option then. Maybe the third SoT for the last slot, there’s a lot of good targets here.

Or a current to fight Scarcity.

517

if that ban list is true criminal is dead… I don’t think they can survive without Temujin which is a shame because its a really criminal card

518

As Kitara dawns, what does Criminal need to be a viable faction again? (Yes, I know the blue Shaper Geist is strong.)

My thoughts: Crim needs some sort of econ. Desperado being gone is really the most crippling hit of all. Temujin was an amazing economic resource, but long before that card came out, it was Desperado that game Criminal its identity as run-based econ faction. Now, it has nothing and is reduced to importing various Anarch and Shaper econ to even have a functional credit flow. The NAPD has done its job way too well for our Criminal friends.

Hand-in-hand with this is the other pillar of Criminal econ - Account Siphon. In the current card pool, the only path Crim has for creating an econ advantage is through complicated ice derez effects that only work if the Corp is using and depending on fairly expensive ice. While Siphon may have been too strong, Criminal needs some way to put pressure on Corp econ while boosting its own.

What else do you think Criminal needs?

I am a huge fan of recent changes in the game, but I will confess that reg Andy was my favorite runner by a good bit and I am very sorry to see the sad state of reg Crim right now.

1 Like
519

Same! I think you hit the nail on the head—Criminal economy has always been rooted in their ability to make money off of runs, either as a side effect (Desperado, Temujin), or as a replacement for normal accesses (Bank Job, Siphon, Au Revoir). All three of the most effective run-based economy options just got taken out of the game, so it’s no surprise that the Criminal that is good is Geist, who doesn’t lean on that traditional pillar for his econ!

Derez effects are neat, but not a “real” economy (in the same way Reina’s old “make ICE expensive to rez” gameplan wasn’t economy)–they are control pieces, and your actual economy has to bootstrap you into your ICE control strategy.

What they need, imo, are replacements for what they’ve lost, at either higher influence cost (to make sure they don’t leak out of faction enough to distort the other faction’s economies), or lower power (higher install cost, lower payoff), or both. OG Netrunner’s version of Siphon was always more fair (corp loses 1, runner gains 10); at four or five pips, that’d probably be fine. Then I do think they need some kind of viable run-based econ option that doesn’t replace accesses. Obviously, the 3c Desperado and 4-for-20 Temujin were too good, but it’s not hard to imagine slightly downshifted effects that are still viable.

In sum: I think Criminal econ needs to go back to its roots by “paying off” runs. Aggressive running is the archetypical criminal plan of attack, and hopefully it’ll be back soon!

520

When you’re the corp, and you sit down across from a blue runner, what do you think? It used to be “Siphon, siphon, ice up centrals for Temujin or Sec Testing, siphon, legwork, inside job, siphon,” in that order. Now it’s, “weird, I wonder what console they’re on. Welp, better ice up R&D.”

I feel like the faction is a bit of a one-trick pony right now. The de-rez effects are the only disruption outside of Leela’s ability. Well, that and Inside Job. Their money options are mediocre, albeit plentiful.

That said, they have some amazing cards in-faction. Aumakua is obv the best early game breaker in the game right now. On the Lam is an amazing tech card that simultaneously protects you from HHN, Snare, and Cerebral Overwriter. Tapwrm is the flavor of the month. The Gauntlet is a great, slot-efficient HQ pressure card.

Of course, these are all low-influence cards, so it’s easy to import any or all of them.

I think the design space for criminal was really poor pre-RevCore. Basically, the faction had 2 overpowered cards in the core set, so you couldn’t make anything too strong. Now you remove those cards and they’re left with huge wholes. The good news is that new cards can fill those wholes in less overpowered ways. The bad news is those cards aren’t out yet.

521

Looking for solutions to Criminal econ, I started looking at IDs that give you money. That’s all of them except for Leela, Geist, and Sil. Then I looked at how Shaper decks are very good and thought, is there a way to play a shaper lock strategy in crim? Finally, I equated The Source + Fall Guy to Clot + Sac Con, and this strange Iain deck was born.

It has a 100% win rate right now because I beat my friend’s Gagarin deck with it. It also gets mad style points for using Tri-Maf (protected by Fall Guy / OtL), Traffic Jam (synergy? with The Source, counters Scarcity), and The Black File (+ LoveGood).

Sourcelock Iain

Iain Stirling: Retired Spook (Honor and Profit)

Event (15)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Inside Job (Revised Core Set)
2x On the Lam (Martial Law)
3x Special Order (Revised Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Revised Core Set)
2x Traffic Jam (The Valley)

Resource (26)
2x Bank Job (Revised Core Set)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Dr. Lovegood (Data and Destiny) ●
2x Drug Dealer (Old Hollywood)
3x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)
3x Fall Guy (Revised Core Set)
2x Film Critic (Old Hollywood) ●●
2x Maxwell James (Terminal Directive)
2x Off-Campus Apartment (Breaker Bay) ●●
1x The Black File (Fear the Masses)
2x The Source (Creation and Control) ●●●●
1x The Turning Wheel (The Liberated Mind) ●
2x Tri-maf Contact (Honor and Profit)

Icebreaker (4)
1x Abagnale (Terminal Directive)
1x Mammon (Terminal Directive)
1x Mongoose (Kala Ghoda)
1x Saker i[/i]

Program (3)
3x Tapwrm i[/i]
10 influence spent (max 10, available 0)
48 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Revised Core Set

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.