Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

I have been playing Na’Not’K/Mongoose + Faeries and been reasonably happy so far.

Would add Inversificator as decoder option. It’s terribly strong and interacts well with Maxwell James and Mongoose.

Aumakua makes Tapwrm not as good…so I’ve been experimenting with Mammon and Vamadeva. But Mammon is really hard to pilot well and Vamadeva is more terrible than ever with so many multisub/nasty barriers. So yeah…I’d stick with Aumakua.

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Good point. Indeed, it may be that Criminal are the best faction to use Inversificator now that all the Shaper econ is restricted.

I don’t understand this justification. Inversificator is restricted too, no? Or are you saying that Crim non-restricted econ options (Tapwrm and perhaps Aeneas Informant) are better than Shaper non-restricted econ options?

I think he’s meaning that Crim doesn’t really care about importing things like Opus or Aesop’s or other restricted cards, so importing Inversificator might be a good place to get a restricted card.

Right. And Shaper basically always wants another restricted card, so can’t really play Inversificator.

Agree with your reasoning. I think there are two strong restricted cards for Steve. Inversificator and Film Critic.

NutritionalZero tested out Aesop’s for a while and (I recall) found that while remote/HQ pressure was good, R&D pressure was too weak. (I think you tested Aesops for a while too…what we’re your conclusions?) I have tons of fun with Clone Chip Steve, but I find that chip plus Faerie takes too much influence and deck slots.

Inversificator is great with Maxwell James and The Gauntlet. But I’ve finally honed in on Critic since it drastically jacks up the odds against PU and PE, works well with Aumakua, and leaves more influence for R&D pressure which I use for Equivocation and/or Turning wheel.

I think Aesop’s Steve has a lot to offer and it may be one of the best options for Criminal right now. The R&D pressure is weak, but that is kind of a ubiquitous problem right now for everyone. To be honest, my biggest problem with Aesop’s Steve is that it felt too much like playing a Shaper deck and not enough like a Criminal. It was pretty strong as the game developed but lacked early game aggression.

I’ve been playing 1 equivocation and 1 turning wheel for R&D pressure. Getting one of these early forces the Corp off of HQ a little. And then I can usually get one more big dig as a last ditch.

Did you have any updates to the list you posted in the Steve forum?

Seems like Zamba could be good in an Aumakua + GPI Net Tap deck. Could be played as Silhouette…but I’m thinking even better as Rubicon Los: Recover the derez bucks with Keros and GPIZamba bucks while loading Aumakua. Included The Supplier cause all that hardware. Datasuckers for extra Aumakua speed. Setup is an issue, but even just a couple of cards in the rig can get some early pressure.

Thoughts?

Exposy Los

Los: Data Hijacker (Station One)

Event (9)

Hardware (10)

Resource (17)

Icebreaker (6)

Program (4)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
46 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Sovereign Sight

Deck built on [NetrunnerDB](https://netrunnerdb.com

I’m just trying to map this out in my head…

With GPI Net Tap, Los, Keros, Zamba, Rubicon Switch, and Turtle, you can effectively run, expose, rez and derez a piece of ice with rez cost 4 or lower for net 0 credits while gaining a Turtle counter (which is worth ~1 credit on its own). The corp loses up to four credits.

That’s pretty good! I see a couple of issues though;

  1. What happens if you approach the ice and discover it’s, say, Fairchild 3.0 and you have a 1 strength Turtle and 1 Datasucker. If you trash the GPI Net Tap, you lose this part of your game plan. I don’t think Datasucker helps, I think Dean Lister is a better include because it saves your GPI and helps your Turtle break much stronger ice. If the corp purges, Datasucker and Turtle are in the same boat anyway. The other thing I thought about was Faerie.
  2. Los wants to run early and aggressively, but Rubicon favours not letting ice get rezzed until you can afford to derez it. I’ve never wrapped my head around how to balance this.
  3. Deck seems very, very poor. Rubicon also makes your turns click intensive and setup intensive (plus you have to deal with the ice if you don’t want to lose GPI) so some kind of clickless econ would be good. I consider Supplier to simply mitigate all those install costs rather than actually boosting your econ to normal levels…
  4. Hunting Grounds out, second Turning Wheel in? Turning Wheel seems a great way to derive additional value from turns where you’re doing nothing but running, breaking, derezzing, and putting something on Supplier. “On encounter” ice like Data Raven you can simply bump into once a turn, eventually the corp will stop rezzing it. However with Komainu you might spend 5 breaking it and 5 to derez. You’re 6 credits down once you factor in Zamba, Los, Keros and the corp is 5 credits down. Not sure how great that is in the short term. Trash the GPI and wait for another one? Leads back to having more econ or Faeries, I think. In the long run I don’t think a Jinteki player can afford to keep rezzing the same Komainu over and over though…

EDIT: Oh and I would vote for a cheeky Drive-By (pet card, ymmv) or a Rip Deal to get back GPIs or Dean Listers, You’ve got the HQIs for it.

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Doesn’t work on Fairchild 3.0, since it’s a Code Gate for like, no reason.

If only we had a Faerie for code gates, that would be sweet. Abagnale is okay-ish if you burn it to bypass a high-strength code gate, but the install cost is high. I would love a Faerie equivalent for code gates. Turn and burn, turn and burn!

@nutritionalzero made several good points.

I wish you good luck with the deck.

I question whether a single Equivocation gives you enough bang to be worth the 3 influence. Medium was strong at 3 influence. Equivocation is not in the same ball park with Medium, though.

I gather you are trying to do a somewhat slow set up using the Supplier. I wonder if more burst econ (Liberated or Peace) might help you get where you want to go. As I see it, this deck has kind of a Shaper feel in that you really don’t want to run much until you get your tools all in place. Some ways to accelerate to that board state might be helpful.

SIDE NOTE: I think this is one of the big problems Criminal has right now. Almost every viable Criminal build is basically some version of a big-rig, Shaper-esque board. The faction used to be about early aggression, but it seems like it just does not have the tools to play that game these days.

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Granted Andy was a bit more big rig since she had enough early tempo to afford it, but losing the low cost breakers (Corroder, Zu) most viable non-AI breakers are now 4 to install. That’s a huge tempo hit to an aggressive deck that’s try to get accesses in the early game before economy has really stabilized or had time to build

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I just threw this idea deck out for discussion. Thought it might be more interesting than the cyberdelia discussion, but I guess not;) After only a couple of games I gave up on the idea.

I have a Steve deck that runs 2x critics, 1x equivocation, 1x turning wheel, 3x saccon that gives a reasonable amount of R&D pressure…especially since Steve ID trigger is so strong on HQ. I like this construction better than Indexing and I consider it one of the best uses of influence right now for criminal.

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One of each is 15c, finding 5 cards + a run, you’d better play Peace in our time for all that I guess :dizzy_face:

This is a long time without any impact on what the corp does, so when this is working, I often comment this as “too late bro” ?

This is obelus-tier, no ?

Supplier is supposed to get all that hardware out for less. But as Nutritional and Walloon basically point out, it requires too many pieces to be be good.

See point #3 in my original post.

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The supplier just means another moving part to me : how many clics you’ll use to find that and are those clicks worth vs the c. economy you make with it ? This is better than a gamble after install 4, no ?

Also, 1xinstall faceup / turn is even slower and predictable : corp won’t rez outermost and play hide & seek with CVS or Battys, or an occasional purge, that would make you trash GPIs.

The deck need more shade, and more early impact to me. And money. And cards.

Well, quite a lot in B&B. Invalid, to me. You need Acacia & Mamon on top of this imo, so you can reboot with ease the Turtle after a purge. Increasing Corp needs to purge AKA putting Tapwrm isn’t a great idea, so you play without it too (plus, if you plan is to keep the corp poor, don’t play Tapwrm).

You could have a look at Aghora / Xanadu.

Corp piloting against that is in the same family of general defense than Nasir, and this is slower than Reina…