Grip, not Hand: Yes We Khan!

Based on this, here’s what I came up with. Won a few quick games on Jinteki with it:

Kahn Cortez

Khan: Savvy Skiptracer (Blood Money)

Event (14)
2x Account Siphon (Core Set)
2x Career Fair (Breaker Bay)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x En Passant i[/i] [color=#FF4500]●●●●[/color]
2x Forged Activation Orders (Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (1)
1x Desperado (Core Set) [color=#4169E1]★[/color]

Resource (17)
2x Blockade Runner i[/i]
3x Compromised Employee (Trace Amount)
2x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Hernando Cortez (23 Seconds)
2x Ice Analyzer (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]●●[/color]
2x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
3x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money)
1x The Turning Wheel (The Liberated Mind) [color=#708090]●[/color]
1x Xanadu (Humanity’s Shadow) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]

Icebreaker (6)
2x Golden (Blood Money)
2x Peregrine i[/i]
2x Saker i[/i]

Program (2)
2x Multithreader (Data and Destiny) [color=undefined]●●[/color]
11 influence spent (max 12-1★=11, available 0)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Intervention

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

Are Threaders better than Datasuckers? Suckers are easier to install, and do more work if you don’t want to bounce things.

4 Likes

So after playing a few more games, I’ve kind of changed my mind on it a bit. It just feels like it relies too much on open server for Temujin and there isn’t enough to keep going once those are shut off. Blockade Runner while first feeling initially ok started dragging me down when I’m trying to search for my third breaker.

So I kind of went back to my original decklist, only I swapped out the Multithreader with Datasuckers (good suggestion) and dropped one Ice Analyzer with a Turning Wheel as lack of multiaccess was hurting me.

Letting En Passat trash an ice is, in my opinion, much better than trying to keep the ‘ice rez harassment’ going which frees up servers for Temujins.

I think Andy rebirthed into Kahn is probably the better way to go, as you’re really almost always spending your first turn using Temujin on archives, which is a shame but I don’t think that’s any different then Anarchs starting with Val or Wiz.

Here’s my current list:

Kahn b2b

Khan: Savvy Skiptracer (Blood Money)

Event (15)
2x Account Siphon (Core Set)
3x Career Fair (Breaker Bay)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
3x En Passant i[/i] [color=#FF4500]●●●●● ●[/color]
1x Special Order (Core Set)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (1)
1x Desperado (Core Set) [color=#4169E1]★[/color]

Resource (16)
3x Compromised Employee (Trace Amount)
2x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
3x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)
2x Ice Analyzer (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]●●[/color]
2x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
3x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money)
1x The Turning Wheel (The Liberated Mind) [color=#708090]●[/color]

Icebreaker (6)
2x Golden (Blood Money)
2x Peregrine i[/i]
2x Saker i[/i]

Program (2)
2x Datasucker (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
11 influence spent (max 12-1★=11, available 0)
40 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Intervention

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

If anyone’s had any luck with some of the suggested changes above, let me know!

1 Like

In this age of good Corp Econ, forcing them to rez ice just isn’t a winning move. It’s why you see such a marked improvement when you start destroying ICE with En Passant instead of just bypassing with Inside Job or de-rezzing with Shutdown/Birds. The entire idea of how Criminals deal with ICE, going around it, isn’t viable anymore.

I’m not a big fan of Ice Analyzer, though I do agree you need more than just the Compromised Employee, so the Analyzer might be the best tool for the job at the moment. (My biggest problem with it is install order. So much ICE hurts to facecheck without breakers installed these days that waiting for a rez and then installing a breaker isn’t a very palatable option.)

3 Likes

I’ve since replaced CE with Account Siphon and Xanadu with En Passant. Seeing how that goes.

I made one change which I’m testing tonight: dropped the 2 Daily Casts for either 2 Kati Jones or one and a Visage, as a decent way to get credits without requiring a run.

Did well with the deck tonight. Here is my final decklist:

So Khan got tested with the entire Flashpoint card pool. Damon and the play testers thought she was playable with her breakers and console.

I can’t figure out how anyone could play with her really expensive and not very efficient breakers and her really expensive console and find her viable. What did Damon see in her that I am missing? I can’t figure out a way to make her ability and her breakers leverage into something that gives her an advantage over a Corp.

I have a feeling her ability was nerfed after playtesting. There’s no other explanation for both her bad ability and her reduced influence. I’m guessing it was originally ignoring all costs and trashing the installed program after the run.

8 Likes

Is that a playtesters “guess”? I think it’s more likely that their meta was off and they expected glacier decks powered by the new ICE released to be a bigger deal. If it is in the future, then I think Khan might become more reasonable.

Her breakers aren’t that expensive. They cost the most in Install cost, and if you use them to Derez. The most costly is Peregrine. Golden compares favorably to Mongoose. Saker has only a mildly worse rate than Corroder.

My take on her is that you need to leverage Criminal LOADS O’ DOSH tactics to use her breakers. Her console is just not at all what she wants to be doing, though. No idea what’s up with that. Desperado is her best bet, until we get a console that cares about ICE rez-states. (Like, if a console gave me credits on de-rez, or credits on rez, that’d go straight into Khan.)

That said, she’s not good. I’d put her as marginally better than Silhouette, but that’s not a high bar to clear. So if you want a 40-card Criminal, Khan’s your girl. Too bad no one really wants a 40-card Criminal. The secondary problem I keep having is that she completely folds to Jinteki damage decks. I can sort of defend against BOOM! or Scorch, but 1000 cuts is killing the deck. (In both senses of the word.)

1 Like

Nope, just a player’s guess. Of course if I were a playtester I couldn’t say, but if I were a playtester I wouldn’t be posting “guesses” on public forums.

I’ve been playing Khan since her release. I can count with the fingers of one hand the games her ability was relevant. I don’t care, i like her.

Years ago i read an article about magic the gathering and the designers giving opions about bad or really underpowered cards. I can’t look for it now, but they chose to do so to cater to players who liked weird cards or weirder decks, enjoyed the challeng of playing underpowered things or simply to avoid an expansión full of powerful cards.

For me, Khan fills all of the above. The game needs Ids and cards like her to attract all the kinds of players.

At least, they gave her the birds, which shows they really care about her. I was afraid of her having no breaker suite.

I’ll play her probably a bit more once the mars cards arrive, just because i like her. I will keep bringing her to every gaming night and every tournament i go (store, regional…) honestly, i don’t care about winning, i know that my game and her ability are sub par, but there’s only one thing i care: playing.

9 Likes

At least she has a cool theme which means, as you say she has appeal outside of “being awesome”.

I played Nero for some time, because I liked him and had heaps of fun running and jacking out on sentries. I just imagined Nero as this big pussy going ‘oh no, a scary sentry run away run away I can’t crumple my suit’

Don’t know if I actually won any games with him… maybe 1 or 2!

So Khan was released in what?—August or September? The card was probably designed more than a year ago. In early/mid-2015, with a vague understanding that you were going to push an economic-themed cycle in 2016 where everyone makes and loses a lot of cash, would you have made the ability more powerful? Maybe. But at the point this card was designed it was probably Data and Destiny time…

So is there some sort of denial game here with Khan where you use Tapwrm and Hernando Cortez to punish the Corp for having 10+ credits and use her breakers to punish them if they keep a low credit total? Keeping a lower credit total also opens up windows for Siphon lock.

1 Like

To me this says, slot a single Beth Kilrain Chang and hostage.

that’s my best guess.

i’m also thinking that, due to her console, you don’t really want to go running around wildly derezzing ICE like crazy

but that being the case, her ability just has fewer and fewer chances to trigger, especially since it’s the very first piece of ice

i’ve found that Deuces Wild is p good with Khan, exposing a piece of ice to see what breakers you need and if the corp can rez it.

but like others, i’ve tried many games with Khan. i would say that about 1 in 4-5 games will i actually use her ability. it’s extremely unwieldy, and Los does what she tries to do a lot better. hell, i’d argue that Geist does it better
Khan always seemed like a ‘fun’ ID to me, but after playing with her, she doesn’t even accomplish that.

“First time you pass an ice” instead of “Once per turn when you pass an Ice” really kneecaps her core ability.

5 Likes

Honestly there is absolutely no reason to ever play this ID (yet). It is probably the most narrow ID in the game, with zero support and reduced influence. I’m skeptical that we will ever receive support for this ID.

In the past, cards that seem woefully underpowered and useless were deemed far too powerful in testing with last minute changes. Examples: Woodcutter/Tyrant/Salvage suite, Monolith, etc. This was said by Damon himself during an interview. It unfortunately only really makes FFG look bad when this happens.

Seeing as how Khan slipped by with ‘hand’ instead of grip in the text my gut feeling is that she probably wasn’t well play tested enough and/or was changed for the worse at the last minute.

2 Likes