yeah, i’ve said this many times. there was no reason to limit it to the very first piece of ice.
that said, i don’t know if making it once per turn (whenever you wanted) would even be enough to salvage her. this restriction was just kicking her when she was down.
yeah, i get the sense that a lot of changes are done last minute without further testing, which is unfortunate. ‘it’s too broken’ because ‘let’s make it completely useless’
on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have things like Sifr and Controlling the Message, so i guess for the sake of card viability, it needs to be underpowered in testing lol
My current build uses her three bird breakers and three low-cost breakers (Corroder, Zul, Mimic) with the idea that you want to only use the birds for higher cost ice.
It is not an elegant solution but it seems like relying on the birds alone is terribly inefficient, so I’m looking for a solution that makes sense.
This is a testing deck that is not close to fully polished. Part of the purpose of the deck is to use as many Flashpoint cycle cards as I can justify to test them a bit. I’ve played with GPI Net Tap, but never had a moment when I actually wanted to install it. I am close to that point with Recon Drone, but want to give it a go at least once against a Jinteki deck to see if it enables aggression vs. remotes.
Khan herself has been worth no more than 5 credits in any game I’ve played, which confirms the general sense people have that she is not a very good ID. I’m still trying to figure out what the designers intended with her, though.
Cortez and Tapwrm do create some interesting synergies with her breakers and Account Siphon. If the Corp gets 10+ credits, the Cortez tax on rezing ice starts to bite some and improve the trade-off from using the derez. If the Corp tries to stay below 10 credits, then the derez is also punishing and they get within effective Siphon range.
All that said, the deck probably would be better with just about any other ID. I suppose I am learning that I am not a top-level competitive player in that I really enjoy trying to figure out how the various IDs are meant to work and how to make them function.
drop Recon Drone
drop some extra copies of your connections for a hostage; maybe drop some altogether
i’m also thinking you could probably skip corroder/mimic/zu.13 with all the cloud breakers and go with the cloud breakers instead. Spike is probably a gamble with all the Vanillas, but with Autoscripter, it seems not bad. Crowbar is probably the best value in the sense that it normally costs 1, and you’ll get that discount compared to Shiv’s 0-cost, but i think Shiv is the one you’ll want to run the most of
i’m also starting to agree that leveraging rezzes/derezzes isn’t really the way to go. you’re only going to derez so many pieces of ICE throughout a turn with the bird breakers, and if you’re running a bunch of other derez effects, why bother with the bird breakers. that said, you’re not going to trigger her ability very often unless you throw in the cloud breakers.
‘slots and all that,’ but i think it’s the best way to leverage her ID. otherwise, you might as well be any other criminal, even Nero
I was having success with the bird breakers and Compromised Employees, but that was an old-school Crim econ option that doesn’t hold up to newer brands of aggression.
Also, the problem with derez effects in general right now is that with ICE Destruction being prevalent, we see cheaper ICE, which is naturally stronger against derezzing effects. So derezzing becomes a worse idea.
Personally I’d love to see Criminal icebreakers that care about the rez cost of the ICE. Something like a suite that starts at strength 10, but can only be used to break ICE with a rez cost less than 5.
Khan feels like a dead-end design. They give her an ability and a set of cards that are tied, but it’s like they had to make shitty breakers to avoid them to be widely used by other runner (Peregrine sees a few plays btw) and give her a narrow use ability so she can’t take advantage of some standard, average breaker. Then she’s stuck. Geist have been much more lucky.
I’ve tried her anyway when she was released. At this time, only Golden was available and felt it wasn’t worth the try (remember, asset spam and low strength ice were already a thing back then). I tried a deck loaded with one-shot breaker (Crowbar, Spike, Faerie over Shiv because no link) along with a basic suite (I’ve tried several of the usual Criminal one) so I can hopefully trigger her ability 3 or 4 times a game. I have recollection of something decent. At least someone on casual J.net room told me it was the most interesting Khan deck he saw. Not sure I won this game, though.
while that is true, even the most asset-spammy of asset spam decks will have something like Tollbooth or DNA Tracker in there somewhere
also, with things like Compromised Employee, Ice Analyzer, Collective Consciousness, and Xanadu, you can make even a Vanilla something the corp will think twice about before rezzing. it’s still a bad strategy though. i think Los will be able to do this very well, however, mostly because he doesn’t hamstring your choices like Khan’s ability does
Latest iteration that actually uses all her influence. (Note: If you play Hernando Cortez on Jinteki, the card is not automated there. You have to have your opponent manually click the credits.)
The deck aims to put the Corp into forks. Ice up HQ to protect against Siphon, get the Gauntlet. Build up lots of money, pay Cortez and Tapwrm. Keep credits low, get your ice derezed and get Siphoned. Khan’s ability is more about saving clicks than saving credits.
Damon Stone on the Theophilius Bagpiper podcast says that the bird breakers were never meant to be used as the primary or only breakers for a given runner. I’ve been trying to make Khan work for all this time and I’m not supposed to be using her breakers?
I think that using them as an interesting way to get by ICE occasionally is fine, but those things aren’t anywhere close to efficient enough for me to want to use as regular breakers. Maybe Abagnale, since that one has a good strength, has a 1-1 break ratio, and pumps at an okay rate half the time. Using them exclusively, though, is just not the best option. I usually feel the same about Geist. I like his breakers, and will include them, but I’m going to also usually want 1 of each regular breaker to use if needed as well.
I think you mean Peregrine. It and Saker are pretty good if you have access to just one Datasucker counter (or Net-Ready Eyes). But, all of that adds to the overhead of using the Aviary rig efficiently.
I’ll definitely have to listen to this podcast next, since I’m curious to figure out the ideas behind Khan’s design.
I both did mean Peregrine, and I didn’t mean Peregrine =P. On the one hand, it is fairly reasonable in terms of break ratio for low str ICE. However, the pump ratio is real bad for almost any played Code Gate but Fairchild 3.0 and Mausolus. I really was thinking of Abagnale, but for some reason I thought that her breakers were the ones with the trash ability. I forgot the de-rez breakers existed at all, because they’re so insanely expensive for doing what they do. Even if you use Peregrine to break a Fairchild 3.0, you installed for 5, broke for 6, and de-rezzed for 2. That’s 13 damned credits for something the corp paid 6-9 credits for, depending on if it’s the first or the 4th ICE on a server. Especially considering the newly neutered runner money, this trade is so bad that it apparently gave me amnesia about its existence at all =P
