Seems like a straw man response. Of course, if you take your Geist deck and put in Khan with minor changes it doesn’t seem to work well.
Why are you assuming the inside job is just to install a cloud beaker? Maybe you put in link (2x Rabbit Hole may not be too bad), or maybe just put in a 2 MU console. You don’t necessarily need more than 4 cloud breakers out to win the game. Against a low strength ice, her ability could just be to replace the breaker she just used.
The premise seems sound enough to give it a try. What is Khan best at? Installing icebreakers. How can you leverage that ability? Install a lot of icebreakers. Is there an icebreaker suite that would benefit from installing a lot of them…
I think we’re mostly in agreement that it’s probably not better than Geist.
But, why try discourage anyone from trying? The only other option is just wait and hope they give her more support. Or do you have a better idea from the current card pool that has a better shot at being better in Khan?
Not a straw man. It just seems to me we’re going out of our way to prove that she’s best at something.
Anyway, I’m not discouraging anyone from building those decks at all. I’ll try them too. I suggested Inside Job because if you’re installing breakers to install breakers, it seems like you’re losing ground. Job lets you challenge an access and then get your ability to fire.
I think that’s the point for competitive deckbuilding (or at least a point). A lot of cards can be narrow and powerful, so you want maximize being in that narrow space and evaluate if it’s worth it. For some cards it’s easy, like Whizzard. Since the runner can’t control how Corps will build their decks, you just have the approximate the meta and answer how often you’ll use those recurring credits. For most of the game’s life, the answer was not often enough, but recently, it’s been very often.
With Khan it’s harder. If everything aligns, you may be able to get a free install and a credit discount per turn. That’s not too bad (maybe it compares to Gabe’s 2 credits for HQ runs). So you try B&E breakers, or Chameleon, or London Library and Femme, or a ton of bypass effects and run success benefits and see if it’s worth it.
I wanted to get plenty of games in before I posted it. So I’ve played more than twenty games. This is a fun Khan deck that has been pretty good for casual play. It’s won 16 games out of 20 on casual Jinteki and local game night. This is omitting the 3 flatline loses due to play mistakes:
Running too aggressively against PE and hitting a Fetal on 3rd click and not having enough clicks to draw up and dying to Bio-Ethics and EMP, while already winning.
SEA Scorch Scorch flatline against BaBW by forgetting to check credit total after having such a huge econ lead early.
Hitting Brainstorm against Big Boy’s deck (his deck not him) with Faerie in hand on the first turn. I knew of the deck already, but didn’t think I would be playing twice in a row and was on autopilot.
(So if you want to include my play mistakes, it has a 70% in causal then 80%.)
I basically just took my active Andy deck, took out the breaker package (including the Special Orders) and added cloud breakers and Rabbit Holes. Here are some observations after playing this deck for a while:
This deck is better in Andy (without the changes). This deck won’t win World, ANRPC final event, or even a regional. But you can win GNK’s and have fun doing it. Probably qualify for ANRPC final event with it too.
Khan’s ability is probably underrated. If you’re anything like me you don’t like to install breakers ever. With Khan you get to install them when you’re already doing thing you want to do with criminal anyway: running. And at a discount. Welcome back to the days of facechecking.
I think Khan is closer to an aggressive Gabe/Andy deck than Geist, even though it uses the cloud breakers.
I think I usually install 4 to 7 breakers a game using Khan’s ability. It’s nice to be able to install all but one breaker for 1 credit or less and no clicks.
It’s 2-4 clicks slower than Russian NEH. Sometimes it gets into these situations where they have Vanilla or Quandary on a central server that you want to hit repeatedly but Corroder or Zu is at the bottom. If you see a lot of Russian NEH or gearcheck rush decks, try to fit in one Special Order. But I haven’t seen any of it in a while, maybe it’s been hated out by the other TC runners?
This deck doesn’t need Levy and Corroder seems to work better than Paperclip (although I haven’t tried Paperclip).
Rabbit Hole is nice, but I haven’t seen CTM or SYNC much lately. Maybe it’s just last month’s flavor. You can probably switch out to one mem chip instead and have no MU problems unless you want Sneakdoor the whole game.
Sneakdoor and TC are so nice. When Corps hardly play ice, it’s nice to make them defend all 3 centrals and a remote if they’re not trying to FA.
Turning Wheel and Freedom through Equality win games. Especially against those EtF decks that think NEXT ice is going to help against Criminal. Just keep bouncing off those Silvers and Bronze and get a 8-card access.
Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions. I haven’t putting in any hate cards until I get the feel for it’s weaknesses. You may want to meat protection if you see a lot of Butchershop or Boom! becomes amazing (probably outside of Weyland).
@beyoken played a similar deck in this video that may give you a sense of how it plays (I developed my deck independently from Ben, but published it today because I use Meteor as my main deckbuilder):
Golden is not terrible with Khan. I’ve used the derez ability more often that I thought I would. It saved me against an early Data Raven that got a counter with a 8+ trace that I didn’t think he would use, but he didn’t didn’t have 2 Scorches for a while. It was the BaBW game that I eventually lost, but not because of the Raven, but just the regular SEA Source after I missed tracking our credits. A lot of time Golden becomes a mini-Vamp that you want to trade on because this deck has a lot of econ.
Correct, but it can’t be used when unrezzed. You can avoid running it or be prepared to derez it again if you need to and clearing any tags they might give you. IIRC, in this game I derezzed it and never had a reason to run that remote again.
I’m kicking around the idea of a Bird breaker deck that uses Hernando Cortez to up the price of all the ICE and then just derezzing it with the breakers, Emergency shutdown, and maybe crescentus.
What other things should go in this to make it work?
Sort of falls outside of the scope of Khan decks, but I think it’s a cool idea for her breaker suite until she gets some more support printed.
Hell, if you have Autoscripter then you don’t even spend a click to install Golden/Peregrine. That sounds pretty nasty tbh. But you’d be better off in Andromeda/Gabe/Leela I’d imagine.
The idea is that you want to break with Golden/Peregrine, bounce it, then pass the ice and reinstall using two Sahasrara to not pay any money, even get a credit if you install onto a Scheherazade.
It’s a strong play and only limited by the fact you could only do it to Sentries before Peregrine. Fairchild 3.0 looks like a brutal piece of ICE, though.
with Autoscripter and Khan’s ability, you effectively have 5-click turns. just install enough support to help you pay for all the programs you’re installing as well.
Scheherazade, Sahasrara, Technical Writer, etc.
i would also like to again make the case for Ice Analyzer, which definitely synergises with what the deck is trying to do imo but is also only 1 influence for a runner with only 12
and i think to supplement that, you’d want Desperado, Datasucker, Temujin Contract, Security Testing, John Masanori, and even Dirty Laundry and High Stakes Job, and you force your opponent into a situation where they must rezz ICE to try to stop or tax you, or you end up gaining a benefit from successfully completing the run above and beyond what you’d normally get (ie: accesses)
i think the main thing we’re waiting on though is her barrier breaker. maybe she has a console as well? i still don’t think we’ve really gotten the ‘criminal pack’ yet this cycle, even though we have an ID already.
How many people are running barriers worth derezzing these days, compared to code gates and sentries? If it’s all Vanilla and and Resistor and such, why wait for the barrier breaker? The console, though, would be nice to see. Hopefully it’ll synergize well with her ability and/or the bounce icebreakers.
I hope that her console reduces the cost of each icebreaker by 1. It’s simple, and it really helps with her bouncing breakers. It should probably do something else too. I assume it would just be one more memory, maybe a link if we’re getting fancy, but probably not.
