Playing around with Geist lately I’ve been finding Clone Chip + Crescentus is an extraordinarily powerful tool for Aggro Criminal, and just abusive when you draw a card whenever you use one of them. I’ve also been very much enjoying Forger/Decoy with Siphon in Geist, to make the usual tempo loss of clearing the tags into tempo gain. Simon’s remarks on FIS and DDoS got me thinking of where Geist could be by the end of the cycle, and I might test this as a new-style Crim Aggro list:
Good early-game card draw is a big boon for Criminal, and Remorhaz is absolutely right that being able to use Clone Chip effectively is huge at the moment, so I have reasonably-high hopes for this type of list.
It does lose some of the strength Criminal has had against Blue Sun as Crescentus is much less good against Curtain Wall than Shutdown is. Also, I’m not 100% that Geist is the best ID for this archetype. I have a soft spot for Leela who is obviously great at extending the early game (and also likes Crescentus), and Fisk with his Seminar could create a real flood for the corp that makes it difficult for them not to bleed agendas to early pressure. Time will tell I guess - it seems we’re finally the verge of some interesting and viable Criminal archtypes appearing, which is exciting!
I’ve bee doing extremely well versus HB with this MaxX build of super ice-trashing: I’m still not fixed down on every card, especially on what sort of draw I should include, between street peddler/inject/IHW. What I do know is that the 2 Knifed are really amazing in general, Keyhole is a great way to win in just a few turns, imp is soo good, SOT is really necessary to be a 3-of, or Levy could be missed, and Kati gets you economy but I’m still not sure whether she might be better as just a 1-of.
2 Street Peddler
2 Eater
2 Parasite
1 Immolation Script
1 Infiltration
1 Forked
2 Déjà Vu
2 Kati Jones
2 Spooned
2 I’ve Had Worse
1 Levy AR Lab Access
3 Clone Chip
3 Keyhole
2 Desperado
2 Datasucker
3 Imp
3 Same Old Thing
3 Dirty Laundry
3 Sure Gamble
3 Day Job
2 Knifed
Good article man, and props for the Bikini Kill reference.
My issue with Aggro decks has always been that they feel like they rely on consistent random access a little more than other runner decks. Noise and RegAss can push the game to a point where they’ll win on board instead of on having 7 points before their opponent. I tend to prefer Runner decks that just stop the Corp from being able to win, which imo is Aggro’s greatest weakness.
I think this is accurate. It’s a little bit of what I was talking about with its curren meta weakness. If you could have aggro deck current winrates in 2014 worlds meta you’d be escastic. In the current meta I think you want to have a much higher runner and more consistent runner winrate.
Though medium based decks get around this a little bit because the power level of data sucker+medium r&d lock is insane.
More generally, I wanted to respond a little on the differences between reg-ass and parasite maxx.
You can’t really split the difference in them without giving up the Econ engine of the one (liberated/Kati) which are more click intensive and need you to not go lower (laundry/lucky find lets you float low in parasite maxx which you need to do). Additionally, you can’t really afford to use clone chips on breakers in aggro maxx, as it needs them to be parasites to get the necessary amount of destroyed ice. This article was originally going I be a breakdown of just thy deck, but I decided it would be more useful to go more general on aggro decks.
Matchup wise, aggro used to be better vs. Astor because of the speed and consistency it could get out medium, but the clot putting cvs in made it much worse. It still has a much better butchershop matchup, but that isn’t relevant any more. Rp is a little bit worse, but still really strong. HBFA and weyland glacier as the big matchups where you lose a lot vs. reg-ass.
In summary, for basically all relevant decks reg-ass is better, but if the meta shifts it can go back to a place where parasite is better.
