Surely Crash Space is nicer in that slot? It has the potential to make you more than 2 credits (if you’re siphoning and clearing, or just running through Data Raven/Gutenberg on occasion). If you’re only siphoning, it’ll match Fall Guy’s econ after the second siphon and be in the green after the 3rd, and it does an even better job against damage protection by preventing some of the meat damage on its own.
EDIT: Plus, it benefits from the discount of Street Peddler.
Early game is Geist’s biggest problem, between accumulating a critical mass of breakers and sustaining setup economy. Fall Guy does the job because it works from 0 creds, costing you no tempo at all. Efficiency isn’t the best, but you really want to be drawing 2+ cards per turn in the early game without having to discard at end of turn, and Fall Guy helps with that.
When you draw it late-game it serves as flatline protection, so it’s not a dead card. It is mediocre overall but justifies itself due to its flexibility and relevance throughout the game.
No Fall Guy, Dirty Laundry, Desperado… You have to start asking if your deck is better as Andy.
Do good players let you just Siphon them 3 times in a game? Around here there’s going to be a Caprice and/or a Crisium on HQ ASAP because people hate getting Siphoned so much.
One Crash Space also doesn’t protect you at all from double 3-point Punitive or 6-point Punitive since they can just pay $2 to trash Crash Space as their first action.
In the case where you don’t need immediate tag removal or damage prevention, Fall Guy is definitely better than Crash as you can just cycle it right away for value.
I’ve not really found this to be true. Granted, I never played much Andromeda (the only time I did was to try B&E since I thought it would be better there first) so I’m not used to the bonus turn she was granted off the bat, but compared to my (@Cerberus inspired) Leela deck, Geist gets his engine up and running very quickly. I’m generally in a position to threaten anything by turn 3 generally, and any one of Sure Gamble, Sec Testing, Dirty Laundry or Street Peddler (when it hits one) will pay for enough breakers to start getting into things, after which Siphon makes mad cash.
It’s definitely in line with those kinds of Andy builds, and honestly my first thought with B&E was that Andy would be the better runner for them, so I built it there first. It’s definitely strong and covers many of the same bases as the Geist deck, but the pace is different. With Andy you have to run more card draw and less pressure cards and your mid-game doesn’t zip along as briskly, but you gain in terms of up-and-running speed. The difference really is that B&E doesn’t speed you up in Andy as much as in Geist and end up only functioning as early pressure/econ cards. They’re not bad in that case, but in my testing Geist has felt like a stronger build.
If your argument is that traditional Andy decks are better than B&E Geist or Andy, maybe? Part of the problem with traditional Andy is that running economy is not as good as it used to be. Corps got cheap ice and better economy so that rezzing to oppose your running econ doesn’t hurt them as much anymore. B&E helps reverse this trend by making the runs cheap again when they need to be, and accelerating you through your deck. B&E Geist plays more like traditional Criminal in a way that modern Andy/Leela can’t.
I don’t think you’d go tag-me if you were using Crash Space for your protection, but I see your point about Fall Guy being useful against Punitive in particular, since you often just need that 1 extra health point on that 1 important turn. Fall Guy doesn’t really help any better against Traffic Accident-> Scorch, though, because they could just wait until the next turn if you preemptively draw with Fall Guy, and if you wait to do it reactively they can trash it the same was they can trash crash space.
I’m probably helped here by the fact that Criminal is unpopular locally so Siphon isn’t as much of a threat, but yeah I’ve been able to land them. Crisium is easier to trash when you don’t have to, say, pay 4 to get into HQ past an Eli on top of the 5 to trash it, and if they’re rezzing Caprice on HQ it’s competing with the one on the remote. Definitely makes the siphoning harder, though, I’ll agree.
My argument is that Desperado, Dirty Laundry, and Sec Test seem like cards that work well when you get them early, which is why they’re Andy staples.
What happens when you get a miserable start as Armand and the Corp gets Ice? Fall Guy is at least functional then, while Desperado doesn’t do much unless you’re fitted to attack, and Sec Test and Dirty Laundry are neutralized.
How’s levy been working for you @linuxmaier? I thought it wouldnt be necessary at first, but against glacier it would be great to have a second run through my deck (I decked and got cut off from the las agenda point I needed las night).
The only thing that worries me is losing mimic, if the corp has too many sentries you can get locked out (maybe your meta doesn’t play sentry heavy?)
Very excited about deck performance, you really feel like an aggro deck, with free runs, refueling your hand as you do it, the aggression really seems to keep up the pressure for so long.
It’s hard to get a bad start with the kind and costs of the cards in the deck. Basically, any two of Sure Gamble (3x), Desperado (3x) Sec Testing (2x) Dirty Laundry (3x) Bank Job (2x) and Street Peddler (2x) is a great start and can likely be enough fuel to get into running mode. I’ve not played against NEXT Design yet but most corps don’t ICE archives against me before turn 2 at the earliest, and more regularly turn 3. The benefit of B&E is that if I get Sure Gamble, I’m at 9 credits and I have enough money to install a full breaker suite with high enough strength to siphon/Dirty Laundry/Sec Test/Bank Job through ICE, and that’s when I start making money while the corp loses it.
I’d give the deck a few practice draws in netrunnerdb and you can see what I’m referring to. I’ve played a dozen or so games and scores of practice draws (I play through the first 3 turns or so of cards) and the starts feel really solid.
I haven’t actually played it yet. I put it in basically because I ran into the same situation as you (though I managed to sneak out the last point) and figured that it was worth losing Zu and Mimic for. I think that if you’ve got 3 Clone Chips and a Levy, you’re not likely to run out of killers against anyone who’s not running a crazy killer based deck. Sentries tend to be expensive for their cost to break so prioritize them as Crescentus/Shutdown targets to make the corp feel poorly about rezzing them, and with 3x Faerie 2x Shiv plus Clone Chips and Levy, you’re looking at killers for days.
So I played with the tweaked version dropping Dyson and putting Grappling E3s in and putting a single Kati in as the “46th” card (which ended up being clutch in my RP game). The 2 Rex worked perfectly fine. Having that 3rd Clone Chip was extremely useful. Oh and having Levy is extremely nice. You really need against glacier. The key is to find the right time for it so you don’t accidentally give the Corp a scoring window.
To answer the Andy questions, where I like Giest w/ B&E is the fact they can help with taxing ice for cheap or you can throw them out early and make runs to help build your rig. It helps keep the tempo up, and there are more times than not you have runs where you draw 2 or 3 cards which is a pretty big deal in the mid and late game where Criminals normally tend to fall off if the Corp can shut down your run Econ. With Street Peddler and a few early B&Es, it’s really easy to get to into run mode as well. I’ll make note to count my click draws and triggers next time I play though.
Did you need both Rexs? Seems like that might be a decent cut if you want to run 1x Kati.
I don’t love the SecTesting/Desperado/Dirty Laundry engine in Armand. As others have stated, there are issues with the setup at the moment, which is part of why Criminal is struggling right now, and importing it into a Runner with a 5-card hand vs. 9-card hand, hoping for better results, seems dubious.
In addition, it’s more Events which whiff on Peddler (not to mention the Legwork over HQI choice), and SecTesting doesn’t even benefit from the Peddler discount.
Even if you keep Desperado, which it’s hard to argue against, I can’t see DL / SecTesting being better than 3 Kati and 3 Fall Guys.
Sec Testing is fine in the current meta; there’s lots of undefended remotes around and the two dominant archetypes (RP and NEH) both have tons of them regularly. John Masanori and Datasucker aren’t efficient in the combo any more because Archives regularly has high quality ICE on it (damn you, Crick) but the rest of the package functions against the decks that are hardest to beat.
Desperado is also as good as it ever was if you’re making lots of runs. It’s important, I think, to remember which parts of the SecTest/Desperado/DL engine are efficient on their own, and which are best improved by the others. Sec Testing is the only piece that has any opportunity cost in terms of clicks. Desperado and Dirty Laundry are just paying you for doing things you normally want to be doing: run a lot. They are also improved by each other’s presence. They’re basically clickless economy in a deck that wants to spend lots of clicks drawing and playing cards, and that’s really valuable.
I’m not a fan of Kati here for two reasons. First, she’s hard to go tag-me with if you’re relying on her for econ. Sec Testing will get trashed, of course, but by the time you go tag me you may not really need it anymore. And besides, you can go ahead and install the other one and make the corp trash that, too, taxing them. With Kati, you have to install it and click to charge it before the corp can trash it happily, which makes it much worse to continue playing after you’re running a few tags.
Second, Kati chews up your clicks more than Dirty Laundry or Sec Testing does. Sec Testing is worth generally at least as much as a Kati click if not more, and if you pile a Dirty Laundry in there it’s much more efficient. Dirty Laundry should be considered to be clickless economy since you should almost never play it for its own sake (the only time I do is if I don’t really have better econ options in the early game, otherwise it’s always riding along during a Bank Job, RnD run, sec testing run or remote check), but rather on a run you already wanted to make.
In Geist if you’re playing B&E, your runs are harder to tax, which should increase the value of your running economy. Andromeda was very nice for getting all those pieces together early, especially John Masanori and Datasucker so you could abuse archives before they had time to ice it up, but it’s by no means necessary to have all the pieces early. The only one I wouldn’t necessarily install/use mid-to-late game is Sec Testing, but the rest all return on their investment very quickly. You don’t need Andy to make those cards good. You just need to be running. And running cheaply means that running economy is a better return than it was before.
@linuxmaier, have you gotten the pop-up(s) from the forum software asking if you’re aware you’re dominating most of the posts in a thread? 
Not yet… I assume it’s because I’m being good about replying to multiple posts with a single post, rather than doing a separate post for each reply. However, point taken! I’ll back off for a bit and play with the cards some more 
Just giving you a hard time. You’re psyched, and I want to see Geist (or ANY Crim) do well in this environ.
If you come to Wausau tomorrow without Geist, I will cock-punch you.
I’m bringing him. Have to pick up my copy of Chrome City (was proxying Crowbar with Gang Sign; felt appropriate) but I talked myself into Geist over Leela. However, I can’t promise to rep Criminal well, since I don’t tend to rep anything particularly well. 
My best non GNK showing so far is 8th at the Madison Store Champs.
I’m glad we’re talking Criminal in general and Geist really rekindled my interest in my favorite faction so I’m all about it. Keep us posted on any Geist gaming this weekend. I’ll be testing some out on OCTGN.
I’m going to be cautious and say yes I did need 2. Even after you use one it can stay on the table to boost the B&E. I hit Kati with a Street Peddler that one game, so yeah that was nice.
Small update: got second in the tournament (22 players i think?) and Geist dropped one game. It has an incredible RP matchup. I’ll likely post more and updated decklist later.