Uh, no.
Quetzal and Kit
Dyson Fractal Generator, Lockpick, Silencer
BlacKat, Refractor, Switchblade
12 Decoders: 2 Anarch, 4 Criminal, 6 Shaper. Cyber-cypher
11 Killers: 2 Anarch, 6 Criminal, 3 Shaper. Faerie
10 Fracters: 3 Anarch, 2 Criminal, 5 Shaper. Corroder
It also makes sense flavorfully for Shaper to be good at breaking code gates, Criminal → sentries, and Anarch → barriers.
yeah I thought is glaringly obvious and an accepted fact. the favored ice types are deliberate design decisions (and a nice touch, i might add)
You have the answer in faction though. Power shutdown for 0 bye Faerie. You’ve traded cards 1 for 1 and credits 1/0 and announced that every unrezzed Ice on your board is Archer, Grim or Sagittarius.
What sentries are you playing? This is one of several reasons I prefer the no-archer builds. 
Watch out for confirmation bias and seeing what you’re expecting to see - for instance, you’re completely disregarding the fact that Shapers have both the most Fracters (like, as many as the other two factions combined) and that Lady is arguably better than Corroder as soon as you run the necessary support, which doesn’t seem to disqualify Cyber-cypher in the “pick the best decoder” endeavor two lines earlier. If you’d go with something like “Well, but everyone splashes Corroder and noone splashes Lady, so it’s clearly better”, then by that logic suddenly “the best killer” will obviously be Mimic and “the best decoder” will probably be Yog.
You could just as easily argue different lines of division, like:
Guess what I’m saying is that you can find all sorts of patterns if you go looking for them (and just because someone found one pattern two years ago doesn’t mean it’s The Key To How Netrunner Is Designed™). Furthermore, whatever patterns you’re looking for in the factions thematically should probably strive to cover the entire card pool and not just the breakers in a vacuum - that’s foolishness.
First pick in my Ken are 3 Faeries and against many decks it’s enough.
I don’t want to play Datasucker + Mimic as it costs influence, I can be locked out and I don’t run as much as other crims. Lone Mimic won’t let me break Data Raven, Ichi, Taurus, Grim etc.
I have Femme, but I simply hate the install price. Same goes for Garrote.
Alias fits my deck. It’s cheap to install and not that bad in terms of efficiency. I learned to like the central breakers.
Discussing about Cerberuses is irrelevant imo : best breaker for each category are dogs, beside d4vid, yogs or those sort of things.
Their problem is the recursivity only : people says Cuj.0 is bad, but actually it’s a faery that works more than 1 time and cost only +2. It can break Tsurugi two times for 4cr for exemple, architect 4 times for 12.
If you want to break architect 4 times with Faery it will cost you more than 12cr with Cuj.0 in a tempo view :
=> to break Architect 4 times, you’ll have to draw then reinstall or draw then recurse 4 times Faery and pay 4 in total. That’s 8 clicks of prep + 4cr + recursion cost + lost clicks of draw something else.
=> since you can’t compress clicks and cred compresses then in the middle term I think breaking Architect via Cuj.0 is better than with Faery.
Well yes, if you ignore the +3 install cost.
Trouble is, they can special order/SOT special order for more Faeries, AND they can draw harder than you can. They also have some other killer(s) in their deck.
Weyland (especially Blue Sun) has the toughest matchup vs. Criminal. It’s tough to keep them out and they have some of the best answers to your giant ICE. Plus all derezzing nonsense is in Criminal. But they don’t like Power Shutdown. You only get 3 goes at getting a Faerie in most Criminal builds. If you can somehow land an Archer against Criminal it’s often game. I personally don’t like leaving Archer out, but you don’t want to rez it to tax the runner against Criminal.
I maintain that Power Shutdown is the best answer to Faerie. Faerie is scarily good though.
Faerie and Imp battle for the 3 influence program slot in all my Shaper decks. Like all programs it’s (even) better in shaper.
Well yes indeed, if you ignore 20+ draws.
Cuj.0 is probably overcosted, yeah.
I really liked how this worked the last couple of times I played Crim as well. I will say the same is not true of 1x Corroder, 1x Lady, since everyone still runs barriers like whoa and Crim has no recurrence (speaking of faction-specifics :)).
Agreed. The problem is, as ever, ensuring stealth credits appear when needed, rather than when they damn well please, which for me often seems to be “a turn or so too late” :). But if you’ve got room for Ghost Runner and Cloaks, it’s pretty dang hott.
My default criminal breaker suite:
x1 Passport
x1 Rex
x1 Yog
x1 Mimic
x1 Femme
x2 Faerie
x2 Corroder
x2 Datasucker
Default breaker suite for Shaper:
x2 Corroder
x1 Femme
x1 Mimic
x2 Gordian
x2 Datasucker
Default breaker suite for Anarch:
x3 Parasite
x3 Datasucker
x3 Clone Chip
x3 Deja Vu
Without reading the entire thread, my go to Killer is Mimic + Faerie. You really only need Faerie for Archer/Grim, and possibly a poorly timed run against Ichi.
I have seen Switchblade used to good effect with Silencers + Datasuckers. It roflstomps RP.
with the zodiac ice getting fleshed out now, I hope the time has come
for gingerbread
I think this used to be the case. But with Architect and Lotus Field (not to mention Wraparound) you really do need at least Crypsis and a plan to make use of it.
While Switchblade is very playable, a rig with silencers is too slow in this meta dominated by NEH with multiple Architects and is somewhat hurt by Blue Sun since Power Shutdown can really hurt the rig if timed right. Was playtesting 3x Faerie, 1x Switchblade, 1x Femme Fatale for worlds (datasucker support with 3x Silencer as only stealth credits) to help the Andy vs RP match-up.
all valid points, but I think you’re neglecting a thematic angle.
Shapers run to test themselves, to push the boundaries. Decoders are their ‘favored’ ICE; they like the challenge; they want to crack the code.
Criminals are… well, criminals. Hitmen, con-artists, mercenaries… they don’t want to be detected (Tracers), and are just waiting for a nasty piece of ICE to show its head (Sentries) so they can put it down (with Killers). Threat neutralized, continue the infiltration.
Anarchs just want to get in, period. They can be jinxed by a simple riddle (Enigma, anyone?), but they’ll be damned if they’re gonna be kept out by sheer force-of-ICE. They will tear the kingdom down to get to the data, and for thousands of years, there has been one favored tactic to keep people out of places: Barriers.
The Stealth Dogs gave each faction an answer to its anathema. For Shapers, force-of-ICE can be their biggest weakness. Battering Ram is a great answer, but is MU heavy. Criminals have difficulty cracking the code; precious seconds opening that Code Gate could cost them the operation, and Peacock ain’t so fast. Anarchs, well, there is a price to be paid for your recklessness, er, fervor, and that price is coming over that digital horizon to see an Archer looking right at you.
Typically Faerie stays in hand until the runner actually fears Archer, is the tough part.
Or at least, in the '13 Store Championship metagame that’s what they did. Maybe everyone sort of forgot in the meantime that Power Shutdown is a thing.
The Mimic/ Datasucker package combined with Faeries is easily the most flexiable and powerful Sentry killer suite in the game and it’s the main reason I keep coming back to Andy. Mimic hits the majority of Sentries that people will run in their decks and Fearie takes care of the rest when you need it. Datasucker puts the icing on the cake, making it so you repeatedly break through larger ICE. It does all this super efficiently to boot. You can lock people out potentially, but this doesn’t actually happen to good players.
Nothing come close to doing that. I think the second best Sentry breaking suite it Femme + Scavange and Datasucker with Atman support and I think it’s notably worse than the criminal/Andy package since all of the peices are are not nessisarily good on their own. Oh, and Parasite support.
Next down is Garrote, probably with Faerie support to get you through the early game. It’s bad but passable since you can’t get locked out and it’s a lot more efficient than Ninja, which is probably next down.
I honestly don’t think Anarch had anything worth talking about (Mimic +Data Sucker is fine but not great without Faerie Support and super inconsistant in Anarch) and that’s why I think Cujo might be reasonable. There now might be something to do with Mimic, Data Sucker, Parasite, and Cujo to round it out if you want the ability to break traditionally.