Mm I did try my hand at gabe as well, and against the current meta it doesn’t seem bad at all, other than the fact that lack of clot and real answers to FA means you’ll still sometimes just lose games despite doing everything right.
So I’ve gone back to Stealth Andy I went 5-1 v NEH FA at regionals (clot and cvs existed, but not team sponsorship), so I vaguely know how to try and tackle the worst matchup. And everything else still sort of just folds to it. Am playing two FIS, which are really fun if you can combine them at the right time with siphon and economic conditions that put a virtual stranglehold on the corp. As a 2 of I haven’t seen them too often when I didn’t want to, and again, other than the terrible NEH FA matchup it’s not hurting you, really. Will see if everyone in my meta suddenly just jumps on the FA train or if I can take a couple of gnks with it, almost time for alt art corroder
Congratulations!I missed the old days of Crim.I agree with you about Crim,as a Crim you always want to force corps to make choice between bad and worse.You made a very clear point.Although I think the current trinity of Crim (Gabe,Andy,Leela) goes on 3 slightly diffrent build:Gabe is full on econ-denial,Leela focus on control and “power turn”,Andy can go somewhere between.I mainly play Leela and I feel you generally don’t want to run too aggressive;instead,concentrate on your econ,trash important assets,set up a useful rig as soon as possible to threat their remote,and Gang Sign + HQI to slow down their scoring speed.You generally don’t want to go traditional style Crim gameplay because you really don’t want them rez too many central ice to deal with.Always leave important tricks in your hand (FIS,RDI,AS,Sneakdoor),once they start scoring,play FIS and bounce back R&D or HQ ice accordingly to fully take your advantage to the best.Remenbering what ice you have saw,realizing which ice is most difficult to deal with and deducing where would corp place that ice is very important.Against slower or glacier deck is harder,but if you get a good read on your opponent,you still have good chance.I really don’t think Crim is a weak faction now,I just think it’s harder to pilot in such meta.Anyway I really want to try with this Gabe,he seems pretty high,no pun here.
I don’t like the 4-cred install cost. Especially when you have so much HQ pressure already and are running it every single turn. I did miss some agendas that I would’ve got with the interface installed, but so far it has worked out just fine without it in the deck.
Yes, FIS has drawbacks, I’m aware. But it’s still an influence-free Diesel. You play it when you are able to get accesses. Either the Corp is poor from your Criminal shenanigans and then an overload of extra cards is probably a hindrance.
Trickier is the case where they have or are stabilizing. Ideally, you have an RDI out and know some of the cards you’re giving them then. If that’s the case, the probability of agendas in R&D increases and you can continue the lock 1 turn earlier.
If you don’t have the RDI when playing FIS, you still have your whole turn to check the top of R&D + HQ. If you added only 1 agenda to HQ, it’s a 1/5 baseline chance to get it, which is still higher than R&D usually. Then they better score it quickly, because next turn, you’re coming after it again. If they have more agendas, well chances of getting at least 1 obviously increase. Basically, you’re maximizing accesses as much as you can, and agendas follow naturally. At least that’s my philosophy so far.
Isn’t this even more pronounced when playing Stealth?
I started from a similar lineage and came to many of the same conclusions! It’s such a fun archetype.
My breaker suits is Breach, Yog.0 and a third Dataducker over Corroder and Passport, because there is a ton of Turing floating around these days. Cerberus was the other option, especially with Clone Chip. Enigma just made me sad.
I’m with you on the FIS, but I ended up dropping them for SecTests when I dropped LARLA. Helps with keeping up with trash costs too. LARLA wasn’t nessecarily a bad choice. It used too much inf to not get played in a lot of games, but without it I was worried about going all in on Faust. Adding some renewable econ turns you into a Faust deck that can set up a real rig eventually. Feels more robust.
Tech I’m considering for the current meta: an E3 Feedback would be nice with Faust, but also wreck HB. That can be a tougher matchup. A Data Dealer because News Team can DIAF.
I found that having so much hq pressure makes people barricade it super hard, so I often can only get in once a turn (or two). When that happens it’s nice to be able to see more cards.
I suppose the install cost can hurt when you’re using actual breakers and not just Faust.
I’ve got to say that (on the Corporation end) for non-Gabe/HQ focused Criminal decks, Enhanced Vision has felt a surprisingly strong addition to the Security Testing package.
Enhanced Vision is that tech card that feels really good when you’re playing it, but has a serious contest with power cards like inside job / E.shutdown. #deckslots2015
Well, so far it has not proved to be a problem. I’ll re-evaluate when it becomes one. But between Sneakdoor, Parasite and Shutdown, getting relative cheap access to HQ has been quite doable. I’ve not played against too much Corps with Crisium. This will change things of course…
E. Shutdown has felt less and less good as we’ve progressed through the SanSan Cycle. There was already a huge glut of decks running Pop-Up Window, Wraparound, Himitsu-Bako, Eli 1.0, Wall of Static, Architect, Enigma – all ice with rez costs 4 or less – sprinkled with the occasional 1- or 2-of Tollbooth, and sometimes a Susasno-o no Mikoto. Now there’s Crick, Cortex Lock, Turing, Turnpike, Gutenberg, heck, even Spiderweb and Tour Guide, and Weyland was the matchup where it seemed like Shutdown shined the most. Nowadays it feels like you’re lucky if Shutdown is a reverse Hedge Fund, derezzing a 4-cost ice. Looking at recent tournament-winning lists, there are 2-3 good (i.e., rez cost 5+) targets for Shutdown amongst 14-17 pieces of ice. That is an awful ratio, when considering slots for Shutdown. I’d still run at least one because of Blue Sun and Weyland matchups in general, but it sure doesn’t feel like the powerhouse card it used to feel like. Maybe it’s time to free up 1 or even 2 slots by cutting Shutdowns.
Eh, shutting down an Architect in a tight NEH match can really go a long way. The ICE doesn’t have to be expensive in a vacuum, just relative to their econ.
From my understanding Refractor without Stealth credits is completely fine against NEH. You can always use Faeries to deal with Architects as a bridge into Switchblade and you’re running Corroders. The only problem card against NEH by this point might just be Archangel.
Most good NEH decks are running 2 Tollbooth, so I mean unless you want Atman 5 or to run CyCy as well as your Refractor, you kind of need stealth credits.
That too. Notice how I also excluded Tollbooth and Lotus Field as well? Those Code Gates tend to be metagame calls in which those Code Gates occupy the same slots. It might be a 1/1 split of Tollbooth, Lotus Field and/or Little Engine. Finding the gearchecks is utmost priority. Stealth credits afterwards as rezzing those ice for NEH is quite the hefty amount.
Honestly it is Criminal that we are talking here. They always have an answer. Sometimes even an Inside Job + Emergency Shutdown might actually get the job done.
Just wanted to note here that @Cerberus made sure criminal placed higher than Shaper this year at world’s. I don’t think that means Criminal is better than Shaper, but in the hands of an amazing player it’s clear Criminal can still scrap with the best of them.
I was rooting for @Cerberus all the way through the top sixteen and his master class on nerves against Timmy was crushing to watch. I would have been sweating and shaking with the winning points all but undefended on the table for so long!
Shame that we couldn’t see that beautiful Leela deck put down the DLR madness, but I don’t think anyone could fault skill of the player there. @Cerberus is truly a Criminal Mastermind.
I made a last-day decision to sleeve up my old gal Andromeda for the tournament, since I’d discovered a build and line of play that shut down butchershop / NBNFA stuff and seemed to have OK game against others. The joke was on me, as I faced 6 HBs, easily my worst matchup on the day, but I was surprised by the resilience of my deck even there; though I went 4-2 against them, I was up 6-0 in both losses (fuuuuuuuu)
Criminal’s big problem remains that if you, like me, shade towards tech for a certain set of matchups, it feels like you have to weaken your other matchups more than the other factions do, because you lack in-game draw/tutor/recur flexibility and your breakers are usually not flexible and/or are really expensive.
But still: not in as bad a spot as they were a bit ago, thanks to the proliferation of horizontal decks out there that let us run Bank Job and Sec Testing for +value.
Edit: and yeah, @Cerberus is a Leela mastermind but also, as we saw across the elimination rounds, a psi game master as well. Truly clutch psi game wins :).
When was this bit ago where horizontal decks weren’t everywhere? Criminal was all over the scene at last year’s world’s where Blue Sun was a threat, and since (and including) then NEH has been dominant, sometimes holding that title with RP (who also runs lots of remotes for bank job). I think Bank Job was always a great call for Criminal but it wasn’t understood how much Criminal needed to play it, since the economy had always been sufficient until RP was able to tax centrals heavily and NEH was able to punish tags with a kill threat, weakening siphon.
I dunno; through regionals season this year I saw a lot more single/low-remote HB/RP/Weyland play than I did horizontal play in competition.
But I definitely agree that Bank Job is a clutch econ option for criminals, but that’s also an achilles heel since it is auto-off for a lot of common matchups.
I’ve been on a tour of Criminal IDs lately. And I have found Criminal’s biggest strength - Desperado/Sec Testing/Bank Job economy - is also their biggest weakness. Many corp decks (midrange sorta decks, those lovely Gagarin builds, etc.) are utterly crushed by the strength of this economy, but if you run into a deck that can cut off that economy early, things can get really bad.
The next biggest issue are big code gates. Turing, Crick, and now Archangel. These are all horrific and there’s nothing in faction that can deal with them. Siphon and Shut Down used to work fine, plus a plethora of suckers, but these things cost 4 credits or less, and corp economies are way more robust, and Datasucker sometimes just can’t cover it (Archangel is 6 strength!).
This is the one that gets me. I can usually find a way to get some money in a game and if I can’t there are usually more money cards I could put into the deck if I needed to, but those code gates are rough. I would really love to see a card that helps Criminal deal with highly efficient low-cost ICE. Time was that Criminal won games by punishing the corp whether they rezzed (became too poor to defend everywhere and then got shutdown for their trouble) or didn’t rez (Sec Testing, Gabe, Leela, Datasucker, Bank Job, John Mas, Desperado and Siphon all really love to get through to their target server) and Criminal won by keeping the game in that forked position. Now the corp choice is a lot easier insomuch as they can afford to rez their ICE from turn 1 or 2 onwards unless you get a Siphon in really early. I want a card that rolls back that dynamic a bit and makes rezzing ICE a hard choice for corps again.
I went 5-1 v NEH FA at regionals (clot and cvs existed, but not team sponsorship), so I vaguely know how to try and tackle the worst matchup. And everything else still sort of just folds to it. Am playing two FIS, which are really fun if you can combine them at the right time with siphon and economic conditions that put a virtual stranglehold on the corp. As a 2 of I haven’t seen them too often when I didn’t want to, and again, other than the terrible NEH FA matchup it’s not hurting you, really. Will see if everyone in my meta suddenly just jumps on the FA train or if I can take a couple of gnks with it, almost time for alt art corroder 
