You know it just occurred to me that FIS isn’t going to help you see more of R&D because it has to be played on the first click meaning you can’t dig R&D then FIS if you see noting. You can’t even same old thing FIS as it has to be first click.
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Sure it is, if you’re playing RnD multiaccess - you’re getting those non-agenda cards you’ve checked already out of the way.
Well yes from turn to turn it could help but being first click only limits it is what I’m saying.
I think the first click thing is the most elegant solution to limiting such cards to once per turn.
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It seems from all the comments that the one thing we can all agree on is that criminal breakers are woefully underpowered.
Ironically, Passport is very strong in terms cost and efficiency. Its drawback isn’t as big of a deal when you can attack centrals very aggressively early in the game.
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Passport and Femme are the only criminal breakers worth their salt. They don’t even have the best sentry breaker (the one thing they’re supposed to be good at), that honour goes to MImic-sucker. Though I suppose if people start splashing huge amounts of Januses, Archers and Grims, Ninja might make a comeback… Maybe even Garrotte?
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I think Andy is really good, and beside these forums asserting criminal is weak right now, I don’t see any evidence that the deck is not competitive.
If I had to guess, I would say that the competitive community is prone to some amount of “brain drain,” that is, certain influential contributors (stimhack boys 
) will decide a deck is the deck to beat, and then others move towards that deck. The more the deck is played, the more it wins, and it fulfills the initial proposition.
That’s kind of a long way of saying that, basically, I disagree with the basis of this thread. Not on a personal level, I just literally don’t see it.
I agree criminal draw and breakers are the weakest; that’s more of a fact than an opinion. I also think it doesn’t make sense to play parasite in criminal, and parasite is probably one of the best cards in the game right now.
These are all really great points, thanks for contributing them and starting the disussion. Here are my brief responses:
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Security Testing doesn’t make or break crim. econ. Testing is one of many, many econ cards in a good crim. deck, and I do think crims need to play a super high volume of econ cards to be good. One advantage of Testing against Blue Sun is that they have to be able to make archives taxing, and have the ice in their scoring remote constantly rezzed, rather than waiting for windows. That is totally possible, but easier said than done.
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NEXT ice is tough. Generally, my strategy against NEXT is to not do the standard crim. thing of running everywhere, which gives the corp an opportunity to rez more NEXT. Just focus on high quality accesses on R&D, and try to play pretty fast because the game is just going to get more and more taxing as it goes on. The resurgence of Yog.0 can both help and hurt this matchup. This is one where I usually install double datasucker. Again, Parasite is a great card, and crims don’t have it. A valid point indeed.
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Siphon isn’t as good, but it’s still great. A built in HQ threat besides multi-access does a lot for ice placement. With other decks, as long as you have R&D blocked off and you’re filtering your hand with DBS/Jackson, you can just dump agendas you draw into the scoring server without keeping them in HQ too long. It’s minor, but noticeable.
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I hear a lot of people say Crisium Grid is the reason crim. is ineffective. I think your econ should be able to support trashing Crisium, even though it’s certainly never fun. I also don’t think your deck should be so dependent on landing Siphons that not landing them shuts you down.
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I’m fine with RP not playing sentries, it means I don’t have to spend 6 slots on Switchblade.
True, although Career Fair is great (I was already playing Earthrise and Casts anyways.)
I love these discussion threads, but sometimes results speak louder than words, so if it helps here are the results I’ve gotten with my Andy deck this year:
Three Regionals T8’s, including two first seed swiss finishes and one overall 1st place. So far, my Andy deck has won 18/22 Regionals games this year (one more regional to go before Gencon!). Also T8 at SSCI, and T4 at SHL3. The archetype hasn’t changed much over those tournaments, the only recent additions being Yog/NRE, Career Fair, and Visage.
Obviously PPVP Kate has won more tournaments this year, both in prestige and volume, but again, I don’t think crim. is the lame duck these threads make it out to be.
For reference, I’ll post my deck below.
Return of Randy [current]
Andromeda: Dispossessed Ristie
Event (18)
3x Account Siphon
3x Career Fair
3x Dirty Laundry
1x Inside Job
2x Legwork
3x Special Order
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (5)
3x Desperado
1x Net-Ready Eyes ••
1x Unregistered S&W '35
Resource (11)
3x Daily Casts
3x Earthrise Hotel
2x Kati Jones
2x Security Testing
1x Symmetrical Visage
Icebreaker (6)
1x Corroder ••
2x Faerie
1x Mimic •
1x Passport
1x Yog.0 •
Program (5)
3x Datasucker •••
2x Medium ••••• •
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Chrome City
Deck built on http://netrunnerdb.com.
EDIT: Sorry if that got a little rant-y. I keep my Andy love bottled up inside.
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Been playing a similar build, but with RDIs instead of Mediums and Switchblade/Femme/3x Faerie instead of Mimic (which may be a mistake). When you don’t have parasite, it’s nice to be able to blank ice.
I agree sec test isn’t the econ you should rely on, just the card that makes them want to ice every server asap, or let you click for 3 credits every turn. I think 3 Sec Test 3 Desperado is a good decision to create this situation early.
I also like 3x Career Fair with 3 Cast, 3 Hotels, Symmetrical, and Kati as targets. Good econ is the key to good decks, and Criminals are on top of the Econ color wheel (Shapers second, Anarch third).
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I’m a little late to the party but personally I think Crim is still fine. Leela has been placing well at regionals (winning even). Anarch is finally strong so it makes sense that people want to play them, now that it isn’t gimping yourself to do so. I’d say we have a very healthy meta.
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It’s fun in the Hivemind… Join usssss
For real though all good points.
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I think Crim is still very strong. They have Desperado, Sec Testing, Faerie, Femme, Passport, Siphon, Inside Job, Sneakdoor and Emergency Shutdown. That the most efficient breakers aren’t in faction is okay, not just because some of the best breakers are a single pip of Anarch influence, but because Special Order is in faction.
I think the biggest reason they’re not played is that they’re not new an exciting (Anarch) or straight out amazing (Kate).
DEsperado requires succesful runs, like others mentioned already, there are not a lot of free to run servers atm, and without backup it does not muc. Still a good console though.
Security Testing, again like mentioned, too much shut-out from testable servers.
Faerie is a killer Killer though.
Femme, good, but so easy to splash so you don’t need to crim to use and actually better out of shaper with Scavange/recursion and with Stimhack.
Passport, central only and not very good even with that limitation in mind, corps will throw a scoring server with a codegate to make you jump through hoops.
Siphon, not what it used to be, the 5 cred suck from corps has much less impact now that the corps are richer, people learned to play around Siphon, so much hate in the form of Crisium and Caprice and worst of all (?) tag me is risky now with so much Butcher’s shop going around and all those sweet sweet resurces really don’t like tags.
Inside job is good, but with glacier, too might have more problems than it used to.
Shutdown is good but again not what it used to be with corps being richer.
Sneakdoor is cool but two mem is tough and corps already tend to protect all centrals more than they used to.
Yes crim has good cards, they are not so good in the current meta though, Clot put Crim down by putting NEHFA down some.
I think Clot didn’t put NEH-FA down so much as make Kate even better.
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My current main tournament deck is Andy:
Hail to the Queen
Andromeda: Dispossessed Ristie
Event (17)
3x Account Siphon
3x Dirty Laundry
2x Emergency Shutdown
2x Inside Job
2x Legwork
2x Special Order
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (5)
2x Clone Chip ••••
3x Desperado
Resource (10)
3x John Masanori
1x Kati Jones
3x Same Old Thing
3x Security Testing
Icebreaker (8)
1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
1x Corroder ••
3x Faerie
1x Femme Fatale
1x Mimic •
1x Yog.0 •
Program (5)
3x Datasucker •••
2x Parasite ••••
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to All That Remains
So far this deck has gone 20 - 5 in tournament play (Nationals, two ANRPC events and Quinns intercity friendly). The thing that really turns it on is having parasite and clone chip - once the insta-parasite gets online it’s a lot harder for the corp to lock you out, and it also deals with NEXT problems (HB with NEXT is one of my best matchups I think).
Blue Sun is the biggest problem, especially the 6 agenda kill dekcs, but I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of RP - to my mind the fact that RP has changed so much is what brings this deck back.
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Criminal aren’t the dominant faction now, but there are decks that are definitely competitive. I think Leela and Andy both have viable decks and while they’ve not picked up as many tournament wins as Kate, part of that is the number of people playing them. Especially strong players who often gravitate to the top deck which is ppvp Kate.
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Leela is powerful, but underrepresented. When strong players like @Cerberus and @aandries rep her, they win.
Andysucker is apparently still a strong archetype, but, these lists have nothing really new added in the past year. I believe that’s the complaint of the masses regarding Crim. Let’s face it: Lukas has been too timid with Blue, leading to things like 10 INF Runners (sorry, old chap).
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Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying when the “Criminals are terrible now!” argument comes up. They’re not terrible; they’re quite strong. I don’t think they’re the breakaway leader anymore, but you can still put up strong and consistent results with Andy or Leela and the decks work just like they used to.
The actual problem with Criminal right now is not that they’re weak, but they’re single-minded. You can’t really give stronger cards to their main archetype easily without boosting them back up to the top, since there’s so much strong synergy there already. It’s like a powder keg ready to go off. And FFG seems to have failed to provide immediate horizontal growth via H&P the way they did to Anarchs and, I’d argue, Shaper.
The hope is that some tools come out in the cycles that can exploit some of their attempts with H&P (some kind of slow-roll Ian Crim? A deck that really gets off on exposing?) to give Criminal players some options. Criminal as how it’s played right now has basically been around since the beginning of the game, and people are understandably bored of it. If another deck allows them to play something else and still manage to be competitive, no wonder people are jumping ship. It doesn’t mean Crim is bad; it’s just not exciting.
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Seeing as I am still playing Andy, and took my regionals with it, I’d say Andy and Leela are still very powerful, though evidently overshadowed by the plethora of strong runners from other factions, notably Kate. I think both stealth andy and andysucker are still tier 1 runners, but the people who’d usually play those runners with success are playing Kate, Maxx, Whizzard right now. Andy’ll be back.