Ken the Big Rig Driver

johncraven 317

Atypical criminal deck running a big rig. Started out as a fun experiment to build a criminal deck that didn't use the standard anarch breakers. After countless iterations, it ended up pretty good and won me a tournament :)

The deck revolves around installing your rig as fast as possible. Preferably, the first one you should install is Morning Star, followed by Torch. You have multiple tools to do so: Stimhack + Savoir-Faire/Clone chip, Siphon money, or even Dirty Laundry + Security testing. The preferred way is to Stimhack+Savoir-Faire, although don't tunnel vision on that and be afraid to hard-cast your Morning star.

Once you're set-up, you're pretty much unstoppable. You will win by run volume, rather than run quality. This puts a lot of pressure on the corp because cards like Ash and Caprice are not all that taxing. Security testing will be your long-term source of income, although once you're set up, you need very little money to make runs.

Crescentus is a key insight for this deck in favor of Emergency shutdown. Even though runs are very cheap for the big rig, there are always the occasional annoying ices that cost a bit too much (ie. 4+ credits). Examples include: Grim, Ichi, Archer, Tollbooth. For sentries, the standard way to deal with them is Faerie, but it is a one-shot process, therefore you need Crescentus to lock it down. For Tollbooth, Torch costs 5 creds which is acceptable to pay one time, therefore you want to derez it after you pay that. Crescentus also combos really well with Savoir-Faire.

The other weakness is big barriers that Morning star can't deal with. To solve this issue, I use a combo of Crescentus+Grappling Hook + E3. Against Bioroid ices, just E3 is needed. The most annoying ones are the Weyland ones where you need the full combo. Thankfully, those are not rezzed that often, although with oversight AI they could be annoying (but then you don't need Crescentus).

Quality time is another really important card to draw into your rig quickly. You can also discard breakers to activate Clone chip + Stimhack, although that's not the preferable way to get them into play. It's better to keep Clone chip in case your rig gets trashed (usually this only happens through AggSec, since destroyers are not a big issue), or to recur Crescentus/Grappling hook. Clone chip is also useful in case a Stimhack makes you lose a breaker in hand.

The deck is lacking multi-card access. Those would definitely be appreciated but not necessary. Probably the most viable is Legwork since it doesn't cost any influence. More experimentation is needed to determine what can be cut for it.

4 comments
20 May 2014 kyledoesntknow

I like it! I'd prefer Garrote over Femme, but you seem super tight on MU. What's your typical full rig look like?

20 May 2014 Larro

I think you could very easily drop a Savoir-Faire and possibly an E3 for 2x Legwork.

20 May 2014 johncraven

@kyledoesntknow This deck started with Garrote in it, but like you said MU is an issue. My typical rig is Morning star + Torch, with 2 MUs left over. Usually it's Savoir-faire + Faerie, since you can use Faerie, and immediately use the free MU for Crescentus. Later on, Savoir-faire could be replaced by a Femme fatale.

@Larro I think Savoir-faire is a key card in this deck that needs to be drawn as fast as possible to enable many of the combos. E3 is maybe possible depending on the meta. Legwork is definitely a nice card to include, but falls in the "Win more" category for this deck. It's a luxury, not a necessity.

13 Jun 2014 Budapest

Thanks for posting this deck. I've played it a couple of times and it is tons of fun. It really feels like I'm a stimmed-up escaped clone hijacking a wrecking crane to smash into a corp. In my last match I had two brain damage by the time I had the full rig up and had to quality time my hand before my runs against Jinteki PE servers. Wow what a ride and I won!