#spythriller v1.0

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ODie 726

NB: there are no Account Siphon's in the deck as this is built to fulfill the achievement award in our local league to win with a Criminal deck without receiving any tags. It could likely be strengthened somewhat by including the Siphon recursion credit engine, but with a lot of anti-Siphon tech (and play styles) coming into the meta, it may be time to learn to play without them anyway ;-)

The Theme

A spy, a Femme Fatale, a Woman in a Red Dress, and a Bug. A shady Supplier, unregistered weapons, triad/mafia contacts, and a Passport. Blackmail, Hostages and a Frame Job or two. This deck writes itself, and makes for a thrilling spy novel and maybe an alright build?

About the deck (composition and strategy)

The deck is a six AM design that has a little testing and I'm going to admit that it is hard to play. The key idea is that information is power and knowing what the Corp has in hand is crucial to being able to determine when to go with Iain for the win from behind. I think this is the critical aspect to getting him right; mistime the "come from behind" attempt and you lose before you go. Go too early and you whiff, lose your advantage and lose anyway.

To that end, there's Woman in the Red Dress to see what's on top of R&D and Bug to check out what they draw at other times, though using this assiduously is important to avoid draining all your Iain credits. Note that although WitRD is a critical piece, better resources to Hostage out early game are definitely Kati Jones (you have time with this deck to make use of her ability to the fullest) and The Supplier.

The Supplier does excellent work in conjunction with Stirling's ability: Logos and HQIs are effectively free installs off it. Most of your Resources are free or only one credit, but it doesn't synergise with Hostage as you have to pay the install cost to drop the Resource in the same action as fetching it, so you may as well have it in play for real. That said, I think this card is so useful to the deck that it might be useful to go up to three copies, despite it being unique.

The central only breakers are pretty efficient at getting you where you need to go, when you focus only on the central servers and simply ignore the remotes. The only time you want to make a remote run is when you're Blackmailing the Corp; don't let them rez any ice in the remote server at all, or the whole game plan unfolds. Frame Job away the first agenda that you steal to turn on Iain's ability again, and give the Corp the BP needed to get the Blackmail off.

OAI, AIZ, ABT and PriReq all wreck that game plan by potentially rezzing ice on the remote, which you simply cannot deal with. I think the solution to this is to either squeeze in a Crypsis, or work in two or three Emergency Shutdowns. Suggestions are welcome, although I'm probably going to head off for different designs for the next league round this coming fortnight...

9 comments
26 Oct 2014 Pinkwarrior

Have you thought about going for New Angeles City Hall and fall guy to get the achievement it would mean you could also include Account Siphon. I've also found that Daily Casts is an excellent econ card with The Supplier. I feel Emergency Shutdown is the way to go especially with Blue Sun: Powering the Future coming in. tho you may need Sneakdoor Beta or Inside Job to get it to work.

27 Oct 2014 ODie

I'm pretty sure that the intent of the league award is for there to be no cards that tag at all, so prevention will discount the deck from that achievement, sadly.

I'm still trying out The Supplier - is he good with Daily Casts? Underworld Contacts? All interesting questions that I'm going to seek answers to in the coming weeks. Definitely putting Daily up there at the top for testing though.

Inside Job is probably going to work counter to the deck intent, because the only time you want to run that scoring remote is when they cannot rez anything. IJ gives them that chance, so you really don't want to do that I think.

Sneakdoor is a consideration, yes. Good thought. You can tell how much (little?) I play Criminal. ;-)

28 Oct 2014 Pinkwarrior

@ODie I can tell you now Daily Casts works very well with The Supplier and i would think Underworld Contact as well though I've not actually tried that one. It works cos you stick it on the supplier for nothing the turn you'd normally install it then next turn you pay 1c install it then immediately get 2c back from it so your making money straight for the time you install it.

I find he's worth running 3 btw as he saves so much money on resource's and hardware that he's worth picking up dead cards later.

28 Oct 2014 ODie

@Pinkwarrior, no, it can't work that way because Daily Casts isn't installed at the start of the turn when The Supplier triggers, so by the time it is installed, the opportunity for Daily Casts to get triggered has already passed. Sorry 5

28 Oct 2014 Pinkwarrior

@ODie If that's the case then it's slightly worse than i thought with daily but you still get the same creds in the end i would think it's worse than i originally thought with Underworld 2 though your still saving a cred doing it that way.

28 Oct 2014 Pinkwarrior

I have found it's not just the money side of things that makes it a good card. Against Jinteki you can leave your hardware and resource's that you may not even want yet on the supplier till you need them to stop them getting sniped since unlike PW it's a you may install.

28 Oct 2014 PaxCecilia

It's a shame that in a league with no tags you have to run Dyson Mem Chip just for memory. Don't you think it might be worth while to drop 1 Frame Job and something else for 2 Akamatsu's instead?
Thematically though, this deck is top notch. I wish I had the balls to dust off my old Iain deck...

28 Oct 2014 Pinkwarrior

is it a league with no tag's from my understanding its an achievement for winning without getting any tags that doesn't mean the corps aren't trying to tag you. I could be wrong mind but that's the way i read his comment

28 Oct 2014 ODie

@Pinkwarrior you're correct - no self-tagging, although I suspect that a random SEA Source would stuff you up as well.

@PaxCecilia thanks. It was serendipitous that it came out that way, but I like it all the more because of that fact. Brush off those cobwebs - that final turn push has a special thrill unlike any other Runner identity, to me.