Ken and Barbie v.2

This is the second version of my Ken and Barbie deck. The original goal was to create criminal deck (since I never have before) and to really leverage Woman in the Red Dress (which I've always wanted to use).

TL;DR

"Better" breaker suite for the idea of the deck. Get Tri-maf Contact online with Kati and WitRD. Grab s till it's time to run, go where you know there is an agenda (thank you WitRD). Save Legwork and Inside Job

Corp getting enough money to rez all ICE is very bad, so hit asset economy immediately. Beware of Corporate Town.

For the readers

The deck had a huge overhaul, even switching identities at one point (to Leela, and will probably keep her as a secondary runner for this deck). I chose Ken because of his higher influence and his economy seems to be a little stronger with this deck. But even with all of the changes, the feel of the deck is same, which I'm really happy with :)

Changes

The breaker suite got the most attention during the changes. Sentries were just costing me too much, and Archer was nearly impossible to get through repeatedly, and even Ichi 1.0 posed a significant tax. Enter Switchblade. A great addition to the deck, and greatly helps with the efficiency of breaking into servers. Because the requirement for stealth credits, the deck loses some of it's aggro in the early game, but this deck is more a control deck anyway.

The Gordian Blades became a ZU.13 Key Master and a Cerberus "Rex" H2, mainly for cost. The 4 cost of Gordian Blade was too much of a tempo hit in the early-mid game. Rex is in just to double up for breakers and is the best decoder in faction; same for Aurora with respect to fracters.

With the extra influence, I was able to find some spots for a set of Datasuckers, which have really helped make running efficient.

Security Testing was dropped in favor of Tri-maf Contact and has it been an amazing decision. This card has single handedly been the biggest improvement. I can easily keep up with corp's money, and it can be tutored by Hostage if necessary. After the rig is setup, and Kati + WitRD is online, a common turn is, gain 4 with two Tri-maf Contacts, Kati, and either for a , or use Mr. Li (speaking of which, has also been a fine addition as he replaced Baby and can also be tutored).

With all of the additional resources Account Siphon had to unfortunately be removed. The threat of tag punishment is too great, and I don't want to spend my whole turn using Account Siphon. I will say, even having to ditch 2 tags, a 12 swing is a huge blow to the corp, so perhaps it could find it's way back.

The 3 remaining influence from changing the breakers along with the 3 influence gained from dropping Indexing gave me enough for IHW. I've considered making these Parasites since I really hate dealing with expensive barriers and stacked sentries, but with no recursion and limited memory, I went with draw power.

Difficulties

Honestly, the worst cards this deck can run into are a well timed Snatch and Grab, and a very well protected Corporate Town or Melange. If you see a Corporate Town or a Melange, you have to trash it immediately. The corp can't be allowed to get enough money to rez all of their ICE on HQ, R&D, and their scoring remote, other wise, it becomes impossible for you to get through (NEXT ICE is a b**ch). It's hard to tax the corp by making them rez ICE since you have no way to make the ICE go away once it's rezzed. This is perhaps the single greatest weakness of this deck, and one that I really want to clean up. I've even considered a Knifed and a Forked with another Same Old Thing just to deal with this issue. Any ideas on this particular topic are met with great eagerness, so please throw them at me.

Stacked sentries that trash programs can be very scary without an Inside Job. Don't run unless you know that you're safe from a rig destroying sentry.

Final Thoughts

This deck is a control style deck. It definitely has that big rig feel of setting up and forfeiting the early game. Except that your early game is stopping their early game. They can't just run out asset economy naked, because you'll always have the money to trash them, so this will definitely slow them down or spread their ICE, both are good for you. Once your rig is setup (which includes 2 Tri-maf Contacts), go find WitRD and let the real game begin. You are constantly building up money while waiting for the right time to run. Legwork will start doing all of the work. You have to handle Jackson so their hand begins to get flooded with agendas. Not too difficult since they don't really want to spend ICE protecting Jackson. Turns where you don't know where an agenda is, up Kati, and grab s from Tri-maf Contacts.