Switchblade Gabe 401 Games Winning Runner List (Dec. 7 14)

switchblade helps immensely with the RP match-up. more criminals need to seriously consider it. decklist looks versatile, may give it a spin. with only 1 Mr. Li, the card draw in here looks light. interesting choice of a singleton Daily Casts.

They are quite a lot of one-ofs. How the hell do you deal with that? Do you spend the whole game drawing?

@Bananifier The deck has very few dead draws, and the focus is really about making quality accesses or denial plays. Consider the following:

There are 2 Fracters, 1 Decoder, but 5 Killers. This means when I find Special Order, I lean on grabbing ZU first. If I already found it, then Corroder, then finally my Killer. Switchblade is there for the eventual buildup into late game, where sentries can be painful to pay for. Silencers are not dead draws because they provide money for Mimic to break until then.

The spread of economy cards make it that every condition is available to me. It's to help mix up the Corp and not make myself predictable. I know it can be hard to keep it consistent, but sometimes having plenty of options with many outs can help you refrain from feeling your draw is a dead one.

The run events are straight forward and don't have many conditionals attached to it, so it's easy to draw-> play immediately if you need to. All in all, play smart, know why you're playing the game (to steal agendas) and you can be clear what your turn should be.

I can attest to the strength of the economy spread. It was demoralizing to trash Security Testing via tag, only to have Kati installed click one next turn.

I gave this deck a spin and it's pretty awesome. I was skeptical as to the great number of singleton cards, too, but it definitely works (albeit some adjustments depending on playstyle/meta/whatever are definitely possible - I, for one, am toying with the idea of replacing one Security Testing with one more Bank Job or Dirty Laundry - not a great fan of ST). Of course, it is not a "Gabe 101" deck and the runner is required to know what he's doing. Flexibility is key, hit the corp where it hurts most. :)

I know the meta @d1en plays in, Toronto has some of the best players I've ever seen (@d1en Your hands down one of them) and I'm willing to bet that he had to earn every win with this deck, I doubt anyone made it easy...

Good job brother, I love the deck!

@Dydra There hasn't been a moment where I felt I was having a tough time cycling through my deck, except once where I wanted to find a Emergency Shutdown for a Tollbooth, but otherwise I play by the cards I have in hand and plan ahead accordingly. I chose Gabe instead of Andy because his ability to pressure all 3 centrals, and because of that, it helps slow down the Corp enough for the deck to do its thing. Gabe is also the only Runner who can steal NAPD from HQ without opening a scoring window, and that's important in my meta since EVERYONE plays NAPD.

In regards to MU, sometimes seeing Sneakdoor late game just isn't worth installing. Players are wise to me hitting a Sneakdoor and start ICEing Archives, so I'll just have the final rig set up, which is ZU.13, Corroder, Switchblade, Mimic, and Femme on the big ICE. This usually is enough and the game should be closing by then.

I think what people don't get about the one-ofs here is that they're not the bad kind of one ofs. If you put 1 sea source into a jinteki deck, thats a bad 1 of, since unless you import Aggressive Negotiation, you won't see it often enough.

The one-ofs here are interchangable with other one-ofs and confer redundancy as well as flexibility. Mimic and faerie fill 2 killer slots, while, at least in some degree, fulfilling the same role. I agree that this is a good design, even if against convention, because in a high level setting, unexpected actions win you games.

You win swiss with reliability and solid play, you win the top 16 by making good plays that are hard to see coming.

@d1en played this deck a couple times last night, won 1 (TWIY Grail Rush) lost 1 (ETF FA w/ Domestic). I found Eli's to be absolutely brutal, I didn't have the means to run reliably after shut out of HQ (even had a turn 2 Sneakdoor that worked for awhile). after a couple steals, economy was hard to come by, with no remotes for sec testing and HQ on lockdown. with only 1 Mr Li, I was forced to default draw for several turns, which felt discouraging. I respect you as a deckbuilder and player, and am going to continue cutting my teeth on this build, but do you find yourself default drawing often when you play this deck? the economy just feels so light, and against 2 or 3 Eli's on board, it was tough to pressure at all. kati is slow and gives Corp plenty of time to dump more ICE. the NEXT Barrier was also a huge problem, with 3 total NEXT on board the Barriers become 3c each. I just felt very poor late game, although I think this is one of the downsides of Gabe in general.

How do you make Switchblade work? I must be missing something, since you need to have already 2 silencers installed.

Unless you use switchblade in the very very late game. But still, since silencers are Power Shutdown fodder...

@moistloaf Default drawing happens, you're going to have to do it. Don't look down on it and focus too hard on the fact that it doesn't have Mr. Li, your job is to sniff out the agendas. I played against a HB:EtF that had NEXT ICE going and yes, it can be brutal, but if that's the case, you're just going to need to setup for money if it happens. This deck does have a curve; it excels in the early game, maintains power in the mid, but late game will slow down. I calculate a lot of odds and card count quite a bit before I decide to run/access/play events, so maybe that's what makes it possible for me to play with a list like this?

@PlutoNick I definitely use Switchblade in the late game, but it all depends on the matchup. NEH, you don't need it, Blue Sun, depends if they run a Archer variant, Jinteki definitely, it's all about knowing your matchups and understanding what cards have value to be installed.

Having tested it, I love how up-tempo everything is in this deck. Even taking time to install the breakers doesn't feel too bad because you're on to doing bad things to the corp. Making runs on HQ just to take a 1 off grab for agendas is way less painful than other places, and is another reason I love Gabe.

As a playstyle thing with gabe, I just find myself taking more 1 off accesses, which leads to much shorter games. Give yourself many chances to win basically. I would like to see more use out of switchblade because so many corps turn to sentries for taxation, leading me to want 1-2 ghost runners, but, as usual, slots are tight. I could see dropping the laundries for it, since almost half the time the credits saved by using switchblade (due to the prevalence of RP) will far exceed the 3 credit return from DL. That does not speak to its efficiency collecting a security testing/gabe/both+desperado though.

I recommend playing it :)

@x3r0h0ur Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. The idea was to create a fast hitting Gabe that could barf his rig out at any moment and not have a tempo hit. Thank you for trying it out and recommending it :)

I love it! I've been trying to make silencer work for me in Andy, and have been having difficulty making a working rig. Seeing this, I think I've been too focused on Ghost Runner and Refracter. Can't wait to deck-build with this deck in mind. And seeing you on the day of the tourney, specifically how you weren't feeling well at all, your win is that much more impressive. good job, man

Decks like this is why I now included shattered remains or taurus in relevent corp decks.