I've Made a Terrible Mistake

chaplain13 1

new to the game, vague idea of what I am doing. How bad is this?

3 comments
23 May 2015 JAK

Leviathan is quite a not-good card.

23 May 2015 Scorpi12

It's great that you're trying the game out, but I'll cover a few rookie mistakes you made here (ones I and my friends have made, ourselves)

Mostly, though, I think your problems are with your Icebreakers:

Like JAK says, Leviathan is a pretty bad card. It's one of those cards that makes many of us ask, "why was this even printed?" It'd be great against theoretical massive code gates that haven't even been printed yet.

Next, Aurorais not a good breaker (not the worst, though). What you are seeing here is that Criminals are great at breaking Sentries (Switchblade is incredible, if you have stealth credits) but not so great with Code Gates and Barriers. A lot of Criminal players import cards like Corroder into their decks to have a good Barrier-breaker, and maybe a Gordian Blade for Code Gates. For your Sentry-breaker, a Core Set Ninja isn't bad at all, maybe supported by a Mimic.

Code Siphon isn't a bad choice in Ken, since he loves 'run' events, but make sure you have great targets for it. Femme Fatale is one of the best choices you can make - it's not only a mediocre sentry-breaker, but it can also neutralize another piece of Ice elsewhere that you were having trouble dealing with. Code-Siphoning through a heavily-defended RnD in order to bring out a cheap Femme is fantastic. I would still only put one Code-Siphon in there.

I would take out your Paintbrushes and maybe use the influence for some Cloaks, or other fun programs? Cloaks to help your Switchblades (if the Corp stacks more than 1 Sentry on a server, Switchblade needs a lot more Stealth credits).

Maximize your number of Dirty Laundry! Dirty Laundry and Ken go together like chocolate and peanut butter. He loves Dirty Laundry and Dirty Laundry loves him - and combined with Security Testing and Desperado it's such an excellent economy card. Similarly, Inside Job becomes sort of an economy card in Ken - it gets cheaper, and lets you skip paying to break an expensive piece of Ice (maybe). Use it on HQ runs because it synergizes well with HQ Interface.

You probably won't need 3 Leverages - most games you'd never have a good chance to even use 1. A few The Maker's Eye would be fantastic in this deck, as well.

Having even one Special Order save your day, too. What if both your Switchblades are at the bottom of your deck? Special Order functions as a third copy of any of your IceBreakers, making sure you can get your whole rig out quickly.

Finally, have you considered a card like Public Terminal for even cheaper run events?

Anyways. That's my two cents. Teaching the game and helping out new players is one of my favourite things, so I hope I didn't go overboard here. Happy gaming!

4 Jun 2015 Rtribute1

Still figuring out code gate breaker but ken switchblade and corroder are great