Gabriel Santiago: The Pinnacle of Criminal Aggression (2nd)

akonnick 2081

I took this deck to 2nd place at the SMC tournament at Raven's Nest in Marietta, GA. Gabe has been my favorite Criminal ID since I first started playing the game. I love the fact that his ID is so linear in what it wants to do and what it telegraphs to the Corp: He’s coming after your HQ and he’ll be rich if he can consistently get there. People have generally passed him over for Andromeda and now Leela, but I’ve been working on tuning him throughout the past several months. There was an article written on Stimhack that presented a conclusion that I tend to agree with: Gabe needs to be built as aggressively as possible. While I have some different thoughts on the card choices that make him shine, I think a hyper aggressive Gabe is both a lot of fun to play and able to very consistently win against a variety of opponents. Most of the deck is just Criminal good stuff as you will see - Desperado, Faerie, Special Order, Emergency Shutdown, Account Siphon, Inside Job. Keep in mind that the first few turns are critical in navigating the game. You need to apply pressure and dictate the pace of the game with Account Siphon, Emergency Shutdown and using Inside Job to challenge remotes. If you get ahead both on money and accesses early, it is very tough to slow Gabe down. The entire deck is designed around making his early-mid game as fast and as powerful as possible. The hope is that if the games go late, you have already scored enough points to just need to snipe one more to win, which is very possible with all the multi-access.

Specific Card Choices:

I’ve Had Worse - This is probably the card that looks most out of place, but it is the card that put this deck over the top in my mind. Plascrete Carapace was an auto-include for Gabe forever; however, it was a dead card in most matchups (more so since Weyland is on the skids). I’ve Had Worse fills both the roles that Gabe decks desperately needed: Damage Protection so you can float tags and Card Draw. Since it is a 3 of, you will usually see one in your hand. There was nothing more painful in a Gabe deck than drawing multiples of Plascrete Carapace in a matchup when you didn’t need it. You are always happy to see I’ve Had Worse as it feels nearly as good as drawing a Diesel does (which I also have played in this deck). The flexibility and value this card provides is worth every drop of influence you pay for it, trust me.

Day Job: I’ve been unhappy with Dirty Laundry for Gabe for a while. Gabe’s ability already pays him to run, so he gets a built in Dirty Laundry once Desperado is installed. The economy hole that you need to fill is how to recover when Gabe is low on money. Armitage Codebusting used to fill this role. While I think that could work, I didn’t love the idea of running that because it was slow and could be easily trashed since you are always floating tags. Day Job came out and I immediately saw that this could fill the role I needed. You basically take a turn off and charge back up to 10 credits - exactly what I wanted. I think it is important enough to have this type of recharge ability in your deck to devote the influence to something top tier for what it does like Day Job. Bank Job is also amazing at this, but is a more conditional card. Both will help Gabe with what he does best, getting rich and making runs.

Breaker/Program Suite: This honestly may be the area that took me the most time to settle on even though most of it is standard Criminal. The most important conclusion that I reached was that Gabe should be playing 3 of Sneakdoor Beta and plan to have it on board the entire game once installed in almost all situations. It may well be Gabe’s signature auto-include card as it fuels his ability and spreads the Corp’s ice thin, which is critical to his success. I’ve tried decks that juggled Parasites, Datasuckers, even Pheromones, but they are too inconsistent if the pieces don't fall together in the right order and they frankly are too slow. Gabe wants a consistent, cheap rig that can be assembled as quickly as possible and powerful events to close out the game. Leave the ice destruction and recurring credits to the other runners - Gabe just wants to play the blue cards as quickly as possible.

Aside from Sneakdoor, the basic rig of Faerie, Corroder and Passport is cheap, flexible and scalable enough to carry you through the late game. I tried Peacock before, but honestly just wanted the consistency of naturally drawing Passport. You’re going to be spending your time on central servers and if you need to challenge a remote, Inside Job or Inside Job/Femme Fatale are great solutions. Gabe is not built to fight glacial remotes, so if you find yourself going against a 3-4 ice remote with upgrades, you probably weren’t winning that fight anyway. Ninja is there because you have to have it to challenge centrals that get clogged up with Susanoo or Grim. Emergency Shutdown helps, but I’ve been locked out of servers with just Mimic and Faeries, so this is a concession to those matchups. It isn’t amazing and you won’t install it in most games, but you’ll be happy to have it in the games where you need it.

HQ Interface/Maker’s Eye: These are your win conditions. HQ Interface is a clear choice if you are running Sneakdoor Beta as Legwork only works on runs through HQ. Interface has won me most of my games. Maker’s Eye combined with Same Old Things and Planned Assault helps you snipe agendas off R&D when you’ve Siphoned the Corp or have seen their entire hand and need somewhere to run. It is definitely your Plan B in most games, but it is a great Plan B and has won me many games.

2 comments
2 Jun 2015 divadus

Day Job and I've Had Worse - I like it a lot. Also, pleased to see no Kati Jones in the list - any time I see DJ and KJ in the same list, the inherent anti-synergy grieves me.

I don't wish to undermine all the work you've put in here (evidently a lot), but with Architect being nigh-on ubiquitous in my meta (beautiful card that it is) and Caduceus being a popular choice in many Weyland decks, I really struggle with idea of a Mimic-less Criminal deck. I realize that, with your stated goal of semi-permanently retaining your Sneakdoor Beta, you have no room for a Mimic (plus, without Datasuckers, Mimic is nowhere near the monster it would be otherwise). That being said, to consistently break Archie or The Duce, Femme Fatale will cost you 4 credits and Ninja 5, after paying 9 or 4 credits to install them, respectively. Pretty miserable exchange, and not something that you will want to repeatedly do. Plus, at 4 and 3 to rez respectively, Architect and Caduceus are also fairly poor Emergency Shutdown targets.

Finally, I feel that Crisium Grid really just devastates Gabe, if the Corp finds it early. Sure, he can typically get in and trash it - especially via Sneakdoor - but the tempo hit is pretty significant.

Congrats on the placement, all the same - glad you've been able to make him work for you.

3 Jun 2015 akonnick

@divadus appreciate the comments and no worries about undermining anything - your points are all totally valid. I completely agree that cutting Kati from the deck was both a big decision and turning point on the direction of the deck. Knowing it isn't available forces you into a playstyle in the sense that the only way you make money is by running.

I played a version of this with Mimic and Femme at the Store Champs and honestly never installed Mimic as strange as it sounds (believe me - I thought cutting it was heresy when I did). The main reason I did was that I felt like I always had Faerie on board to protect me from the early face checks and then found myself either running to the unprotected servers without the Architect/etc., using Emergency Shutdown and Siphoning so it couldn't come back, or getting enough money to where I was just using Femme instead. I agree that Caduceus is a poor Emergency Shutdown, but would tell you that against NEH, which still sees a bunch of play near me it is probably your single best target. If they have to rerez Architect, that is one more turn they have to wait to use Biotic Labor. I'm now used to playing without it, but it would be very easy to swap a Day Job for another econ card and put it back in the deck if you wanted it.

Crisium Grid is not fun for Gabe, but you definitely identified the best counter in Sneakdoor. I'm fine with the tempo hit and it hasn't ever been a real problem - it is an annoying card, but it is a minor setback and you can always get the accesses as they can't protect it with a Caprice Nisei (since you just run through either HQ or Sneakdoor to avoid her). Gabe tends to set up so fast that it is quite rare that they can get enough money/ice/upgrades to race you and make all 3 centrals taxing enough for Crisium to really start doing work.

Thanks again for the comments and for checking out the deck !