Eagle Eye (Beyoken's List Improved)

RubbishyUsername 442

So this is a slightly modified version of this list by Bewnt/Beyoken (-1 Crowbar, +1 Cerberus "Rex" H2). But that's such an important change, and it's not like he gave a write up on the list anyway, so I wanted to talk about Khan for a while with a deck to reference and I figured reposting it wouldn't hurt. Give him some love for the original idea, anyway.

Khan has a lot of problems, most of them already well documented. She needs to run a lot of icebreakers, and those icebreakers need to be temporary so she needs more later on. And there's just not that many options available to her. The Breaking and Entering suite (Spike, Crowbar, Shiv) go in there, but without Geist's draw one card for one piece of ice is a raw deal. And then there's the link: 3x Rabbit Hole, using up a quarter of your precious influence. And that's still not enough, and you really can't afford the influence to import more. Golden, at 5 to install, is quite naff for criminals to be honest, even if it is her signature breaker. Other lists have run Chameleon or Brahman, but that influence is just too tough.

Let's reinterpret this ability. Khan let's you do something you normally couldn't, and that's maintain a constant breaker coverage when you would otherwise not expect one. See truth is, Khan isn't a falconer, she's a foxhunter. Enter Cerberus "Rex" H2. Specifically, three of them. Cerberus "Rex" H2 works out as slightly more efficient than ZU.13 Key Master at none of the influence, as long as you can keep them rolling. With three in your deck and the power to install them at any time, she can keep going through all the codegates between the dogs and a couple Crowbar. She turns Criminals' biggest weakness to a decent strength.

But a word of advice: you can't really afford to pay the influence for a Levy AR Lab Access. You don't have the deckslots for a backup breaker. And that's not a worry. Your goal is to win the game before you do have to worry about that. That's why I run Keyhole. With Temüjin Contract, Desperado and your new, improved efficient breakers, seeing fresh cards in multiple runs on R&D closes out the game pretty quickly. A single Keyhole is pretty easy to find in a 40 card deck, and well, you can be pretty certain you have the breakers to start trashing R&D the moment you see it. Account Siphon? I'd much rather get some points with Legwork.

3 comments
20 Sep 2016 unitled

Colour me intrigued! I'm super curious about Khan and this looks like a great use of her ability. I tried to make her work as just a #slimcrim but someone shared a Sil deck which did what I was trying to do ten times better.

Will be taking her for a spin! I guess my worry is finding the Keyhole? Could we swap in something like... Test Run?!

20 Sep 2016 unitled

Sorry, double comment, but seems a shame not to grab an Inside Job with Khan as it works so well with her ability?

20 Sep 2016 RubbishyUsername

@unitled I think this is a common theme with all Khan decks, but the problem is: deckslots and influence. For Test Run, you can maybe shave one influence by running Corroder, but where are you going to find the others? Desperado is just so necessary given how aggressive this deck is (although Doppelgänger + Temüjin Contract is plausible), and Rabbit Hole beats running several Access to Globalsec any day.

As for Inside Job, it's... reasonable depending on your meta? The issue is deckslots. I wouldn't be comfortable dropping draw or breakers for it, which basically leaves economy - in a meta where that matters more than ever. I'd swap out a Security Testing, Career Fair or Legwork for one, and no more than that. I might test this.

Make no mistake: unless she gets some decent in-faction support in the next few sets, there's no way you can match the good Criminal identities. She jumps through a load of hoops to get a good Decoder on the table where the others just import them at exactly the same cost. But at the same time, I wouldn't underestimate her: running so many Decoders and having them function and generally be fairly efficient feels great out of criminal.