Shut it down.

Benjen 720

What is the best way to play Khan: Savvy Skiptracer?

I've seen several builds that use the Breaking and Entering breakers to install mid-run and I remain unconvinced. Khan is less about maximizing her ability and more about maximizing the ability of her breakers.

Golden and Peregrine, while not exactly paragons of efficiency, have a unique ability that can wreak havoc on unprepared Corps. If you de-rez every or even most ice you encounter, you are going to keep the corp in a tight spot economically. That is the goal of this deck.

I knew I wanted to shut down as much ice as possible and then punish the copr for rezzing it again. 7 cards in this 40-card deck either hurt to corp or help the runner on an ice rez. Ice Analyzer and Compromised Employee pay the runner either directly or by helping them re-install the breaker after passing the ice. Hernando Cortez can be brutal on a lot of the new multi-sub ice this cycle is giving us. Often I find the corp just doesn't rez at all, which I am totally fine with.

The combination of Ice Analyzer, Scheherazade, and Khan's ability mean re-installing the expensive bird breakers gets easier. I can commonly do it for free or a net gain.

Datasucker is a must in this deck and I can't believe it took me so long to include it. Hitting a 3 strength code gate is awful with Peregrine so being able to lower it to strength 2 saves you 3 credits.

Sports Hopper could be a double Plascrete Carapace or one of each. I like having the draw available in non flatline matchups.

With my spare 2 influence, I put in Employee Strike. Corps are running more currents these days to fight rumor mill and you need an answer. Also, Scarcity of Resources is just awful.


I'm not having tons of success with this yet, but I am intrigued by the concept and trying to see if there is anything in it. I know we still need Khan's console and the third breaker. There is also a spoiled card from the next cycle that pays you when you de-rez ice.

Open to feedback here. Khan was dumped on pretty hard when she was released but I think there may be something there. Let's build it together.

3 comments
24 Oct 2016 byjarke

I am trying a similar build, but Ice Analyzer doesn't seem to pay off that much (as you said, corp often doesn't rez). I found Technical Writer to pay off better. I like your idea of Datasucker but I have Sahasrara so I don't know about MU...

24 Oct 2016 Benjen

@byjarke I think I like the ice analyzers because they can get used multiple times and are clickless. You can get a benefit out of them almost instantly. If the copr doesn't rez, that's good for me too. I also tried Sahasrara a bit but wasn't super impressed. In my first game with datasuckers, they were both in the bottom 10 cards. Ugh.

25 Oct 2016 oasis

I'm not a very good criminal player, but this archetype interested me. I tried a similar build. I tried sahasrara. Sahasrara's needs memory to work well with criminal, and criminal lacks good mem expansion options. But, Ice Analyzer & Compromised Employee were too slow in my testing to allow me to get economy fast enough.

Kati & Sucker were both absent from my testing, and may be a big part of why I wasn't successful; that said, kati seems super slow and vulnerable right now.

The real reason I got off of this type of deck was just not being able to keep an economy engine going with how expensive the birds were. I think some of that is my fundamental weakness at playing criminal, but a lot of that is also just the economic requirements of the birds.

This is interesting, and I've tried this out. I gave up in favor of shenanigans with conspiracy breakers, but I'm interested to see if people can figure this out.