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

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.