99 Luftballoons

greyfield 3915

I'm not sure I can exactly explain why this deck works, except that Tech Trader is a stupid card and adding Tech Trader into Spy Camera/District 99 loops is dumb.

Bankroll seems out of place at first, but it actually is good in the deck. One thing Geist has never enjoyed is poking servers, since it costs you tempo that would be better spent finding Tech Traders. Bankroll and Aumakua allow you to play a normal Criminal game that only later devolves into Geisty bullshit with a Camera firing every turn. Once you have three Tech Traders, even trashing a Bankroll with only 1 credit is great, since it turns a profit of 3c + a card + a D99 counter. And Bankroll, like Sports Hopper, does you a solid simply by triggering District 99, allowing you to fill up on counters. Same with the Con Artist breaker suite; early game they provide safety nets that also fill up the D99/pay you money, and late game they serve as real breakers alongside Aumakua + Dean.

Two Diversion of Funds might be a head-scratcher for some people, but in practice I found they were pretty consistently average and bad in combination. Firing two Diversion of Funds for your entire turn isn't worth it; you really only want it to put your opponent critically low on money so you can check a trap or run a server with more security. In that respect, it's more here to assist the more effective taxing that is Corporate "Grant".

Drive By has overperformed; in previous builds I played Falsified Credentials, but I mostly just wanted it for Aumakua counters, and oftentimes you'd rather have the raw power of trashing a defensive upgrade, fishing out an NGO Front/Rashida/trap, or just saving the money trashing something you'd otherwise not want to run over 4c. This, like Diversion of Funds, is a secretly great card to retrieve with D99.

Listing might be better served by Faerie; even though Faerie doesn’t trigger Trader or Geist, five credits is a lot. That said, getting to leapfrog a Surveyor is great.

Reclaim was a last-minute replacement for Levy, since I don’t think you need two, and Peddler #3. Reclaim can rebuy Cameras, triggers Geist and TT, and can even trigger D99 if you throw away an excess Aumakua, and has consistently carried its weight. If you want to get really fancy, Compile is also a valid selection.

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