[Fite Club 2024] Is this Los?

A Los Cause

The long and short of it is I think this is the best deck in the worst faction right now. Crim fell of hard in RWR, and the reason for this is mostly Tributary.

Tributary WRECKS criminals. The general game plan for the criminal decks I play is get value central accesses (Zahya, Sable) while building a board state, using Boomerang and Inside Job to slow the corp down. Tributary means the “value-central-run” does not exist. The first run you make is almost always guaranteed to cost 2-3 extra credits or a tempo hit. Moreover, Tribuary means glacier is back in a big way, which already was crims worst matchup. But, for Fite Nite one of us had to bring a crim deck, so I fell on the sword (or axe?).

Los in the Sauce

I think this Los succeeds in the place a lot of crim decks are failing. This Los does not go for value central accesses, he camps the remote and keeps the corp honest for as long as possible until he can make his big runs to close the game. Early game, Los doesn’t need anything besides his ID to contest remotes -- usually corps will be reticent to rez a tithe or ablative when just rezzing it is a 2c swing for you. Once the big ICE (or the Tributary) is rezzed in the midgame, you use Saci and Window of Opportunity to turn that big ICE into a farm, by installing Saci, derezzing the ICE with WoO to get 3c per Saci, then letting the corp rerez it to get 2c + 3c per Saci. Usually after an ICE gets a Saci and WoO on it the corp will refuse to rez it, turning Saci into a credit positive hippo. You can use this combo to bring games to a screeching halt, all the while setting up a Twinning to capitalize on this once you hit the late game.

Turn a Los into a Win

So this is the combo, but it needs a lot of support. First, it needs to punish corps that just trash their ICE, so you need to hit remotes hard (Miss Bones) and punish weakly iced corps (Hermes, Diversion of Funds). I also put in 1 Simulchip to really make sure Saci’s stick and to justify 1x breakers. Second, you need draw. Without 5 click turns you need to get an efficient draw engine on line fast — I decided to do TCA/Earthrise and Career Fair (a card I usually dislike, but here is enough gas). The 1x Emergency Shutdown is great as a game-prolonger, but I wouldn’t go to more than that.

I’m happy with the deck as is but I think given how important face checks are I might find room for a Flip Switch to really make sure you can face check.

One card I very intentionally did not put in this Los is Rubicon Switch. When it’s good it’s good, but if the corp is aggressively playing around derez, it’s a major liability economically, and I wanted this to still function as a crim deck.

Stop Los Order

The way to beat the Los deck is to hit resources. Twinning is the obvious one, but basically all of this deck’s draw comes from Earthrise and TCA. Los has 0 game to Working Prototype, and not being able to go tagme can be a problem for the archetype. I also think while it has gas it doesn’t have quite enough gas to survive the glacierist glacier. I don’t think this is the spikiest deck, but if you’re looking to play a very different sort of crim game and wanna have some fun, I’ve been really loving this.

The Los Boys (, girls and nbs)

Thank you to Lostgeek, tuno, and cablecarnage. While I’ve enjoyed balancing the game with you for longer, it’s been a unique sort of joy to actually build decks with you, especially in the new meta.

Thank you to Unband, Mr. Muntal, TAI Breakers, and Clearingscouse for being wonderful opponents — being able to play untimed and really dwell on small decisions has made these some of the most fascinating and informative games I’ve ever played. I’ll probably try to do some replay dives at some point, a la Lostgeek has been.

Thank you to Aksu and Axwill for turning this scaled up Fite Nite into a reality. Being able to celebrate the radiation of testing groups and teams that have emerged in the last year has been a delight. I hope this continues, because it is so much fun.

Finally, thank you to the folks in QtM, Snarebears, and the PA/NJ community for helping me practice and test decks. To quote KD: “I know the world's almost over, but you make it seem better. And I hope for you I do the same”. What a community.

CheeRs!