Master Assassin [3rd @ NY Showdown]

Having grown increasingly jealous of Kikai having his own personal Criminal deck I have spent the last month or so playing this deck and getting great results.

Over Christmas this version made deck of the week but without a real writeup so hopefully this goes some way to solving that. Linked at the bottom here are all of the replays from Showdown as well as the EA Sports internal write-up for the deck which has details about every single card choice.

Why is this deck good?

I think there are two very clear reasons why this deck is good.

1) Pure Efficiency

Masterwork (especially with Q-Loop) is a very click efficient card that gives criminal card draw, something it otherwise lacks, but the drawback is that it requires you to play lots of hardware, if there isn't enough good hardware then it's not worth it. Currently there is enough good hardware.

2) Winning Without Accessing Cards

This is the bit that some players may find distasteful...

There are currently a lot of corps that punish you for accessing cards and especially for stealing agendas. Even just decks with deliberately low agenda density cause a major problem for a runner without another way to win...

Jeitinho allows us to put a clock on any game but it is also what allows us to play Sec Testing, the defensive nature of this can totally turn off a corp's game plan whilst making our runs tempo forward.

A version of this deck playing WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ and Docklands Pass instead of Jeitinho could make use of the efficiency of the engine but could not abuse Sec Testing.

Changes

The differences between this and the previous published list are:
-1 Paladin Poemu.
-1 Hush.
-2 Daily Casts.
+1 Mystic Maemi.
+1 Environmental Testing.
+2 Poison Vial.

Env Testing is quite simply better Daily Casts for us in this deck, you can get it to pop in a single turn cycle if you're hot on it. Mystic Maemi was originally a second Env Testing which I liked a lot but decided to go for the leaner econ expecting a fast meta.

Poison Vial is the real standout winner of the bunch, this card featured in the original version of the list many moons ago but got cut. Now that Revolver is our Killer the utility goes way up, it's very synergistic with Boomerang and generically useful in a lot of matchups.

The Tournament

This deck went 4-1, only losing a game to an Ag which is our worst matchup. Judge for yourself in the replay but I would argue this is a throw on my part.

I was struggling with connection issues throughout parts of the top cut but had a great time across both days, no one does online tournaments quite like ManintheMoon and this deck is awesome.

Links

Replays do not show you the information gain via Q-Loop which is really unfortunate... Whenever really sick stuff happens you can often go back and figure out what was there if you are curious.

• In Depth Writeup
• Replay Vs Ag
• Replay Vs Asa (The final 2 turns of this game are a total mess be warned, I somehow manage to pick the worst of all lines and still win. It is hard to see exactly in the replay but a fun puzzle if you want to work out the best line for yourself.)
• Replay Vs Sports
• Replay Vs PD
• Replay Vs Ob
• Stream of part of the PD game includes some hilarious commentary from CTZ and Radiant figures out in real time why the deck is good.