Creativity is a bitch.
If I'm not trying to push new ideas into the game, I get bored. It can somewhat be managed by playing tricky decks (thanks Ari), but at some point I have to go back into exploratory mode. This can lead to interesting decks and equally interesting (and varied) reactions:

Premise

Crim is in a bad place, and it's not just a minor issue brought up by a couple people, but an increasingly shared underlying sentiment. I have many things to say about that (and a little surprise), but making videos takes time. Stay tuned. In the meantime, let's talk a bit about how this deck came to be.

Inception

Ok so I'm standing in for the Unband 🧠🔥 team alongside xiaat, helping out Council and Kikai. Council and I are the two* people that are fine playing Crim and I prefer having them on what they're most comfortable with. I've been playing Ari all year and I've been meaning to revisit blue anyway (my fav faction). I look at what's good and... nah, there's no way I'm playing goddamn Sable. It's not as bad as playing reg 419, but still reg as hell and boring. Zahya is similar to Sable, so no. Az is fun but dysfunctional (print some hardware econ NSG I beg you). Jeitinho won't cut it.
Okay...
Time to explore.

Idea

Flashback to RWR release. I play a bunch of Ob games against wowarlok on Crew Seb. It's nasty. I can't rush how I want to. Games are tricky, the deck that has been carrying me throughout the entirety of last year looks bad. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago or something. I'm annoyed, because a Crim that can't run is just done and glacier is back. Hold on. What if I open servers back up? Mawmakua was a real deck and people are already revisiting it. Crew is 3 inf, which is actually not that much. Killing 3 ice is good, but it's not insane. Ok, get them in Steve. Hm, now I can spam kill HQ ice and spam doof. The only real Criminal wincon (no, really, it's the only one) also loves uniced HQ.
Exciting.

Prototype

Slot Pennyshaver because open servers can be abused. Add breakers, traditional "Crim" draw (Earthrise / Verbal), Career Fair and some burst econ. Looks good. Play a few testing games. It's clunky as hell. I'm not Sable, so I can't just hard draw that much and drip is unstable. Efficient draw becomes expensive without the rat, and killing ice costs too. I get clunky hands filled with bricks and breakers. Think back to the last couple smooth blue decks I played. They all have Masterwork in them. Fuck it, let's give it a go. I know that console + Zenit + Cezve makes things easy from previous Az exploration. Also, since I'm going full yolo mode, might as well just cut all breakers and fill slots with turtle. Ok, looks better. I smash the first few testing games. It's... working? Change a few slots. Smash some more.
THIS DECK WORKS?!

Refinement

Alright, the deck is not insane, but it's promising. It's new and it poses new challenges for corps. Doof becomes a bigger threat now that rezzed ice doesn't stay rezzed forever. Assets are a bit of a problem. I play with Aeneas for some time, but it's just very click intensive. I like going up in money with it, but I can't contest the board early with it. Cupellation is really cute and acts as tech for some matchups. I really want to cut it for more gas or a couple breakers. I end up keeping it because you never know, but I'm not super happy. Show the list to Council. They're unimpressed. We play a couple games. Holy shit it's crushing Sokka's AG in our first few games. They're hooked. This deck smashes corps and drinks their blood. Even a secret version of prison MirrorMorph, which deals well enough with the Hosh version, can't keep up with the combination of ice destruction and credit denial. Sick. Debate slots with Council. We end up making no real changes for Fite Club, leaving some options open for the future.

Results

The deck loses to tuno's busted Asa, a deck that's filled with econ, goes a little wide, slots 2x Mavirus and has tons of recursion. I mean, yeah, I can picture the result on paper. I need to draw the nuts and play my lines. tuno practiced the matchup and has solutions to my plan, so proceeds to elegantly dismantle what I have (which is indeed not the nuts). Not a great showing, but I'm happy either way because I could show something new to the world. Now I can just wait to see if someone comes back to it later on. Maybe it ends up drastically different from how I imagined it, but I don't mind. It's so last week anyway.

Resources

VOD
Replay
Corp