The Mastermind

Armand Walker is not one to get his own hands dirty. He uses his time to sink his fingers into the one resource he's best at: people. When you have the right people on your side, you don't need all the fancy programs and hardware that other runners use. Hell, you rarely need to run at all!

Geist is a true crime lord of the city, sacrificing whomever he needs to to get the job done. He holds people hostage, buys off politicians, journalists, and detectives, and even puts out the odd assassination hit. When he wants things done, he sets up a perfect plan, and then snags his prizes before anyone even knew he was there. No wasted effort. No move un-calculated. Crime: perfected.

This breakerless deck relies on finding agendas first and stealing them later. Use DDoS to get into weak servers, and Blackmail to get into more heavily guarded ones. Don't forget to reiterate with same-old-thing and Levy.

Muligan for Hostage or Tech Trader. Use Hostage and Express Delivery to get out your Tech Traders as early as possible, or any of your connections that counter your particular matchup. Use your Fall Guys for quick cash, Sports Hopper to keep up the draw, and Kati Jones to ensure you have a cash back-up plan (e.g. traces). Build up and draw until you get Corporate Scandal, and then start running!

Use Spy Camera, Raymond Flint, and Drive By to look at cards before running. The goal is to only run when you know you're going to score an agenda.

Of course, that's not always entirely possible, so use Sneakdoor Beta to get quick access for pol-ops and some random HQ hits before the corp plugs it up. Pop Investigative Journalism to ensure the bad pup sticks, with bonus points if you've got Raymond Flint on the board.

The key to playing mastermind is to be patient. Do not let yourself be baited into any Ash or Caprise surprises, or worse traps like cerebral overwriter. If there's an unprotected server with advancement counters on it... Drive By! Do not face-plant into anything, or let them res any ice. Stay cool, and stay safe!

Match Ups:

Tag-N-Bag: You need Film Critic to ensure you never "steal" an agenda. If the corp is gaining lots of cash, and could possibly trace you (midseasons!), do not run without Film Critic.

Asset Spam: Hostage for your Scrubber to ensure you can trash key cards.

Nasty Agendas: Weyland and Jenteki both have evil agendas, and a lot of people still run NAPD (I know I do!). For these, we need to Hostage out Film Critic.

Blue Sun: You can't stop them ressing ice, unfortunately. You're probably screwed. I've tried putting Muertos Gang Member and Emergency Shutdown in the deck, but they are simply dead cards against anyone else. Unfortunately, this deck is all about meta :/

Problematic Cards:

Eliza's Toybox - Kill it with fire (Political Operative works well).

Executive Boot Camp - Kill it with fire (do whatever you need to do to trash this ASAP). Unfortunately for you, if they know your game, they'll res a simple ETR ice on EBC, and it's game over for you.

Amazon Industrial Zone - Unfortunately, by the time they rez this, it's probably too late. But, kill it with fire anyway, if you can.

Oversight AI - The corp you know plays this is Blue Sun, and if you're lucky they'll just pull the ice back for cash. If they know your game though, you're screwed.