Resourceful Geist

This is a very different sort of Geist build to my other one, but I wanted a bit of change of style so I whipped it together and it's been a blast to play.

The basic premise is heavy denial backed by card draw. You still make a good few runs, but perhaps not as many as a sec-testing based Criminal build. Kati Jones and Tri-maf Contact are there to provide you cash while you're not running, while Desperado and Compromised Employee will pay you when you set out to wreck face. You should get cash either way.

The fun part of the deck revolves around two cards, backed up by a third. Muertos Gang Member and Compromised Employee are two connections that go together like eggs and ham and they're incredibly fun to play in this deck. Muertos is an incredibly strong card in the early game and Crescentus tactically derezzing cheap cards like Wraparound and Pop-Up window gives Muertos the chance to hit a bigger target in the mid game, if they've got more rezzed. Compromised Employee picks up slack on the other side of the bargain by paying you when the corp inevitably has to rez their ICE back up again. You deny the corp while enriching yourself, which is what Criminal is all about.

The card that backs the other two up and keeps everything moving along at a nice clip is Off-Campus Apartment. There's not a million connections in this deck but there are enough (Kati Jones, Tri-maf Contact, Street Peddler, Muertos Gang Member, Film Critic, Fall Guy, Compromised Employee) to make Off-Campus Apartment a significant source of draw, which is very nice in an otherwise draw light faction.

I've been on the record about Fall Guy being a bad card, even in Geist and I still think that's true, at least in the sense of burning it to gain 2 credits and a draw. Dirty Laundry is more efficient than that and it works better with more of Criminal's card pool. However, this deck needs it for two reasons. One is to defend the Off-Campus Apartment, since losing that probably means losing multiple Muertos Gang Members and then seeing all the most expensive ICE/assets rise from the dead, but also to preserve New Angeles City Hall. This deck doesn't want to go tag-me for obvious reasons, but Account Siphon is still the best blue card and absolutely bonkers in an econ denial deck. NACH lets you still Siphon and even Same Old Siphon and clear tags with clicks left over to apply pressure on remotes or anywhere else you think agendas might be hiding. NACH's downside is typically that you have to re-install it after every steal, but Fall Guy lets us preserve it clicklessly, which is marvelous efficiency (putting Fall Guy into play costs the click to draw and the click to install, and if you install it on Off-Campus Apartment and get a draw back from Geist then you've returned your two spent clicks in the form of card draw).

Anyway, I've gone on long enough about what is ultimately a fairly simple denial deck. One last treat to leave you with is to highlight the awesome combo of Street Peddler, Muertos Gang Member and Account Siphon. If it's early game and the corp has only 1 piece of ice over HQ (common) and you've got a Muertos Gang Member on a Street Peddler (uncommon but not rare; it's already happened to me 3 times) then you can blind Account Siphon into HQ by playing the Muertos Gang Member off of the Street Peddler during the encounter phase after they've rezzed the ICE. The corp doesn't get an opportunity to re-rez it during encounter, so you get to derez it and pass through unscathed no matter what it is and continue into HQ to steal their money and make it your own. If that ain't a Crime, I don't know what is.