Nothing Special [Flashpoint]

The deck that I call "nothing special" is basically just a very normal criminal shell, with Test Run and Faust. This is an updated list that, I think needed Sifr out to be considered viable again for a couple of reasons. These cards allow you to leverage the extremely low variance of an Andromeda deck and use Faust to compress your redundancy into economy. Test Run has been my secret weapon in criminal for a long time, since it:

• enables smoother tricks with Femme Fatale and Sneakdoor Beta
• gives you program search AND recursion which would normal require multiple imports
• works well with the now released bird breakers (letting you zap them to hand rather than top of the stack and derez a juicy target at the same time)

I am inclined to say Sifr/Desperado is a meta call, but the problem is that your breaker choices become more difficult without Sifr. Saker is pretty strong at 4 to install and with people trying to play around paperclip the cost to break most barriers is pretty reasonable. I'm less impressed by Peregrine at 5 to install, but it's actually a fairly competent breaker even without Sifr. (though paying 5 to reinstall is brutal).

Still, this is a VERY rich deck, because econ advantage is important without much NBN tech (King Aaron notwithstanding) and it's the only way to use your derez abilities without it hurting too bad.

Femme becomes a usable backup breaker to mongoose with SIFR, making it easier to justify playing if all you want is to Account Siphon the corp or break into a remote. This extends to the bird breakers as well (but still fuck golden), and they "combo" with test run (that ability is still expensive, but its easier to pull off and saves you a draw if the derez card is worth 4+, I say go ahead and zap the bird back to hand off a test run)

Hostage is not my favorite card, but I did find that 3x Aaron Marrons is actually higher variance than 2x/1x hostage, since you can see him both too early AND too late, hostage let's you find John Masanori or feed it to Faust. Probably don't hostage for blockade runner, since John will net you more cards and BR is mostly just to smooth out your hard draws, not be itself "card draw".

Blockade Runner: I'm experimenting, but the benefit of this over Symmetrical Visage is that you can tailor your grip a little better pre/post Faust. If you need garbage to throw on the fire, or if you want new cards, this has better control over that. It's also good for putting career fair/Temujin back if you want to draw them again later.

Rebirth: kind of a safety blanket because I'm a Leela player at heart and at 1 influence, it's hard to justify NOT including, but honestly, the deck doesn't need to be Leela, and if you're more comfortable with a Film Critic or something else, there are pretty reasonable uses of your last influence pip.

Citadel Sanctuary: I've found to be a very strong complement to Aaron (as opposed to say, On the Lamb) because once you have a way to remove tags on the corp turn (by leaving a counter on Aaron) you give the corp little reason to ever bother boosting that trace. This let's CS do much of the heavy lifting Aaron would otherwise do, and works great with your self-tagging cards.

Some thoughts: I'm experimenting with Tracker, since we've been seeing Vamadeva creep into some criminal decks, with the MU from Sifr, I think its stronger (albeit easier to game, Vamadeva is not necessary with Faust in the deck too)

RDI/The Turning Wheel could also be a medium, or I've also toyed with DLR as the last influence pip. Wasn't firing DLR as much as I would like, even if I got it early, but I had John/AS/Citadel, so, it's worth consideration depending on the meta I suppose. Keyhole would also be good with Test Run.

Test Run could also be Beth Kilrang-Chang since we have a hostage, but I haven't been wowed with the 1x Beth out of faction, since you tend to see her too late to really compress your advantage on the corp, and of course you can't rely on getting the thing you need (money/clicks/draws). Still, if you're not using Test Run, feel free to give it a shot.