Retirement's Over

Ok, so this deck was primarily created to hate on SYNC decks which I suspect will be prevalent. So I started with Data Dealer+Fan Site combination. News Teams are GREAT.

Next up was to add 3x Hostage and 3x Logos to try and get Data Dealer as quickly as possible. Once I had the Hostages, I decided I might as well go heavy on the Connections. The Source and Dr. Lovegood are the next to go in, followed by Mr. Li and Film Critic. Decoy is our old man's version of a Plascrete, and Underworld Contact is the last Connection that I think might be useful. (This one's on the chopping block, after playing with it a bit. Might be better as a Fall Guy...)

Because of Underworld Contact, Dyson Mem Chip gets added. (I considered Helpful AI, but it would be the rest of my influence.) Next I have to decide on my breaker suite. I decide to start with 2x breakers and go from there. For my first iteration, I'll go with the Centrals breakers. Rex and Femme get added as Criminal's best non-central only breakers not named Faerie. Faust gets added because after I'm set up, I don't need more Logos, Hostage, or Special Order, and some matchups it can eat Decoy, too. Looks like a pretty reasonable Program suite, lets head over to events...

First up, the obviously missing card: Account Siphon. I think that this deck doesn't particularly care if you're poor or not. It definitely doesn't need the money-infusion from it, and as I said earlier, the concept was to try and destroy SYNC, and I definitely can't float tags in this deck, so clearing them is just going along with their gameplan... Because of the central breakers, I absolutely have to run 3x Inside Job. I'm already running 3x Hostage and 3x Special Order, because I want to leverage Criminal's strengths, and those are Connection/Icebreaker tutoring here. Speaking of Connections, Calling in Favors seems good here, and in testing it's acquitted itself nicely, being as good as or better than a Sure Gamble in every game that I don't draw all of them in the first four turns. Drive By is needed for Mushin or Jinteki decks, and also snipes Caprice/Batty hiding out. It also lets me target my Inside Jobs more accurately, which is needed in a deck without SoT/Levy. Now I have two slots left... and one influence... Stimhack doesn't really fit, since I can't get in anywhere with Just Money (central only breakers), but Employee Strike should neuter a few corps. Emergency Shutdown is the last addition, though I'm not sure on it.

Playtesting analysis: Surprisingly strong. Completely destroyed the SYNC deck I played against, and actually gave NEH Fastro a run for its money. The difficulty, like most Criminal, is getting into servers later in the game. The Inside Job's and Femme pull their weight here. Data Dealer is So Much Money. Fan Site + Data Dealer is roughly equivalent to 4 clicks, take 9, and get 9 more for every two clicks after that. And it's even better if they give you News Teams. Data Dealer also enables desperation plays that are otherwise impossible, allowing you to take an Agenda when they were on game point, at the cost of one of your own. Iain can definitely win by just preventing the Corp from winning.

Things that aren't working so well: Breach. With the death of Parasite spam, Ice Wall and other cheap barriers have made a resurgence, and Breach is poor against these. At least it wrecks NEXT Silver. Faust also is relatively lackluster here, just because I don't have the Levy. I don't want to import Datasucker, as making repeated central runs is not generally what I want to do with this deck, so I'm struggling for where to go for an AI or catch-all breaker. Crypsis or Overmind seem to be the next best choices. Underworld Contact also feels lackluster, so that might have to go entirely as well.

I also feel I may want more 'silver bullets', because I have Logos to find them, and Mr. Li also does work in finding me specific cards that I might want for the matchup. I'm not going through my entire deck, but I also generally don't feel I need to, since a bit of it is redundant. (I feel happy that I've figured that part out, at least.)

I've also noticed that I think you can play Iain like a normal Criminal, just ignoring his ability. In the NEH game, I think I fired my ability only three turns, but it still came down to a last turn run to steal for the game. Given this revelation, I may start thinking about Iain as if he were a 'worse' Andy, that becomes a 'better' Gabe if he starts losing. (It's basically Gabe's ability without a run on HQ when you're losing.)