Testbed Zahya 3rd Texas Gateway Release Tournament

I'm a big fan of Criminals and was very excited to see what Zahya could do. I was a little skeptical of the Conduit hype, and originally built this deck with Makers Eye and Sneakdoor. But then I decided that 1) the upside of Conduit in Zahya is too good to pass up, and 2) this is a release day tournament so experimenting with new cards is probably more important than building an optimal deck.

As a result, I played Tread Lightly over Inside Job, slotted Cleaver over Corroder (big mistake), and Jailbreak. The one card I didn't replace with its newer version was Emergency Shutdown, which turned out to be a mistake because Tranquilizer is really good. I made the decision to not slot it when my deck had Sneakdoor, because of the MU issues and because E-Shutdown + Sneakdoor is a strong combo. I simply forgot to make the substitution when I moved to Conduit.

Lessons Learned:

Unsurprisingly, Zahya is good, Conduit is good, Pennyshaver is good, and the combination thereof are good. Conduit might be weaker in formats with stronger ice, but here it was a beast.

Red Team performed a lot better than I expected. It combos well with Security Testing on Archives, Docklands Pass for running HQ, and can even Conduit on R&D. While you can't get Conduit accesses while getting Red Team credits, you can add a virus token to Conduit while doing a Red Team run since it triggers on any successful R&D run.

That being said, it gets worse the more powerful run events are in the format and your deck. I don't think it makes the cut even in Startup, where Bravado is hungry for slots and runs. But it's a respectable card in this format, and was a consistent performer across my games.

Tranquilizer is a strong card. Even though I didn't play it, I had the displeasure of facing it. It's a powerful card that creates surprisingly interesting game states and scenarios for the Corp. Maybe too slow for Standard, but I think it's worth slotting over E-Shutdown in any deck that can spare the MU.

Overclock is solid, but I don't think it automatically earns slots in the way Stimhack used to. Paying out before the run, and with an additional credit compared to Dirty Laundry is definitely upside. But losing the flexibility of Dirty Laundry into an undefended Archives is probably a big enough downside to keep Overclock from taking over that slot.

Jailbreak seemed okay. I ended up discarding it every time a drew it, since other cards were just more impactful. I'm pretty skeptical of the card in general, since it doesn't do a lot for a slot. But 1) it does interact nicely with Zahya's ability, and 2) it at least doesn't demand influence, so it seems like potentially viable, if low impact multi-access that you can run if influence is an issue.

Tread Lightly was the only new card that struck out to me as actively bad. Fantastic artwork, but these would have been much better as Inside Jobs.

Quick Tournament Report:

Round 1: Win vs. Jeff on Built to Last

This game was over pretty quickly. I was able to get Conduit, Cleaver, and Pennyshaver out against an R&D defended only by Wraparound for two full turns, and was able to score out from the big dig. If Jeff had been able to find an additional piece of ice during my dig turns, I could have been temporarily taxed out. However, the combination of credits stacking up on Pennyshaver, virus tokens on Conduit, and being able to take 5 credits from Zahya during a dig turn meant that stabilization would have been tricky. Conduit and run based econ is extremely punishing to Corp against if things go wrong.

Round 2: Loss vs. ArminFirecracker on Built to Last

This time Pharos locked down R&D from fairly early on while Hortums and Enigmas squatted on every other server. I ended up drawing 21 cards from my deck before finding an Abagnale or Mutual Favor, immediately after which point Armin got to 6 points with an Atlas counter. Inside Jobs instead of Tread Lightly would have helped here, but bricked draws happen and sometimes, no matter how well built the deck is, you just can't find the breaker until two late. Even with an earlier Abagnale, Armin was playing very well and the game would have been challenging. Corroder would have performed better vs. Pharos, but I still don't think it would have been affordable to break more than a few times. I needed Tranquilizer to take down the big ice.

Round 3: Loss vs. MovableObject on Reality Plus

Movable's deck was built around the Public Trail + Retribution rigshooter combo. I didn't respect the combo sufficiently, and lacked a way to efficiently make money outside of runs, so ended up having my breakers repeatedly trashed until I was locked out. This was a mix of pilot error and lack of influence affordable non-run econ for Crim in Gateway. I might have done better in this game if I had some Smartwares in my deck, possibly instead of the Jailbreaks. Access to non-run econ would have helped me get enough money to safely run and not get my rig blown up.

In Conclusion: This was a fun deck to play on the day! Despite the poor record of my runner, I was carried by an undefeated Corp. I'm happy with the new cards: they feel at an appropriate power level and seem well designed. As a side note, art in this set is honestly just incredible.