At last nights Warlords weekly meet up I got a chance to test drive my first attempt at a Criminal deck. 

I’m an Anarch at heart, I love playing Noise (although the leaked/spoiled Anarch id null from the next data cycle may tempt me away) especially with Faust/David/Street Magic/Wylde Side/Pancakes – which has most people online raging against them (this might be gutted with the first update to the most wanted list due to drop any day now).

So playing a faction I don’t usually play is a big thing.

However I was tempted to come up with this deck after the Run Last Click guys mentioned the Drive By card in the live broadcast they did at the UK Games Expo.

In my hunting online to find out just what the good ice breakers are for Criminal, I stumbled across a card combo that would install Femme Fatale for free! It was out of faction but had to be used a nine cost ice breaker is way way too expensive.

The main thing I wanted to play with in this deck was the Drive By, Gang Sign and Rebirth.

My starting id for this deck is Andromeda giving me an initial massive nine card draw. If that doesn’t give me rebirth, it should allow me to fish for it using some of the card draw or planned assault. 

Once I get rebirth I can then swap to a Criminal id more suitable for the matchup I’m facing.

From what I can tell Criminal is all about the central servers particularly HQ. 

This deck is running a lot of events for me , giving economy, exposing cards, making the hit on HQ more painful for the Corp, and finding cards.

Running one copy of my breakers may seem recless but with the events I can get to them quickly if need be.

Window I added because how many times after losing has the card you really needed been on the bottom of the stack? 

In the game last night I mulliganed, in the second hand I drew I got two sure gambles. A cash rich start. Ben iced up HQ quickly. So a Sneakdoor Beta on an unprotected Archives scored me an agenda. Guess who iced up archives then?

Gang sign scored me an agenda when Ben scored his first agenda. I managed to score a third agenda from HQ. I was sitting on six agenda points while Ben had five. 

My biggest problem was having enough credits to drive my ice breakers in the lay stages of the game. Which slowed down my assault on HQ. 

Ben scored the final agenda he needed to get the win.

I liked the way this deck played. The combo worked to get Femme out for free. Drive By did its job a couple of times. Gang Sign got me an agenda. So the little ‘tricks’ worked. 

We followed up our Netrunner game with Firefly Fluxx which Ben won. 

My final game of the evening was a four player game of Epic. The decks were dealt randomly (in the interests of time), and we played it that you could only attack player to your left, with only the two players doing battle able to play events to influence it, however everyone else could play events when the current player tried to end their turn.

I was the first to be knocked out. However I’m pleased with that, considering the random element to the decks, the cards I had drawn were not bad. I could have been dealt worse cards. In the end Ben emerged triumphant again. A clean sweep for him.

Great evening gaming. But now I have to decide if I play this new Criminal deck at Saturday’s comp at my FLGS or stick to my tried and tested, but more importantly familiar Noise.

Here is my deck…

Drive By Swap
Andromeda (Humanity’s Shadow)
Event (28)

3x Drive By (The Underway)

2x Easy Mark (Core Set)

1x Emergency Shutdown (Cyber Exodus)

1x Express Delivery (Honor and Profit)

2x Infiltration (Core Set)

2x Inside Job (Core Set)

1x Lawyer Up (True Colors)

2x Legwork (Honor and Profit)

1x Lucky Find (Double Time) ••

1x Planned Assault (Honor and Profit)

1x Rebirth (The Liberated Mind) •

2x Satellite Uplink (Trace Amount)

2x Scavenge (Creation and Control) ••••

2x Special Order (Core Set)

2x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

2x Test Run (Cyber Exodus) ••••• •

1x Unscheduled Maintenance (The Spaces Between)
Hardware (6)

1x Desperado (Core Set) ☆

2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

2x Public Terminal (Honor and Profit)

1x Window (Honor and Profit)
Resource (8)

2x Gang Sign (The Underway)

3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

2x Security Testing (Honor and Profit)

1x Street Magic (Kala Ghoda) •
Icebreaker (4)

1x Aurora (Core Set)

1x Femme Fatale (Core Set)

1x Leviathan (Second Thoughts)

1x Crypsis (Core Set)
Program (2)

1x Sneakdoor Beta (Core Set)

1x Au Revoir (The Source)
48 cards (minimum 45)

14/14 (=15-1☆) influence used

Cards up to The Liberated Mind