Gabriel ‘metaknight’

This week I’m looking at a deck designed to take on the current astrobiotic meta with a strong sub-theme of being able to deal with the increase in horizontal play we’re seeing with replicating perfection slowly establishing its place as the number two contender for strongest corp right now.

Gabriel has fallen out of favour since Andromeda showed up big time. However, I feel like he is still an exceptionally strong runner for focused aggression and control. His game is more snowbally than Andromeda and he has trouble if locked out. In the current meta, however, being locked out is a death sentence to any runner, so playing a deck that is willing to take that risk to hit hard and early feels like a reasonable choice to make.

Gabe’s issue has always been consistency and ability to make plays, losing tempo easily if he has to dig for answers. If he’s lucky enough to have the answers available, he’s devastating- anyone who’s been on the wrong end of Gabe on a good day will say it felt like they just couldn’t do anything. The key then is getting that ball rolling and making it as versatile as possible so you avoid those stages of frantic searching for options.

To that end I’ve started with importing the overknight shell as my breaker suite- Knight, Overmind and the Deep Red console which does so much to help both of them. In criminal this shell has the added bonus of being able to freely play E3 Feedback Implants which goes a long way to extending the power of these tools and freeing up deck slots to use on other stuff. With three Special Order I feel like this shell should always give me the power to get into servers if I need to, consequently both Crescentus and Emergency Shutdown are excellent tools for extending the pressure window. With playtesting I may add a one of Crypsis to add a bit of longevity, but I’m really not trying to play the long game here.

The big downside of this shell is with deep red taking up my console slot I don’t have space for Desperado. Expecting a lot of horizontal play as I am, this deck is going to go all in on exploiting that with Bank Job and Security Testing. Like a lot of the cards in this deck these choices are risky, if I end up playing a cerebral imaging deck for example I’m probably screwed, but if not the additional efficiency should let me keep the corp on the back foot and make up for the loss of desperado’s economic impact on the game.

From there, the remaining choices in the deck are pretty simple. Account Siphon, Inside Job, Lawyer Up. A splash of one Indexing for early game control and Makers Eye for late game accesses. A single Legwork and a couple of Planned Assault with a playset of Same Old Thing to provide that powerhouse criminal event toolbox. Finally, a Sneakdoor Beta. I’m not playing a playset of this guy, as powerful as it is in Gabe, because it messes with the efficiency of Overmind a lot. People will be cautious against Gabe probing archives anyway so I can bluff a lot of the power of the card without having it, and I feel like with the breakers I’m using I should be able to punch down the front door more often than not against the meta we’re seeing.

I played around with that last one of influence, thinking about Scrubber or Stimhack, but settled on Pawn. Having knights on the board consistently is pretty important to this deck… I’ve chosen not to play Plascrete Carapace for now, since I’m going to be aiming to clear tags rather than float them. My recent regionals had only a couple of Weyland players in a field of fifty and the big bad corp isn’t getting anything too spectacular in Upstalk.

__________________________________________

‘MetaKnight’ Gabe

Identity: Criminal: Gabriel Santiago

Cards: 45 / 45

Influence: 15 / 15

Event (21)

3x Account Siphon

3x Dirty Laundry

3x Emergency Shutdown

1x Indexing ●●●

2x Inside Job

2x Lawyer Up

1x Legwork

2x Planned Assault

3x Special Order

1x The Makers Eye ●●

Hardware (5)

3x Deep Red ●●●

2x E3 Feedback Implants

Program (11)

3x Crescentus

3x Knight ●●●●●●

3x Overmind

1x Pawn ●

1x Sneakdoor Beta

Resource (8)

3x Bank Job

3x Same Old Thing

2x Security Testing

Decklist from Little Chiba

______________________________________________________