Criminals are weak, are they? Well, let's see about that.

So, yeah, this is my build of an old school Criminal control deck. It's been doing really really well in regular testing—its current record is about 45-6, mainly down to the fact that people have forgotten how to play against an aggressive Criminal build.

The games I lost were in large part due to me having forgotten how to play around Scorch (remember your credits minus five, folks), and due to the one hole this deck has, Fastrobiotics.

Gabe is critical to the deck; that early HQ pressure forces them to rez ice or give you a huge econ boost, and that's a lose-lose because if they rez ice you know how to land your first Siphon. Drug Dealer has been absolutely rock solid in testing - it'll send you into holes sometimes, but this deck will generally make enough money to not worry about it, and the card draw is so so necessary.

Levy has only been useful in maybe 10% of the games, but it won those games. Burning through your events at the rate this deck does, you need a way to reset yourself if the game does end up going long, despite your best efforts. Plus, it's something like recursion—I've had Corroder sniped turn one, but still managed to win the game due to shutdowns, parasites, and femmes until I could finally Levy and Special Order for the Corroder back.

But the main use of the Levy is to give you twelve Siphons to play, and that's critical. You play your Siphons very differently when you have six or twelve of them than when you have three of them; you're more willing to take risks and use it to force the corp down than to ensure it lands. Siphon is a great card[citation needed], and I don't think current builds are maximising it.

Muertos Gang Member has definitely been lower impact than I wanted it to be. When you get to play one turn one against a rezzed Tollbooth it's magnificent, and even if you're hitting them for three credits on turn three and it gets trashed to give them a Tollbooth on turn twelve, you're ahead—but there are too many cases where it's just been a dead draw, due to the Parasites not managing to clear away all the lower rez cost ice or low rez cost assets being a pain to clear away. Or just having gone tagme; every other resource in this deck is a calculated risk, one that can timewalk the corp if they try to trash it after the Siphon, but Muertos makes that deal work out much better on their end.

Visage. Very low impact, actually. It does let you turn your Drug Dealers into Wyldside on the turns you need to (1cr for 1 card vs 1 click for 2 cards), but I've very rarely found myself actually using that option once Drug Dealer hits the board. It still has a role before you're comfortable installing the Dealer, so if you happen to draw them in that order that's fine, but I'm eyeing it as a potential cut.

No multiaccess. There was no influence left for it after I built the initial version of the deck, so I decided to try it out without any—and it turns out most matchups don't need it. Sure, you lose out on some ability to close out games, but you don't mind; you're making it really hard for the Corp to recover anyway and in the meantime sniping accesses here and there. You look at every card in the deck, bar Levy, and you ask, do I want to draw an R&D Interface or even a Maker's Eye in place of this card in the critical early/midgame? I do not.

But it does make Fastrobiotics a huge hole, yeah. In testing, it's been clear—if I manage to steal an Astro, I win, if I don't, I lose. That's higher variance than I'd like; I've been thinking of testing -2 Muertos, +2 Gang Sign to see if I can slow them down.

Still. Gonna keep tweaking it. There's a lot of potential here, I think, and the meta is basically just not at all prepared for it.

You gotta stay hungry, or you'll lose the edge.