I've been playing against my friend's cirminal deck quite a bit recently, and he pulled a lot of ice out of his deck and is relyign almost entirely on Crypsis. Criminals can get away with this more than the other factions for a few reasons:

1) your event cards are doing alot of the heavy lifting for you. Account Siphon only needs to get through to the hand once, and Crypsis works just fine for it. Once you've hit the corp with account siphon, you have even more money with which to fund Crypsis. Similarly, Inside job helps to reduce the cost of using crypsis since that's one less piece of ice you have to wory about.

2) You're getting a bunch of money back on your runs anyway between Gabe's passive and Desperado, so ice efficiency isn't as big a deal to a criminal as it is to other runners. The criminal economy can support Crypsis better than other factions can.

3) Criminals don't have to splash for Special order, so you're getting slot efficiency without having to spend influence.

I just don't see Crypsis needing to stay around for the long term. Yeah, you can keep funding it if you're doing well, but why would you need to? Once you get your barrier/sentry/code gate breakers out, Crypsis just kind of takes up space, in my opinion. I've run into that, and Crypsis just ends up going to the heap.

I agree he has utility, but I just never ended up needing him for very long. I've just been debating taking him out to see if those card slots would be better filled with something else. And again, Snitch has been more useful than I could have ever imagined.

SnowcatAssassin said:

You raise an interesting point with Snitch: as more sets are released, Crims get more toys that are simply better alternatives to Crypsis. Snitch is an example of that without even being an icebreaker.

We can also go back to the days when we only had the Core Set: in a Crim deck that already had cards for Sentry, Barrier and Code Gate (usually a borrowed Yog or Gordian Blade) ICE, when the player wanted to throw in an extra 'breaker, the choice was for Femme Fatale, not Crypsis. Femme Fatale has huge install cost and isn't as efficient as Ninja when it comes to Sentry killing but its ability to bypass ICE (notably the ubiquitously corp-beloved Toll Booth) still made it a much better choice than Crypsis- and that's even where Crypsis is for the early game as proposed and Femme Fatale can usually only be paid for in the late game!

As for the other runner factions, again only Noise seems to make the best use of Crypsis to the point of accepting its weaknesses. Anarchs and Shapers instead have gotten other toys that they'd rather run. There have even been some terrible cards that came out for them and the idea that Crypsis can take their place hasn't even come up. The choice is still to not run them and not run Crypsis.

Also, to be honest, I predicted on these forums in a Crypsis thread that it could possibly get cards in the data packs that would actually make it good (that was the time I got the idea to make my Criminal Crypsis deck). Those cards have still not arrived.

Brigaldio, SnowcatAssassin just is on the money here. Crypsis either costs too much or can easily be replaced by something far more efficient.

Brigaldio said:

1. That was the idea behind my deck. Using Criminal tricks, I wouldn't have to use Crypsis often thus not spending much. Yet, I actually did spend a lot on Crypsis to the point of nullifying what advantages my events like Inside Job provided. At the end of the day, even where Crims are all about speed, you will still not be so fast as to not need to break ICE (and given an experienced corp player, you're going to be facing fast defense set-ups as well).

2. That too was something I assumed, but Crypsis eats up those advantages as hungry as the poorer Crim 'breakers do (I'm looking at you, Aurora) yet while still costing more (weighty enough install cost, clicks to load, 0 strength). You're also overlooking the fact that Gabe- while not a bad ID- can easily find his ability locked out. An experienced player will always begin to install ICE on HQ and R&D first, whether they're facing Gabe or not; when they are facing Gabe, they put in an extra effort to protect HQ (and Archives for Sneakdoor Beta). This really slows Gabe down. As for Desperado, that's only one cred per successful run- that's the minimum Crypsis has to be paid whenever it break ICE (not to mention the virus token). You just get more out of other 'breakers.

3. As far as Crypsis costs a lot to use and Crims before and now have more viable and effective alternatives, using Crypsis is slot inefficient, as is using Special Order to grab Crypsis. You're better off going for Ninja, or even Peacock or something else.

Brigaldio, I tried all of this and it didn't work. It couldn't even cut it in casual games, and certainly won't be strong enough for competitive play. Only with Noise does Crypsis make sense and that's because Noise makes a bit more use out of it than everyone else. When only one ID in the game is truly amenable to Crypsis, the hate for it is somewhat justified.

Runix said:

Yes, but speaking as a Crim player, I can avoid Data Mine and Whirlpool one way or another. Whirlpool is only worth it if the succeeding ICE are all particularly dangerous and not survivable; more likely, it leads to an ambush asset- but if so, a Crim is likely to spot the trap using their expose shenanigans and simply not fall into it. A trap that doesn't spring simply takes up space, time and money.

For that matter, Data Mine isn't that nasty either where a player is likely to be willing to take its 1 net damage.

Anarchs can destroy ICE, and both Data Mine and Whirlpool are particularly easy for them to trash. Shapers can prevent net damage. There's just so many other options that can be taken that don't cost as much as Crypsis but are as- or even more- effective.

I find crypsis to be very strong in criminal for one simple reason; it's an agressive icebreaker. Criminals thrive on making early runs and ruining the corp's economy. Having an early crypsis will let you get in to account siphon, will let you hit their melange behind a single ice, will let you get into HQ to emergency shutdown whatever ice they manage to scrape together. Crypsis can put the entire game into the criminal's hand early, they can run with confidence knowing that they can break ANY ice they come accross.

Many have said that crypsis should't be around for the long haul, neither should criminals. With an effective aggro criminal deck you should be able to deprive the corp of so many resources that it feels like they are playing their first turn of the game over and over again.

If you use other breakers early in a criminal deck then the corp has the option of putting out a variety of ice, forcing you to build up a full icebreaker suite. This takes time, and patience is not a criminal's strength. To me, that's the shaper's game and if you're looking to build up an icebreaker suite then shaper is probably a better choice for you, I don't want a rig as a criminal, I just want to win, and preferrably I want to win early.

Crypsis allows you to control the early game as a criminal by breaking every single ice in the game on its own.

witticaster said:

I am glad you posted this, as I was going to say the same. Gabe is hyper aggressive. So what if the corp piles extra ice on HQ and R&D? Crypsis will break them every time and the corp will be poorer for it. As long as there is ice for the corp to rez, Crypsis will help keep the corp poor with out having to worry about losing your events and economy support to face-checking bad routines. Granted, the late game criminal probably wants Corroder and Femme Fatale (for bypass mainly) to lighten the load on your weakening economy, but crypsis will have already acted as the work-horse early, scoring 2-3 agendas by the time support is needed.