The Mastermind

Armand Walker is not one to get his own hands dirty. He uses his time to sink his fingers into the one resource he's best at: people. When you have the right people on your side, you don't need all the fancy programs and hardware that other runners use. Hell, you rarely need to run at all!

Geist is a true crime lord of the city, sacrificing whomever he needs to to get the job done. He holds people hostage, buys off politicians, journalists, and detectives, and even puts out the odd assassination hit. When he wants things done, he sets up a perfect plan, and then snags his prizes before anyone even knew he was there. No wasted effort. No move un-calculated. Crime: perfected.

This breakerless deck relies on finding agendas first and stealing them later. Use DDoS to get into weak servers and force the corp to spend clicks double-icing servers, and then Blackmail to get into more heavily guarded ones. Don't forget to reiterate with same-old-thing and Levy.

Muligan for Hostage or Tech Trader. Use Hostage and Express Delivery to get out your Tech Traders as early as possible, followed by time booster Beth Kilrain-Chang and finally score protection Film Critic. Use your Fall Guys for quick cash and Sports Hopper to keep up the draw. Build up and draw until you get Corporate Scandal, and then start running!

Use Spy Camera, Raymond Flint, and Drive By to look at cards before running. The goal is to only run when you know you're going to score an agenda.

Use Feint to get quick access for your silver-bullets Political Operative and Emergency Shutdown. Pop Investigative Journalism to ensure the bad pub sticks, with bonus points if you've got Raymond Flint on the board. Make sure you're prepared for a SEA source or tag-n-bag by having your Forger or New Angeles City Hall out. If you suspect a lot of tags (e.g. Hard-Hitting news), make sure you're not running without at least 8 credits. Thanks Kati Jones!

The key to playing mastermind is to be patient. Do not let yourself be baited into any Ash or Caprise surprises, or worse traps like cerebral overwriter or snare. If there's an unprotected server with advancement counters on it... Drive By! Do not face-plant into anything, or let them res any ice. Stay cool, and stay safe!

Match Ups:

Fast Advance: Gotta love Hostaging for The Source. Especially since Fall Guy is in-faction and we're still making bank.

Tag-N-Bag: You need Film Critic to ensure you never "steal" an agenda. If the corp is gaining lots of cash, and could possibly trace you (midseasons!), do not run without Film Critic. Forger is key for avoiding the SEA Source.

Asset Spam: Let them have it. It'll be an interesting race, but you need to stay calm and not give them opportunities to tag you. Don't waste your money trashing things except for key pieces.

Nasty Agendas: Weyland and Jenteki both have evil agendas, and a lot of people still run NAPD (I know I do!). For these, we need to Hostage out Film Critic.

Blue Sun: You're probably not going to stop them from ressing a few ice, unfortunately, but our best hope is Emergency Shutdown with Feint.

Problematic Cards:

Eliza's Toybox - Kill it with fire (Political Operative works well).

Executive Boot Camp - Kill it with fire (do whatever you need to do to trash this ASAP). Unfortunately for you, if they know your game, they'll start to res ETR ice on a variety of servers.

Amazon Industrial Zone - Unfortunately, by the time they rez this, it's probably too late. But, kill it with fire anyway, if you can.

Oversight AI - The corp you know plays this is Blue Sun, and if you're lucky they'll just pull the ice back for cash. If they know your game though, it's bad news bears.

Accelerated Beta Test - Luck will win them the day, unless it's something you can face-plant through. That said, we can always kill things with Feint and Emergency Shutdown.