When ryanbantwins gives you a list... (3rd @ IT Nats 2024)

... to play crim with, you play it at a bunch of event and do well with it. That's what happened in this scenario (if you count me blatantly stealing the list as "giving").

Story Time

It's early August and I'm sitting with @ryanbantwins and @J0N4LD outside the venue for German Nats as we wait for the judges to finish re-sleeving Brian's opponent's deck so they can resume their final games.
I try not to distract him too much from his game as we chat about the meta. I complain about how criminals are so weak currently and that opened the door for a lot of HB rush decks to run rampant in the meta. With a calm smile on his face he asks: "Can I interest you in Deep Dive Sable ?". Unfortunately our conversation gets cut short as he's called back in the room and the final resumes.
He goes on to win his Sable game only to then fall with his iconic Combo Ob against @AugustusCaesar's Lat in a nailbiter last game.

Later that day the German champion and I are on our way to the airport. I've already mentally dismissed the Sable deck, but as we chat he, with the attitude of the great player he is, mentions being interested in looking into the deck and figure out why it worked so well: we discuss its strengths and weaknesses, its position in the meta and some possible slot changes. By the time our conversation shifts topic I'm intrigued by the list, but the World Tree Arissana I'm currently playing keeps putting up great results and if I'm right about the next ban list update being empty, this new crim list is going to keep its role as benchwarmer for a while more.

I was WRONG!

The 24.09 ban list update hits me in a moment where I'm struggling to find a corp to play, leaving me without a runner as well.
I don't have time to think about which runner to play, my instinct tells me that Jinteki glacier, which was one of the toughest matchups for WT Ari, might become a little less popular and that could result in more breathing room for the blue faction. That's good enough for me: I unearth the Sable list that peaked my interest just the month prior, I play a couple of Jnet games to get a feel for it and sleeve it up for a local CO the next weekend.
The deck perform wonderfully, going undefeated winning against some Jinteki tempo and rush HB decks. The meta feels very soft against this particular strategy and moreover the deck is just very fun to play!

Fast forward a week. I'm in full preparation mode for Italian Nationals: my corp crisis is still going, but I had more time to play the Sable and I'm enjoying it more and more.
I'm recovering from a bad cold I caught at work, but I still want to join the AMT to get some practice. In order to reduce stress and ideally avoid giving out free scouting information, I join the tournament under the very British name of init_bruv, which makes me giggle every time I read it. Despite the premise I go undefeated in Swiss, even winning a game vs an Earth Station featuring 3x Crisium Grid and Transport Monopoly, right before getting knock out of top cut by @jan tuno in a game riddled with piloting errors on my end.
At this point I tweaked the list very slightly, including the insightful suggestions I got from Augustus, and I understand it very well. I'm slightly concerned that many strong players, famously known for their prowess with slow Jinteki decks, are going to attend Nats this year, but I just plan on relying on lady luck to dodge those matchups.

During the event the deck went 5-1, winning some very convincing games, despite rolling into @koga's Earth Station twice between Swiss and Top Cut, closing every game with one or more Deep Dives. The one loss came in by the hand of AugustusCaesar himself, piloting his dreaded AgInfusion, where exhaustion and stress got the best of me as I basically walked into a rezzed Saisentan for lethal damage.

Verbal Plasticity?!

The only change I made to the original list is including 2 copies of Verbal Plasticity, taking the spot of the third Cezve and Mutual Favor.

To this day I'm not sure this makes the list better: Cezve #3 felt unnecessary, but finding the first one can be very important. The same applies for Mutual Favor: sometimes you need to find it early on, but late game it's quite dead.
On the other hand Verbal Plasticity feels very nice: the interaction with The Class Act gives you a major filtering effect and the deck naturally relies on clicking for draws, so it felt like a very natural include. In the end I decided that the additional draws compensated the loss of consistency that the changes came with and the stronger draw filter was a pretty good upside when dealing with a deck featuring multiple copies of several unique cards.

The other card I want to shoutout is Backstitching. This card consistently proved to be one of the best in the deck: it's a great tool in the early game, where it helps face-checking and forcing the corp to rez ice, compromising their credit pool, and them comes in extremely handy in the late game, where bypassing a big piece of ice can accelerate our deep dive by one or two turns.

The play pattern with this deck usually comes down to finding a few point early, thanks to the many free or cheap accesses that we get for using our tools, and then building up a big credit pool as we wait to close the game out with Deep Dives, slowly exploiting the weak marks for profit and letting Backstitching do the heavy lifting when the mark finally lands on the more protected servers.

Shoutout to ryanbantwins for creating the original list and to Augustus and the rest of the TAI Breakers for the feedback and practice.

Criminals have been getting better and better results as of late, coming up with different approaches to how to win the game: this one is all about run-based economy and aggressive central pressure.
If that sounds fun to you gives this list a try, you won't regret it!