Welcome back to another GateRuler deck profile. As you can probably surmised from the title, today we are going to be reviewing and analysing Crimenauts and how they purport to function under the K-11 Knight ruler. While the archetype may have found a more suitable home under A1-Apprentice, for now, I nonetheless wanted this profile to shine a spotlight on the hand-ruler build, given their future prevalence as we start heading into Set 3, Ace of the Cosmos, Assemble! Thus I hope this will serve as a good building block, upon which players can base their future decks.
The Decklist
Similar to the K-11 Alice archetype we covered in a recent deck profile, the Crimenauts strategy revolves around special summoning a variety of small units to the field either from hand or drop. However, unlike Alice, Crimenauts are Not a late game control deck but rather an interesting jack of all trades but master of none, at least at the present time.
In fact, given the variety of options and tools they have at their disposal K-11 Crimenauts could be classified as a midrange style deck, capable of both reasonable solid aggressive and defensive strategies. While there may be a lot of disparity in the TCG world as to what the term ‘midrange‘ actually defines, in this instance the deck really hits its stride after the first couple of turns where the appropriate cards to combat an opponent’s board or setup are either in hand or in the drop-zone.
Unit Composition
While this archetype does run the standard ATLAS CNT package, in the form of Colonel “Bigwig” Owl, all other Units are from the Crimenauts family, with the exception of the Legendary cards that offer too much value not to run.
Specifically from the Crimenauts attribute, we run Creepy Cuddlies Hollowbear, Creepy Cuddlies Shark Dandy, Creepy Cuddlies Murdercorn and Crimenaut Henchman “Badfellas”. These cards serve as our bread-and-butter Units. Due to their stat-line they are very capable of getting rid of higher health defensive targets and their abilities allow for further removal of combo pieces and potential set spells, potentially key to an opponent’s strategy.
However, this list is not exhaustive as there are more members of the Crimenauts family that can and will offer additional variety to your line-up. Specifically, I am referring to Elite Agent Shadowhand and Scare Squad Hannibal Raiser, among others. While the latter might not be too relevant in the current format, the former can serve as a great beatstick or defensive Unit, that is very likely to always have its charge shield ready upon play considering the unit flooding nature of the crimenauts archetype.
Archetype Interactions
The principle ‘combo enabler’ that promotes the various summoning mechanics of the Crimenauts archetype is none other than Creepy Cuddlies Capo Jenibarbie herself. With both a CNT and on play effect that special summon from the dropzone, it becomes quite easy to select the desired effect or statline, from the available pool, in order to optimise your offensive or defensive strategy.
Yet she is not alone, as the events #FlashbackFriday and Well of the ld lend a helping hand in boosting consistency. The former boasts a similar effect to the deck’s main combo enabler, but it goes one level further and allows for the summoning of level 2 units and below, thus enabling additional Unit flooding should Jenibarbie be in the dropzone.
As discussed in our Alice article, Well of the ld serves the same purpose here as it did there. Should any combo pieces remain stuck in the damage zone, this event will help ensure they go to the drop.
Final Thoughts
The K-11 version of this archetype most definitely has a lot to offer overall. Even with the current cardpool, there are enough versatile options to allow for pre-emptive deck teching should you know your local meta. With set 3, Ace of the Cosmos, Assemble! to be released on the 29th of this month, the deck will have multiple new and extremely powerful additions to the crimenauts family, making it a potential favourite rogue option in the future competitive scene.
While we cannot be genuinely sure of anything viability wise, at least at the present time, the archetype functions well as a whole. It is capable of a multitude of strategies both offensive and defensive and with the increased number of unit options it could realistically transition from a generic midrange list to whatever the player chooses to build.
gunnolfbjorn 