Worlds 2014, 2nd place

Mtgred 1746

The deck in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76uJ68st4VQ

The original idea comes from Chris Hinckes who won the Cambridge Regionals with it. It had only 8 ICE and low economy. Then Jurgen Marx won the German Nationals with an improved version. I started experimenting with variations of this version on OCTGN and at local tournaments with great success. Not only is it strong, it’s also very fun to play.

Then at the Dutch Nationals something surprising happened: 3 of my opponents out of 6 played Feedback Filters (FF) and won. Those games were very close but still, that card had a big impact. Suddenly it’s more like 30% chance winning instead of 90%. At least half of the top 8 had FF in their deck. A card nobody would even consider playing few months ago, suddenly it's the new Plascrete Carapace.

After further testing, the best way to handle the deck was clear. Generate a mountain of credits with Security Testing, Desperado and ignore all the remotes while digging for the FF with John Masanori and Mr. Li. Once the FF is on the table with 40+ credits, simply run all the remotes and laugh at the net damages. The matchup boils down to 90% chance of winning if your opponent doesn’t have FF + a recurring source of money. Or 10% chance of winning if he does.

For the Belgian Nationals, the big question was how widespread will FF be? I decided to stick with the Jinteki deck and hope for the best. It was undefeated till round 6 of Swiss where I faced a french player who knew the perfect counter: Security testing and Mr. Li till he had FF. I played him again in the top 8 and lost again to the same scenario. Rushing agenda while the runner was digging for FF was the counter plan. But the Jinteki deck doesn’t have enough economy to do win the race, especially when Account Siphon comes into play.

For Worlds I decided to add my own original variations to the deck to address the above issues: 1 Shattered Remains to kill the FF and laugh at the useless mountains of credit, 3 Sweep Week to have a shot at winning the agenda race against Andromeda. For that I had to cut the Pop-Pup Window, Cerebral Overwriter and Subliminal Messaging (which is useless anyway with Security Testing)

Worlds

I didn’t have time to test the changes before Worlds and almost played Cerebral Imaging (Reuse is awesome) or (god forbid) Near Earth Hub. Fortunately I remained faithful to the Jinteki church. I had so much experience piloting the deck and tricking people with traps or Psi games (100% on Psychic Field, 80% on Future Perfect) it would be a shame to play another deck.

At Worlds it turns out nobody plays FF. That was quite unexpected and it made the deck extremely successful.

The only deck without FF that have a shot at winning is Kate with recurring Deus X + Levy AR Lab Access and Same Old Thing to use LARLA from Heap when the Stack is empty. Even then it’s still a good matchup for Jinteki. At round 7 at Worlds, I played against Spags who was running such a Kate deck. His deck was emptied twice and he only had 1 card left in hand with 6 agenda points. In R&D there were 3 Snares, 2 Fetal AI, 1 Future Perfect and one 3/1 agenda remaining. Gaining 3 credits and running R&D each turn was his last hope of winning. He miraculously hit Future Perfect and won the Psi game. That was the only real defeat at Worlds. The other defeat was in round 6 due to time running out while being behind in agenda points.

Some players were also overconfident against Jinteki. I faced El-Ad, the Canadian champion in the 1st match of the top 16. Being top seeded, I could choose which side to play. From the intelligence I gathered he was most likely not running FF so I chose to play JInteki. When I arrived at the table he was shuffling his NEH deck convinced he had such a good match up against PE that I would chose to play Andromeda against hist NEH. Of course he got burned quickly by Jinteki. His plan was to run R&D and ignore all the remotes. This strategy doesn’t work because there will be Ronin and Philotic Entanglement lurking among the traps. It also let the Corp scores Agendas freely. Sooner or later the runner will hit Snares or Fetal AI and will be finished by a combination of Ronin, EMP or Philotic on the Corp turn.

After the match I asked El-Ad if he had FF. He said he had 65% of winning against PE so the extra 5% from FF was not necessary. It was clear the meta in America was quite different. The Cambridge deck is dismissed as something easy to beat. In Germany, it’s as dominant as NEH and many runners play FF and infiltration.

Another highlight of the deck at Worlds was round 5 against Andromeda. I played Sweep Week first turn. My opponent and the people around were cheering at the surprise. Then came the 2nd Sweep Sweek as click 2 to the loud cheers that could be hear across the room. ICE on HQ was click 3. On his turn he ran R&D and hit… Snares! Two turns later his 2nd access was … Snares!. What a bad luck for him :D

Card choices

A lot of people asked about the removal of Cerebral Overwriter and the addition of Sweep Week.

The Sweep Week turned out to be good. They provide a big boost in economy and help keep the Corp above 9 credit to rez Komainu or absorb Account Siphon and still be able to pay for Snares! They also help pushing for Agenda points if necessary.

Contrary of the opinion of other Jinteki players, I don’t feel Overwriter is a must have. It’s certainly a good card and is better than Project Junebug against Kate. But Kate is already a favorable match up since nobody plays Kate with FF. The real threat to address is FF.

Even with no FF at sight at Worlds. Shattered Remains turned out to be decent. It kills Clone Chip (less recurring Deus X), Pre-Paid Voice Pad and Desperado.

Overall I’m quite happy with the current version and won’t change any card at the moment.

15 comments
13 Nov 2014 Dydra

Great deck. I watched the finals on the FFG stream and inspired me to go back to PE after playing RP for the past 6+ months. Of course I've made my own version of the deck but it's very beneficial to read what experiences you've encountered having played so many games with this deck :)

Congratz for the 2nd place, and if it worth anything, I was rooting for u to win on the finals ;) This PE deck just returned my interest in Netrunner!

13 Nov 2014 moonwalker

Minh, do you know that because of you and Dan there will be nothing but Jinteki on OCTGN for weeks? :-P

13 Nov 2014 Mtgred

Sorry about that :) At least it will be more interesting then NEH everywhere ! :)

13 Nov 2014 x3r0h0ur

So wait, why would they not just run every advanced remote? Isn't that the point of CO? I wonder if this worked because conventional knowledge among us players is to run only unadvanced remotes aggressively, and only run on 3-4 advanced remotes if theres 2 on the board or you're going to end turn in ronin territory. Knowing the list now, it seems like it would be much less effective, or am I missing something?

13 Nov 2014 Mtgred

There were initially 3 Cerebral Overwriter in the deck. But I noticed almost nobody would run a Mushin No Shin'ed card early in the game. That's why i decrease the number of traps with counter and mostly kept Mushin No Shin for Ronin or Philotic Entaglement. Now that the decklist is out people are changing their run patterns, it might be a good add more traps with counters again.

13 Nov 2014 x3r0h0ur

If you noticed that, why not mushin a 3 pointer and get the game-ending pressure up faster?

13 Nov 2014 CodeMarvelous

this deck seems very hard to pilot. can you give us some pilot advice

14 Nov 2014 Dydra

Just watch the finals video on twitch.tv :) You could hardly see a more beautiful piloting of this deck.

Just to give some experience of mine with PE, although as I mentioned above, I stopped playing it around February this year.

First in my meta we had a very skilled Kate ( that's last year) player who was running a deck similar to my netrunnerdb.com He had 3 clone chips, Deus Ex, 1x AS, 1x Levy, 3x SoT ... and with the Jinteki cards prior the xPack it would simply not work. Since we are always 8 to 10 people max on tournaments, losing 1 game to him, if I got to play him, would often mean costing my 1st place. That's why I decided to drop PE and eventually made my RP kills deck ( yey!).

However, obviously the big expansion changed a lot of that with Mushin no Shin, House of knives, Komainu, Philotic Entanglement and such. However, I was still reluctant to run PE, because my RP kills deck was just so strong and it would hold it's own against Account Siphon recursion decks. So I never returned to PE ... until now :)

A very beautiful piloting of the deck though. When I saw you play the finals it reminded of me when I was striving to play PE even prior the 2nd Cycle and everyone was " ooooh Jinteki is only shell game and chance, no skill" ... which is the most BS thing ever. Obviously no1 of them had played Jinteki enough to know how much skill you need to know in which situation which card or trap to play :)

About the comments of people having "general strategy" against PE. That's the most BS ever. You can only have a "general strategy" against PE IF you know exactly what traps the deck is running, or if you play Feedback Filter .

Cheers ;)

P.s. In my PE deck, running different ICE and stuff, but I also have 2x Shi.Kyū which I ping them for 1 Net damage each time they check archives or if I really want to slow them down, I can make them take it and suddently that TFP is 2 points ... that Fetal which cost them 3 cards and 2c is 1 point .... pretty nasty :)

15 Nov 2014 Shishu

I wouldn't compare El-Ad's deck to the rest of the "American" meta. From persuing /r/netrunner, I've found that the meta really varies from state to state. The New York City meta is actually very particular and it really changes with literally every data pack. Just a few weeks ago I was laughed at for saying you need Deus X AND Plascrete Carapace in every deck (they would take up slots), but now it looks like Feedback Filter might be another thing to add as the "must include." I'm not so sure about Infiltration however. It's a tricky card to play against PE when Psychic Field is so harsh.

So yeah. Maybe Runner decks need to be something like 50% preventative cards and 50% actually playable cards. Sigh.

17 Nov 2014 pootify

@Mtgred thoughts on swapping Hedge Fund for Medical Research Fundraiser? Seems like it would be better for digging out from a Siphon, and giving the runner 3 creds is less of an issue for this deck.

17 Nov 2014 Mtgred

With Gila Hand Arcology and Sweeps Week you can normally rebound from low credit situation so I don’t think Medical Research Fund Raising is necessary. It’s best to prevent low credit situation in the first place by using Gila Hand Arcology often or click for credit to stay above the 9 credits threshold.

17 Nov 2014 Empty_World

Watch the final on YouTube,deeply impressed by this deck,a lot of fun to play.The only concern I have is about with a lot of servers unprotected,did Bank Job or Security Testing threat this deck?Anyway I'm glad to see that the final is a battle between Jinteki not Astrobiotics.

18 Nov 2014 Mtgred

Bank Job and Security Testing are good cards against this deck indeed. Especially when the Runner also has Feedback Filter. It's actually the best way to beat this deck. That why there is a Shattered Remains. I'm also glad non NBN decks claimed the top 3 spots at Worlds. :)

20 Nov 2014 DrunkenGineer

Chris Hinkes went down to 2x Gila Hands to fit in a 1-of Chronos Project for those pesky Deus X recursion decks. Did you consider doing the same thing?

20 Nov 2014 Mtgred

It's indeed the most efficient way to handle Deus X recursion in my opinion. Cerebral Overwriter is another option but it's expensive in influence.

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