Niseis for Days - ETX Washington Regionals 5/6th Place

pandapersona 2628

People really dislike psi games and Excalibur/Nisei MK II, so why not do this all day?

The Tennin Institute: The Secrets Within ability is pretty key, as it allows you to set up plays for scoring Genetic Resequencing from hand via Trick of Light, giving you another breath of fresh air into your scored Nisei MK II. The deck packs a fair amount of varied ice to keep Kate players guessing and six of the grail ice to put a bit of fear in the runner.

16 comments
22 Jun 2015 Dothanite

If there's a VOD if this in action, I'd love to see it. Such an original concept!

Congrats on the top placement. Any advice on how to play it?

22 Jun 2015 pandapersona

Locking down HQ and R&D early is pretty pivotal to getting the ball rolling. The more sets of 2 advancement counters sitting on ice you can have the better your game gets. At least one space ice should go on the scoring remote.

Here is the video from the ETX live stream: www.twitch.tv Starts around 03:01:40.

22 Jun 2015 Dydra

So how do you play this?! Double-trick the first Nisei? Do u setup a remote? Is this the first working REMOTE Tennin?

22 Jun 2015 CJFM

<3 our time spent tuning this paid off. Excellent finish! :)

22 Jun 2015 Dydra

Watching the game right now, but I'd assume Security Testing Criminals ( and some other runners) will force you to spread the ICE on archives as well? You have a large ICE count, but do you manage to get enough money from all the + installs?

22 Jun 2015 pandapersona

Like most Tennin decks, you need to first lock down HQ and R&D, after that, you begin work on a scoring remote. Scoring the first Nisei MK II is the challenge, there are several paths to this goal:

1) Never advance behind a piece of ice, then either using Tennin ability + triple advance to score or if no Tennin ability triggers, you can use a single Trick of Light + double advance.

2) Caprice Nisei + any ice or Excalibur

3) Double Trick of Light with 4 advancement counters to score Nisei MK II from hand.

The deck tends to try to rush out that first Nisei MK II, then it begins to lock down the board and abuse Nisei MK II tokens.

Ice eventually does go onto archives, it really depends if the runner aggressively runs to turn off the Tennin ability or not. In general, Grim and Crick hang out over archives.

As for money, events and clicking are the path. The deck is more towards the glacial spectrum and you want turns for the Tennin ability to trigger, so clicking for credits is not so bad.

22 Jun 2015 Dydra

Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. Great deck. Thumbs up!

22 Jun 2015 Dothanite

So I sleeved this up and played this twice, against MaxX and Kit. Won both games.

Genetic Resequencing is beautiful with Nisei. Multiple Nisei counters win games, period.

How successful were your grail ICE during the day? One game I got them too late and were therefore not useful, the second I got to play them down but never got to rez them because Kit didn't check it.

I'm going to continue playing this deck. Are the any changes you would make after playing it yesterday?

22 Jun 2015 pandapersona

In the end, I found grail fairly mediocre. It rarely hit that often, however, it is quite taxing ice for cheap. As for changes, I'd consider trying the deck without grail freeing up 6 influence to see what this is like. I'd also totally cut the Cortex Lock, great when it fires, but too often it felt like wasted space. I'd rather just have a second Excalibur and another Wall of Static or Quicksand.

As a note, Quicksand was great, it definitely baits out Parasite.

23 Jun 2015 bluebird503

Interesting Tenin deck, congrats on your finish :D. Your ice suite seems a little too reliant on positional, I think cutting Cortex Lock is a great idea.

23 Jun 2015 ANRguybrush

If you want to cut the grail, why not play ice walls?

23 Jun 2015 Dydra

I'm wondering about your Agenda Spread. Considering you are playing Genetic Resequencing, is it worth replacing 2 3 pointers with 3x Braintrust since they can also leverage quite well the tokens?

Or you feel that the deck intensity requires surely 9 Agendas over 10 Agendas?

23 Jun 2015 pandapersona

@mcpba Initially I was playing with Ice Wall, I found it to be not terribly useful. If I were to cut grail, I'd rather go to 4-5 space ice and some other influence ice like a Tollbooth.

@Dydra Using Braintrust could be good, but it certainly pushes the deck more towards the rush/fast advance spectrum. I built this deck on Friday and tuned it with @CJFM on Saturday, so I didn't have too much experimentation time. I'd definitely try it out with the Braintrust, it's just hard to give up a The Future Perfect.

23 Jun 2015 Dothanite

Well 2 TFP is stil great. I'm going to try 3 Braintrust, 2 Genetic Resequencing, 3 Nisei MK II, and 2 The Future Perfect. The downside is that I need to remove a card, so I went for the Restructure.

23 Jun 2015 pandapersona

Braintrust seems pretty solid, I'd actually try going for Medical Breakthrough as the deck has no trouble scoring 2/4 agendas and has some occasional upside over Braintrust.

7 Jul 2015 ANRguybrush

any updates on this?

Not sure about running so much space ice. It's pretty much dead if you get in a starting hand and D4v1d runs all over them. Too many anarchs in this meta. Also, you are already playing a lot of ICE that's not too great in your opening hand: Grim, crick, inazuma.

I'm trying out to replace lancelots with a second grim and nebula, the cortex lock with tsurugis and slot in two ice walls and an asteroid belt for the galahad.