English Degree

Dapperghast 1

My janky baby's first attempt at an RP deck, the general idea being to waste the Runner's time and money. Any feedback would be appreciated. Assertions that I have no idea what I'm doing and should quit forever would be unnecessary (as I'm already well-aware of this fact :P), but still appreciated.

3 comments
3 Aug 2015 bubbathegoat

If you like wating the Runner's clicks as RP, there's nothing quite like Enhanced Login Protocol. Most often the runner will have to spend 3 clicks just to run a remote, which pairs nicely with your Hourglass and Eli 1.0 on central servers.

For more HB splash you can toss Turing on a remote since it gets the bonus strength, and cannot be clicked through as RP.

I'm not particularly fond of Uroboros, since it is so expensive (both rez and influence) and only offers Trace subroutines.

I tend to like cheap to rez ICE in Jinteki, since credits can be a little harder to come by. With 20 ICE you should be able to try using some Sundew for econ, which if you pair up with Crick on Archives, you have an opportunity for recursion. Since you are using Susanoo-No-Mikoto, you can redirect a remote run onto Archives for the purpose of triggering this combo.

But back to ICE cost, Quandary is a cheap, simple gear check that stops the runner for a couple turns at the beginning of the game. As RP, that can very easily create a scoring window for your first agenda. The two extra credits compared to rezing Enigma can make the difference between scoring a 4-2 Agenda on turn 2 over having it stolen on turn 3.

Think about what you want each piece of ICE to do and decide if you have enough ICE to end runs on remotes (Hourglass, Enigma, Lotus Field, Eli 1.0, Susanoo-No-Mikoto) and enough taxing central server ICE (Pop-up Window, Pup, Uroboros). I don't think Neural Katana accomplishes either of these, since Mimic is very popular and beats this sentry for a single credit, whereas Pup is cheaper and almost always get the 2 credits out of the runner.

Another note about your ICE, a lot of your ETR effects are on strength 4 ICE. Atman at strength 4 will eat through a lot of this ICE suite with for peanuts.

Fetal AI is more of a Jinteki kill-focused Agenda than a scoring agenda, since 5/2 with no ability is a pretty low payoff for the effort it takes to score. Braintrust gives you a chance to install one turn and leave unadvanced, so it could be either an agenda or a trap (or ordinary asset), making the runner guess about your face-down cards. You can then score your 3-2 agenda in one turn without giving the runner an opportunity to react to advancing the face-down card, since you don't have any advancable traps. You can also consider Nisei MK II, since it's ETR token can create a scoring window .

3 Aug 2015 Dapperghast

Yeah Sundew is definitely going in as soon as I get it. The main reason I went with Fetal AI is so all my agendas protected themselves, giving me a bit more leeway to just put taxes on centrals and focus more on impenetrable remotes, but you have a point, I'll have to give those a try.

Enigma I was mostly using for the click loss with the added benefit of being able to bounce the runner, but I did find my economy a little tight, so I'll prolly swap in the Quandaries.

Do you think Strongbox would be worth it for the agenda protection, or would it likely not pull its weight relative to its influence cost?

4 Aug 2015 bubbathegoat

I don't think Strongbox will really help you much, since runners rarely run last click against Jinteki for fear of hitting a Snare!. The extra click is unlikely to stop a runner from stealing your Agenda.

Caprice Nisei is a very strong card that already fills a similar role for you, but if you want more upgrades to keep your agendas safe, consider Red Herrings or Ash 2X3ZB9CY. Ash is particularly good since many runner won't fight the trace, so it can also save your Caprice for an extra turn.

As far as agenda protection goes, Jackson Howard can rescue overflow agendas from archives when a runner is about to grab them. I really would like to see FFG reprint some old datapacks, since if you don't have him now, he can be quite difficult/expensive to find now.

A final note to consider, Shi.Kyū doens't really synergize well with the rest of your deck (it is really strong in an Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions deck that forces the runner to repeatedly access archives), but Project Junebug combos very well with Mushin No Shin and is always good bait as an advancable trap. Even if the runner only hits it with a single advancement token, 2 net damage and paying the break into your server will usually set them back enough to open a scoring window.