Wall of Nightmares

Thanks for keeping the dream alive! I'd set CP aside for some other projects, but I was just playing with the old build the other night and wanted to get back to tweaking it. I really like the Static. Not only against Noise, but so many others who kinda need their abilities :)

I'm not sure what advice I can offer, since you've been through so many iterations, but I do find myself wondering if you find Eli worth effectively 2-inf apiece. Granted, that's still a great tax for the cost, but Wraparound may also work and leave you with 2 influence leftover. Or, maybe you could go Spiderweb in their place? But that does cost an extra credit, though it can't be clicked through. Just thinking as I type...

Either way, congrats on having your megacorp luck turn around, and thanks for the ideas for my own build!

Thanks for the encouragement, slo. :) I like your point about the Spiderwebs. It's a 3 credit tax on Corroder, and 2 Lady counters gone in the blink of an eye. We'll see what happens after 2/1, though. I can't wait to see what you cook up for us, too. The more diverse lists we have, the better!

I recently decided I'm only going to play Jinteki and Criminal for a while, as I haven't played either for over a year... And I'd forgotten how much I love Jinteki. Particularly this lovely ID.

Now, I've only been playing this ID for... a week? So take what I say with a pinch of salt. It's more of a series of anecdotes of things I did wrong than anything.

Why would the runner be scared of running naked remotes? Sure, it can be a scary thing against Jinteki, and they don't know your deck... But every naked remote is going to be Jackson Howard, Shock!, or an agenda. If they do pluck up the courage to run one, they'll be emboldened into running the others.

No House of Knives!? Blasphemy!

You say that a pure-damage build didn't work well because of recursion, but this build seems to be build around the breaker-buster build. How do you intend to stop the recursion there?

You also mention that the pure damage build didn't work because the Agenda suite took ages to score... Have you tried the pure damage build with this agenda suite? You could play a never-advance bluff game with Psychic Field. Or a Mushin No Shin based one with Project Junebug, Cerebral Overwriter... Hell, you play more Jinteki than I do, I'd hazard. You know the score.

I'm not 100% sold on the ICE selection either; it's perfect for the Barrier Bay build, but I feel like you're just hamstringing yourself by sticking to that frame without the rest of the gear to back it up. Cortex Lock, for example, would be fabulous here. Neural Katana is a brutal fire from Marcus Batty, although admittedly weak otherwise. I would also drop to one Shock! and run two Snare!. No-one says you have to do the damage one at a time.

With the build as it is, I wonder about Celebrity Gift, too. If you pop that and they see no significant ambushes, what are they going to think when you lay down remotes?

... I realise I come across as a bit of a git here, questioning your every choice, but it's only because I'm asking myself the same questions. I'd be interested to hear about successful modifications you make with a view to improving my CP deck. I reckon by the end of the cycle it'll be a monster; Salem's Hospitality and Ibrahim Salem in CP will probably be absurd.

It's good to hear from you again, Jash. :) Last time, I believe we were discussing Stronger Together or something like that.

Like I stated in my posting, I will stop at nothing to make this my battle axe Corp! Everyone in my local meta is into either NEH/Sync/Haarp, Foodcoats, or PE. I'm the guy who nobody prepares for. My Kim deck has been smoking people, cuz they either play Kill or Tag (or both), and it's easy to catch them off guard by keeping them poor until I can draw into my breakers, while sniping their key pieces in hand. The addition of Scrubbers to that has made my NBN adversaries want to gag on a spoon. But I digress...

It depends on the runner, but since (as you've stated) they don't know what's in my deck, they're wary of me just tossing shit out there. I won't lie, my draws and psi-game luck were really good last night, whether I was runner or corp. I will intentionally give them the first Breakthrough, or at least a shot at it. If they don't take it, I will. It just snowballs from there, really. While they're busy setting up, I can play a Hedge Fund or two, a Giraffe, click for a few things and glacier up. They're spending money on their rig, and before they know it, I've got 4 points.

Indeed, no House of Knives is kinda blasphemous, and I hate myself for not having it in there...but I don't wanna overload on agendas, and the Braintrust/Breakthrough suite w/MKIIs really does speed things along nicely. A Chronos Project scored at the right time can cripple some runners, as can Clone Retirement (Val, of course). But it's also an easy 2/1, and I want that in order to really force the runner to make decisions (hopefully leading to some sniping).

Subliminals and Cerebral Static also force the runner into running when they don't necessarily want to (when they're setting up or recovering). Against Jasminder, Static wasn't really necessary, so I ditched them; against Sunny (my only loss of the night), they do nothing; against the Hayley, I drew into them too late. It's all about the control you push onto the board state...making the runner juuuuuust uncomfortable enough to either do too little, or too much.

I will admit, I have thought about a never-advance Ambush suite...in fact, I've thought about that a lot the past few days. I may just end up gravitating towards that anyways...using less ICE, while going full-bore with the mind games. It depends on how my opponents take to things that I'm already doing now. If I leave it as it is, will they catch on? Will I be able to adjust on the fly just enough to make it not even matter that they know my entire list? Only time (and the fact that the MWL is about to make half my meta's runner lists obsolete) will tell.

As for the ICE, it's funny you should mention Cortex Lock. I had that in my all Code Gate/Sentry incarnation a few weeks back. In a store championship, I loaded up my R&D with Cortex/Batty on turn 1...turn 2, he ran it, took the damage. I used Batty, won the psi-game...and of COURSE, his 2 (yes, the only 2) IHWs were plucked. He went on to win not only the game, but the tournament. I've found that generally, they suspect Cortex early, so they just won't run until they have their Killer and a means of pumping (or minusing Cortex str).

If I decide to go away from the operation econ type, I'll probably gravitate more to having the MHC/PAD/Turtles econ engine w/Static to mitigate Whizzard. Giraffes, for now, are serving me very well, however...and I was fortunate enough last night to fortify my centrals whenever I needed dough...so they were left with little to no game-breaking information.

Fortunate? Sure. The way my Corps had been playing up until last night though...I needed that sort of emotional lift. Tbh, though, I was kinda looking for lots of questions, even if they were directed at my personal choices. :) That's the only way we can ever grow and do better in the tournament scene! It's sort of a mission of mine to make something nasty out of this ID...and not just posting it on here, and basking in the glow of 75 likes/favorites. It's more about the conversation. That's all I want. To pick brains, and have mine picked as well. I can't wait for those 2 NBN cards to be released...they look beastly for this~!

It was indeed Stronger Together! I placed third in a tournament with it in the end, but I'm not going to lie, the near-perfect record of my Edward Kim deck helped me along a lot!

Thanks for taking the time to explain your choices. I'll start posting my Chronos Protocol decks, see if we can get another dialogue going. I'll stand by Cortex Lock lock though; the time they take to find their breakers is time you can use to score.

In a higher-damage variant I ran (Loosely based on Fugu 1.3), Lockdown gave a really good showing for itself. Might be worth a look

Ah, great minds think alike! You're kicking some ass with Kim too, eh? Very nice. :)

Yah, I'd like to see those C.P. lists of yours for sure. I can certainly understand your loyalty to Cortex Lock. The point of scoring out while they fear Cortex is well seen and perhaps something I'll have to experiment with soon. Lockdown seems like a solid choice as well as a 2-of.