Inspired by the final battle in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Episode 3 of the duel series pits Steve "Retrieve" against the Jinteki PE grinder. Can Keanu/Steve take a lickin' and keep on tickin', or will he succumb to a thousand cuts from the House of Knives?
These decks are assembled from the System Gateway + System Update 21 card pool and designed to play well against each other, but are also solid standalone decks. See the runner deck here: SG+SU21 duel – Episode 3: Steve Cambridge (vs PE)
In this matchup, your goal is to score agendas with the help of fast-advance and never-advance tools, using net damage (or the threat of it) to slow down the runner. While Jinteki can deal damage in many ways, this is not a "kill deck”. Flatlining the runner is quite possible, but is a byproduct of first getting to 4-5 agenda points—which pressures your opponent to make dangerous runs—rather than your primary objective.
When starting out, try rushing 1 or 2 Agendas behind cheap end-the-run ICE like Enigma, Ice Wall or Palisade. Doubling up on ICE helps defend against Inside Job; even better if you install 2 different ICE types (e.g. Barrier and Code Gate), which forces your opponent to find two breakers. Use Seamless Launch to help score 4/2 Agendas (Nisei MK II, Offworld Office) the turn after you install them. Your economy is quite poor, so in the early game, only rez ICE that stops the Runner from accessing an Agenda. Be sure to reserve 4 to enable Snare! (or to rez Karunā if a Sentry Killer has not yet been installed), as the threat of net damage will force your opponent to run more conservatively.
Once the Runner installs all 3 breakers, things get much harder. Jinteki's ICE suite is relatively weak, so it's difficult to prevent successful runs. However, there are several things you can do in the mid-game:
Once you get to game point, your opponent is forced to check everything you install in remote servers. Use this to your advantage, e.g.
If you previously scored a Nisei MK II or two before game point, congratulations! Now is the time to use Nisei’s end-the-run ability to freeze out your opponent after a taxing run, and score the final Agenda.
In our playtesting, we preferred:
Other thoughts:
In building this deck, we used Girometic’s [SG+SU21] Personal Evolution - Thorny Grid as a starting point, and incorporated concepts from asqwasqw’s Pauper PE (Startup, (6-1) in the Ashes to Ashes Tournament); the latter has an excellent writeup on Plan A/B/C/D and when to transition from one to the other during a game.
This matchup is tense but fun, especially when playing face-to-face against your opponent!
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