Standard Siphon Jesminder

Intro:

After playing Jesminder almost exclusively since June, this is the decklist that seems to finally be working for me. I’ve tried a variety of different cards; Account Siphon & Kati vs. Vamp & Magnum Opus, Panchatantra & Gingerbread vs. Stealth Suite vs. Standard breakers, Modded vs. Personal Workshop, SMC vs. Test-Run & Scavenge, and even attempted to play Code Siphon just to experiment. I’ve had the most success with Account Siphon, so I wanted to build a deck around it for fun.

Using Account Siphon meant using Kati vs Magnum Opus, and the up-tempo nature of Account Siphon means that the slow plodding along of the Stealth breakers pushed me in the direction of a more natural setup. This deck has a good number of 1-ofs, and as a result your opening hand can be inconsistent, but the large amount of draw and tutoring/recursion tends to make up for it.

Strategy:

Taking up 8/15 influence, Account Siphon is pretty central to this deck. Your goal is to land a 4-5 credit Account Siphon on HQ ASAP. Since you’ll often have Same Old Thing down before you land your first Siphon, you usually threaten a second as soon as the first lands, leading all non-asset spam Corps to chain ICE on their HQ. Use the credits from Account Siphon to get your rig set up, trying to keep as few ICE rezzed on R&D as possible. If you can manage to push the Corp to 0 credits, you’ll have free runs on R&D with (hopefully) Maya, an RDI or two, and possibly even The Turning Wheel. Use Maya to filter cards the Corp needs to get out of whatever hole they seem to be in, and build up counters on TTW if possible. Once you’re on 4-5 Agenda points, you should be able to lock both R&D and the scoring remote, and sweep HQ with TTW for the win if your R&D digs don’t do it first.

Cards:

I’ll try to avoid talking about obvious cards (e.g. Sure Gamble) while still touching on aspects of important cards such as how they see play or the number included in this deck.

-Events

Account Siphon – The central piece of this deck, this allows for you to slow down the Corp’s clock while speeding up your own, which is an amazing trait in Shaper. Sometimes you don’t find your first one until 30+ cards deep, in which case you just play like any standard Shaper. Between 3x Same Old Thing and 1x Levy AR, we’ve got up to 10 of these to play for a maximum potential swing of -50 credits for the Corp and +80 (after tag removal) for you.

Diesel & Quality Time – I really don’t have much to say about these. I tried 2x Quality Time. When you can’t find Account Siphon, you’ll wish you had the 3rd.

Modded – Perfect for thinning out your hand after overdrawing with Quality Time / Diesel / Professional Contacts. Almost every piece of Hardware / Program can be hit with one of these.

Rumor Mill – This is going to auto-include in a lot of decks for a while to come, and many people don’t expect to see it out of Shaper. While it won’t help you vs. Crisium Grid on HQ, I still would rather have it than Political Operative for the sake of slowing down the Corp’s agenda filtering with Jackson Howard, or even for trashing a key current.

-Hardware

Maya – Jesminder’s personal console. +2 Mem for 3 credits is already amazing itself, but using the ability correctly is critical to playing Jesminder at all. The ability has 3 main uses; shoving an Operation / ICE away to keep it out of HQ, using it as a pseudo trash effect on Assets / Upgrades with a high trash cost (e.g. Crisium Grid, Hostile Infrastructure), or simply pushing a card out of the way for another access to run R&D again on the same turn. Because of the uncertainty of what cards may be coming after the one you’re looking at during multi-access runs, good knowledge of all deck types and awareness of game state are imperative. While your second copy is pure trash as Hardware destruction is all but nonexistent, consistency would be too problematic as a 1-of.

R&D Interface – I had this card as a 3-of for the longest time. Cutting it back to 2 was like a breath of fresh air. Nothing is worse than running R&D and accessing 4 cards and hitting 3 Snares to lose the game. With Maya giving you the ability to push a card out of the way, you have the option to access all 3 cards and lock R&D, or trash/steal 1-2, push 1 with Maya, and run again immediately to access 3 new cards.

-Resources

Beth Kilrain-Chang – Especially with the threat of Hard-Hitting News, it’s incredibly difficult for the runner to facecheck in the current meta. An early Beth will help you keep up with the Corp, or if you find it late will provide you with free clicks if the Corp is already ahead on credits. At 2 credits to play, she’s able to hit the board early without slowing down your Account Siphon timing.

Film Critic – Tech to deal with Exchange of Information / Midseasons Replacements / Punitive Countermeasures / The Future Perfect / Fetal AI etc. Nearly pointless vs HB, but that’s already a fairly favorable matchup for Jesminder.

Kati Jones – This is your pseudo Magnum Opus, but is far harder to use correctly for a number of reasons. Getting a loaded Kati crushed by All-Seeing I / Snatch and Grab can lose you the game.

Professional Contacts – I had this as a 3-of before Beth came out, and am very happy with this card as a 1-of. This deck tries to avoid clicking for credits as much as possible, but 3x Diesel and 3x Quality Time will only get you through 24 of your cards. Long story short, you will inevitably have to click to draw, at which point gaining a credit per draw is a very welcome bonus.

Same Old Thing – In addition to its standard use as Account Siphon 3-5, this card will pull Levy back from your Heap to replay your Econ, or land a timely Rumor Mill for game winning Archives access past Jackson Howard.

The Turning Wheel – Build up your counters on Account Siphon runs and R&D lock, then spend the counters on an HQ access to win the game.

-Icebreakers

Atman – These are the glue that holds the rest of your breaker suite together, filling in all the gaps as needed. With Siphon needing cheap immediate access on HQ, we run a lot of cheap breakers that get heavily taxed by higher strength ICE.

Cerberus “Lady” H1 – The classic Eli 1.0 breaker, but also useful for dealing with cards like Hadrian’s Wall, Hive, advanceable high strength ICE, etc. Recursion from Clone Chip and Levy keep the counters from being an issue, and together with Atman you will be able to break barriers through the end of the game.

Cyber-Cypher – A nice cheap trashable 4 strength breaker to SMC out for your first Account Siphon. If need be, you can use Clone Chip to pull this out late game against a remote stuffed with Turing.

Gordian Blade – Cyber-Cypher only work vs. one server; we need something that will handle the rest. Deals with Quandary, Enigma, and all other low strength Code Gates, and alongside Cyber-Cypher keeps the Corp from stacking Code Gates.

Inti – I started using this card as an influence free Corroder. I can’t believe I was ever using Corroder in the first place now. It’s free to install if you need to thin your hand, cheap to pull out with SMC for an Account Siphon run, and breaks very common early game Barriers. Saves Cerby’s counters when needed, and can be trashed for Memory guilt-free.

Mongoose – I was playing Shrike for the longest time, and was absolutely seething every time it hit my hand. Shrike felt bad to install, even with Modded, and was almost impossible to pull through SMC. Mongoose fits perfectly in this deck; it’s cheap, pairs perfectly with Modded, and helps you run HQ without fear of tearing yourself apart to an Ichi 1.0 before you play Atman.

Tl;dr – Smash HQ. Grab money. Lock R&D. Win game.