Project Kusanagi

Project Kusanagi

What a wonderfull card! Although having zero-point agenda may look weird at first because what player would want keep his agenda density high? Till that point there was only one attempt in creating such agenda Domestic Sleepers, however after paying 3 it transformed into 2/1. Now we got another 2/0 agenda, this time for Jinteki.

Jinteki, as a whole, is corporation that benefits from wide range of tricks and every Jinteki ID to date had ability that could made your opponent nervous. Obvious candidate for overseeing development of Kusanagi is Jinteki main HQ i.e. Jinteki: Personal Evolution. As I see it,it can be used three ways:

  1. Play on table, left unadvanced - one additional decision for Runner and even if he access - 1 damage and 1 worthless agenda in score area.
  2. Play on table few copies and slowly advance , possibly after scoring 2 copies of House of Knives
  3. Draw with Jackson Howard and try to put 3 copies of Kusanagi in Archive.

Benefits

  1. In PE, this agenda becomes something between Shock! and Shi.Kyū and is natural target for Philotic Entanglement
  2. Scored PK with one agenda counter + Komainu = kill :)
  3. The Board = possible -3 point for Runner
  4. Additional decision for Runner - to put in on Film Critic or not?
  5. PK with 3 or 4 counters (I know, difficult) : It's a Trap! or even better Kitsune + Snare!

Drawbacks

  1. This is agenda so Film Critic
  2. Nobody plays Data Dealer but .....
  3. Increases agenda density
  4. Doesn't combine with 24/7 News Cycle

And of course at the end of the day this card is obvious choice for every "Ghost in the shell" fan!

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Hold on, hold on! Benefit No. 5 isn't quite right... PK adds a sub AFTER all other subs, so when the first sub of a Trap resolves and trashes that trap, the trap is gone and can't fire it's additional subs, because the encounter has prematurely ended by the ICE being trashed. That makes PK completely useless on any ICE that trashes itself (as all Traps do) or ends the run (thus ending the encounter, too). —
Use it on an excalibur —
I think this is a decent agenda for PE but is probably not worth it in the other Jinteki IDs. It has good interactions with in-house cards such as philotic entanglement and Batty with destroyer ICE. Jinteki could also use this with imported cards like archer and exchange of information - it has some potential. —
Additionally, Kitsune has an optional trash ability so if the runner isn't running AI breakers then you can fire the net damage this way. Other good ICE to use this with would be crick, and lockdown as they both have high strength and low rez costs. —
Krams: Damn you're right :( —
Thinking about Core Jinteki it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a bunch of essentially "trash" agendas to give the runner another chance to steal something they can't use that still deals damage. Alternately if you have a porous server with something obvious at the end and the runner knows exactly how much damage they are going to take to get there adding just +1 more could break their thinking. —
I've been using this in PE as Philotic Food, net damage, and targets for Stock Buy-Back - and the latter has paid off well. —

Wdym with the board interaction? The board is unique right?

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Toshiyuki Sakai

Toshiyuki Sakai

Oh man, how I love this card. The trash cost is low, sure and probably Sakai ends up in Archives when accessed in R&D or HQ but...

Rez cost of this card is zero but this is not relevant because 99,9% time you don't want to rez it. Play and slowly advance or put on table with Mushin No Shin. Three token on it and the fun starts, add another one and Runner may starting to worry.

My favorite combo is replacing Toshiyuki Sakai with Plan B or Ronin. I've played some games when Plan B was crucial to victory because in my meta I found players that run like crazy even against Jinteki no matter the risk. Even 3 tokes are enough but with four is also extremely handy to replace it with Ronin Medical Breakthrough NAPD Contract GRNDL Refinery Thomas Haas or even funny Haas Arcology AI. And remember you may swap this with ANY agenda or asset so even things like Psychic Field may work ;) With influence of 2 it may be seldom seen in other factions and if you put this in Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions which become lately my favorite Jinteki ID, anything that is replaced with Toshiyuki Sakai may have trashing cost simply to high for Runner to afford. Of course there are limitations - Drive By notable example but still for someone like me, who loves mind games it's 10/10

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