Tokyo Hold 'Em v16 (4-3 at Magnum Opus 1A)

The culmination of my frustration at Glacier decks during store championship season is this baby. Deep in my despair of having my Tithoniums Femme'd, my Sappers Turtled, and my Sandburgs crushed by a Stimhacking Val, I realized the core truth of Netrunner: "The Runner Gets In". No matter how cool your ICE is, there are too many clever runner tricks that render your defenses porous, like a sponge made of Swiss cheese. So, pick the one faction that makes every run an agonizing slog and slip in your agendas in between bouts of self-doubt (and net damage recovery)! Steps to playing Jinteki:

1. Remember your poker skills

2. GRIND THEM INTO "MEAT".

This is unrecognizable from my initial version when I started the store championship series this year, but the core tenets of "Mushin" and "Hurt them with net damage" still apply. I brought this to Magnum Opus and ended up having a ton of close games, winning 4 of them and being within a turn of winning a couple more!

Round 1 (Val): Lost to a Mad Dash after I Mirāju'd to stop an Indexing, because shuffling sometimes still puts those 'gendas on top. Didn't find any of my Mushin fodder and got rightly crushed for it!

Round 2 (Val): Kept Mushin-ing out Obokatas and my Gene Splicers, and the constant toll on his draw, paired with Genetics Pavilion was enough to squeak out my agendas and a Gene Splicer.

Round 3 (Val...): Started with infinite money which flowed neatly into my big ice, so I was able to simply lock him out, whereupon he conceded after I hit six points.

Round 4 (419): You see that lone Psychic Field in my assets? I had that in a starting hand and blasted out 2 of his single-copy breakers on click one. It was the proudest I've ever been of my tech skills. Some more net damage later, and I was again able to lock him out since he had only a single Lustig and a Nexus for the rest of the game.

Round 5 (Maxx): A 50 minute game against Maxx usually doesn't end up with a Corp loss, but here we are. Thinking my ice was safe from the CV+Zer0 combo, I removed my Preemptive Actions in favor of more money and traps. However, I got hit by Wanton Destruction thrice and my ice and agendas piled up in the archives. Rough stuff, but well earned by him.

Round 6 (419): Out of the day 2 running after my round 5 corp loss, I ended up with a turn two win with a Mushin'd Ronin and a Rashida Jaheem to get me money'd up after I got nailed by a Diversion of Funds when he had two cards in hand. That was SATISFYING.

Round 7 (Smoke): This was my first rodeo against Security Testing Paragon Smoke and holy crap was it effective against my setup. Didn't manage to find enough taxing ice to stop his runs on R&D (Dagger breaks Anansi for HOW much?!), so he racked up 12 tokens by the time I was on game point. One turn away and he managed to get in, giving me another close loss that was well earned by capitalizing on my slow play.

This deck did not let me down often, and I had a great time sweating through several shirts as I upped my bluffing game to new heights. My MVPs were Data Loop and Mushin+Obokata, which is the combo that made me switch to this dangerous deck in the first place. In hindsight I'd take out the Junebug for another Gene Splicer, find a way to get the influence for two Fairchild 3.OP and maybe consider changing my agenda suite to THE Jinteki Worlds Meta Special, but I had a great time with this type of deck and did rather well! Were I a better runner/player in general, this story could have ended a little better, but I am glad I stuck with my weird-ass Mushin deck to the end.

Thank you to everyone I played, and hope you all got home safely!