Tempo Tennin V.2

Overview and play advice:

This isn't a typical fast-advance Tennin list. Instead, it plays a bit like a more aggressive version of Replicating Perfection glacier. You trade the click tax and the ability to leverage asset economy for the ability to play never-advance with 4/2 agendas like NAPD and Nisei MK II. Plus, you can actually score a future perfect from 0 advancement counters- use your identity ability to advance it once, then trick of light and advance twice and score. This allows you to fake the runner into runs on your large taxing servers with Caprice or an asset like Jackson or Daily business show.

The other advantage this deck has over RP is its ability to threaten to score earlier in the game. This allows you to pressure slower runners or bad draws with an early Nisei MK II score. This is due to the ability to score faster, and the amount of fast money this deck packs. On the other hand, against more aggressive runners you can hunker down and build up your defenses, using Jackson and Business show to control your draws and avoid flooding while you build big servers.

This deck wants to rez its relatively large ice early, so it relies on big burst economy to set up quickly. Your R&D is also fairly resilient, since you run only 9 agendas, and 5 of them protect themselves (Future perfect and NAPD), so you can often rely on porous but taxing ice early game, like pup and yagura, saving the hard end the run ice for your scoring server. The philotic gives you a surprise score off of the trick of light, and can even flatline a runner who is trying to run through Komainu for cheap.

The big trick with this deck is to figure out when your scoring windows are. You need to be attuned to the runner's play style, and decide what tempo to play at. Do you want to rush out some agendas, or sit back and defend your centrals? You can choose based on the matchup. The ability to switch up the tempo of play is what gave the deck its name. And finally, I just started experimenting with daily business show, but it is awesome. Park it in your scoring server while you set up and you can control your draws and get just what you need to start scoring, whether that’s a Nisei MK II, a caprice, or a few more pieces or ice. If they run your taxing remote to trash it, that’s still a win for you. Finally, late game it can masquerade as an agenda, forcing another taxing run for nothing.

Ice Choice:

The main thing you want from your ice is consistent taxation. You need a few hard ETR’s to force breakers, but most of the ice is chosen for its ability to tax. This includes the classic Eli 1.0 (although if lady takes off I may swap out at least 1 for a viper), Komainu, tsurugi, and pup. I originally ran quandary, but yagura is twice the tax once they have a breaker out, and almost an etr on R&D. Ice wall can get quite taxing once you start adding tokens with your ability, and it can just end the run early. Tollbooth is amazing as always, and femme seems less prevalent lately so it does extra work. Finally, the lotus fields are a bit on the weak side, but they add extra etr’s and do excellent work against noise, which can be a hard matchup.

Matchups:

Here are some matchup specific notes. First off, classic Andy decks. The key is to weather the early assault and get set up. You want to ice archives early to turn off datasucker and security testing, and wait to set up a scoring server. If they have parasite this matchup can get tricky, but you’re usually favored in long game. Everything I said about andy goes double for gabe. Gabe tends to be much more pressure in the early game, and the threat of sneak door requires multiple ice on archives, but if you can hold off the early pressure and shut down siphon your usually fine in the long term, you can outlast their economy. Don’t be shy about putting caprice on HQ, and if you can score a Nisei MK II you’re usually set. Leela requires a different approach, but you have a strong matchup here. You need to slow down and make sure you always score agendas with at least 1 click left to replace whatever she bounces. Save your Nisei tokens, since these decks tend to run powerful run events, especially siphon. Also, don’t forget that you can pre-emptively rez caprice to prevent her being bounced. Noise has you on a clock. You can’t play the waiting game the way you would against Andromeda or gabe, since the mills will start to really hurt. Instead, you should try to rush out some agendas relatively early. Noise is often inconsistent setting up, so don’t be afraid to take a few risks. Sometimes D4v1d or knight will ruin your day, but if you play around them a bit you can take some calculated risks and often be rewarded early game. Also, be aware that tsurugi and komainu will usually eat parasites, and should only be rezzed if they will get their money’s worth right away, you can’t expect them to be a recurring tax. In pre-paid Kate the parasites are the biggest problem. On the other hand, they tend not to have so much repeatable multi-access, relying on one of events that will miss fairly often in your agenda light deck. Eli is considerably worse if they are playing Lady (and they should be). You may need to play a bit faster tempo in this matchup as well, or you can try to outlast their burst econ and score in the windows that can open up when the econ events are expended. Finally, any deck with magnum opus (like the stimhack based chaos theory list) or lots of stealth credits can be a big problem. They can just go bigger than your taxing ice, so you need to play fast and sometimes rely on a caprice psi game or two. Luckily, these lists are fairly rare, since I think they are the decks toughest matchup.