Missing the point v0.1

Shiiuga 1266

Just an idea I had whilst playing against Eady from RLC's Tennin last night. What if Tennin wasn't actually about using the tokens at all, but was actually about baiting the runner in to godawful painful runs to stop you from getting tokens that you are never planning to use?

Twilight Zone music plays

Like all the best Jinteki decks, the idea here is to just go full Murderface on everyone.

There should be no attempt to score anything except a House of Knives or two to pew pew the runner a bit more, unless it's to bait the runner in to a run so that you can kill them (in the face) on your turn.

The Ice suite is designed to be porous but spiky, allowing for the successful runs that will set up your Cerebral Cast, Scorched Earth combo.

The only thing you would ever really need to use the tokens for is on Wormhole.

A big key to this deck is the element of surprise. Usually, Tennin is one of the less painful Jinteki IDs to run against because it's much more focused on ending the run to get that precious token. None of that nonsense here, though.

Most likely the runner wlll think Wormhole is an Ice Wall (assuming they haven't seen it in an R&D/HQ run) and won't be expecting to have to deal with a S7 code gate that can trigger your sentry subs, or even a Kitsune that has been broken earlier by Faust. Or maybe a Crick? Who knows.

Faust is everywhere at the moment, but Jinteki in general is basically a big FU to it, and this deck is no exception. If you want to tax the runner with a barrier, Wall of Static costs 1 more card than Himitsu-Bako, and the same amount as the slightly more expensive to rez Bastion, so it's in for that anti-Faust tech alone as any better cheap barriers would cost influence, which is all accounted for.

Wormhole is even better. So you want to break the sub on what was going to be a transported Neural Katana? OK. You can pick 4 cards to trash or I'll pick 3, your choice.

Marcus Batty is there to enforce subs you really don't want broken, and maybe to push a kill combo. FUN FACTZ: You can have two Battys in a server as long as only one is rezzed at a time. Double spank that Neural EMP for the lolz.

The PAD Campaign might seem like a weird choice, but it's there for baiting the kill combo. Put one down early to hopefully make some money and then if you think the runner is likely to (ie: is Whizzard), rez one later when you have the cards in hand. They run and trash, you kill. It could be a Sundew too.

Hopefully even if the runner twigs that you're trying to go death by a thousand cuts on them, they still won't realise that Scorch is your ultimate goal. There's an obvious tendency to run with at least 3 cards against Jinteki, but losing those to a snare and only being able to draw back up to 3 is potentially fatal here.

Thoughts on improvements are welcome.

1 comments
12 Aug 2015 zozo

I died to face-checking a Neural Katana which had been battied - my own dumb fault - yesterday to Eady. So, on that one experience: the dream is REAL.

I'd query three MRFs and only the single Hokusai. Would be interesting to see how 2-2 of that went. Or, indeed, a teacup giraffe, though I can see how revealing scorch/etc/etc might be counterproductive. Could be useful as another bait card ('go on, you know you want to faceplant onto death in my hq....'