Commercial Tennin [Cache Refresh] [SOCR2]

Mass Commercialization is an amazing card for Tennin. Jinteki IDs can struggle with income but, combined with some splashed advancable ice, Tennin can perform admirably with the addition of one kind of broken econ operation. This deck went 3-2 in the 2nd Stimhack Cache Refresh tournament but does not have a lot of success against God of War/Obelus/Siphon spam/Counter Surveillance decks that are proving successful.

Ideal first hand is going to have some ice walls and a hedge fund in it. You want to get advancement counters on ice as soon as possible and it's good to have a little bump of income early game while you advance your game state. Use Ice Wall and Kakugo to bounce some early probes and get those Tennin counters if you can. Even if the runner is making good runs there's enough advancable ice to get to your game state. This isn't fast-advance Tennin so you'll want to build a good scoring remote. I like Data Loop, Kakugo, and triple advanced Colossus on it. Every Nisei counter is gold when your ice is taxing cards and not just credits. Priority Construction is good for those Colossus installs but you can use it to save a few credits on anything when you're going for a deep remote.

Fire Mass Commercialization all the time and use Preemptive Action to put it back in. Overdraw and toss Breached Domes to make archives a bad place to land successful runs. Jarogniew Mercs put a damper on this which is pretty tough but I think that's why they made Dome do meat damage even though it's in Jinteki. Sometime you can slow advance agendas and make MC credits off of them and it's pretty great. Shipment from Tennin can let you cheat out scores that the runner isn't expecting and even never-advance one of your Obokatas that you left in the remote because the runner thought it was a Snare. Use MC credits to fire Snare a lot, it's great.

Round 1

Versus @barbrarian playing MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock

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Slow start and bled a couple of agendas. Only time the Tennin ID triggered was on the first turn, and I put the counter on their Magnum Opus. Low agenda density did some work and there were a lot of expensive runs, but ultimately the runner had all their breakers out and was floating 30-40 credits so there was no hope of scoring behind the largely gear-check ice. Lost a Kakugo and a 2-advanced Colossus off R&D but once the runner was out of cards and saw a Kakugo on R&D, he gave up on the server and started pressuring HQ. Probably hit 6 snares in the game and gave up 20 some odd credits to Honeypot. The last snare meant that he couldn’t steal Obokatas anymore, so I durdled for time while I slow advanced one in a remote. Had a Nisei in hand; if he had hit that he would have won but he didn’t, he hit another snare instead. Took awhile to get enough credits to make Mass Commercialization count for much but it was firing for 8 credits by the last few rounds and is worth it even for four when you’re starving for creds.

This version of the deck was before the release of Crimson Dust so it used Honeypot instead of Breached Dome and spent a bunch of influence on Red Planet Couriers which did not make the cut into the final deck. There was a Junebug in here too which also got cut. It used Enigma which was fine but not really very interesting as a long-term taxing ice which is where I ended up taking the suite. Three Chrysalis too, but I discovered as I played with the deck that I was making enough credits to really press the cost of my ice.

Round 2

Versus @ino209 playing Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire

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Basically a triple advanced Colossus was too much for him to handle with his reg ass breaker suite on the remote. Managed to score out a couple Obokata behind a Data Loop and that Colossus, kept central runs too taxing to be worth his while, made a ton of moolah off of Mass Commercialization and finished off with a cheeky 10 advancement Philotic Entanglement.

Dropped down to one Enigma and put in Data Loops for the first time, which performed really well. Taking two cards out of the runners hand on encounter is so good with a lot of other Jinteki tricks. Put in a Melange Mining Corp for bait and money but I never saw it while it was in the deck and it didn't take very long to disappear.

Round 3

Versus @GhostMeat playing Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter

He got a Nisei Mk II and a TFP early so I was already on a bad footing. My internet went down and he was west coast so it was late and I was a bit tilted from getting beat so nasty with my runner deck a few minutes earlier. He had some good early pressure going but it was getting to mid game and I had rezzed Kakugo’s all over the place so he was taking damage he didn’t want to be taking. His ID ability was doing some work but I think I was making good decisions about which cards to RFG, kept him from getting his sentry breakers and had a nasty remote built up to score my Obo’s out of, two Komainu’s and a Kakugo I think, but he hit HQ and stole an Obo I was going to score the next turn. The bitching part is that he was at 3 cards after running through two Kakugos but he got his Cambridge draw and had enough cards to steal the agenda. Tough game, but I think the ID has some play against Cambridge even though he has so much recurrence. It’s tough to weather that much net damage when you have to take the damage to get the recurred cards.

Was really happy with my deck from the last game so I didn't really change anything.

Round 4

Versus @PaxCecelia playing Rielle "Kit" Peddler: Transhuman

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Decided to put a couple of code gates in my deck and of course I ended up facing off against someone playing Kit after a couple of games without just one. I didn’t rez a single Ice Wall, what’s the point? Just gives her something to surf with, but I installed them and advanced them because it charges Mass Comm. Had a scoring server with two triple advanced Colossus, a Data Loop, and a Komainu but he only ran it once when I installed a Snare so I never rezzed any of the ice on it really. Mass Commercialization is nice to keep in hand when you’re making some high risk plays like that (I was on 4 credits) because it lets you bounce back real hard. I think I made 24 credits with one of them. I regular scored one Obokata, used a Tennin token and a Shipment to score another one, and then put a Nisei Mk II in there when he was on 2 points. He started putting (expensive) pressure on the DNA Tracker’d R&D but didn’t manage to get more than another two points even with his hard digs, but I didn’t get to Tennin token the Nisei so I just screw it and just advanced it once. He was clearly intimidated by the server anyway so I was going to trash his econ and let him steal it if he wanted it that bad. He ran R&D instead so I scored it out and won the game.

This is one of the match-ups I was dreading because it seemed like Kit's rearrange all the ice ability would prove particularly destructive in disabling the Tennin ID and controlling R&D, but I'd slowly weeded most of the cheap ice from the deck and ended up using DNA Tracker which still sucks with Inversificator. I think he had a hard time reading where the agendas were, too, so he wasn't sure where to put the ice. This is where Breached Dome and Priority Construction made their appearance, both really good additions. This was a good cycle for Tennin decks I think. No more Red Planets Couriers, which I really only fired once to be a bit ridiculous - losing all your advancement counters is no good early or mid game and it's only really a good move to close out. Obokatas don't need to be advance like that either. Breached Wall is very much an upgrade to Honeypot but honestly Honeypot was awesome while it lasted and could suck a lot of credits from the runner in a decently long game.

Round 5

Versus @x3r0h0ur playing Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire

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Sideboarded pretty hard against Noise, with 2 Macrophages and Hortums, which I thought would be real clutch since he was on the God of War plan. Unfortunately that was pretty much my whole plan against him and I had a hard time when he installed a Black Orchestra and stole the agenda I had in my scoring remote. I thought it was a pretty good plan but it didn’t pan out and he closed it with a 16 card access on R&D that gave him all the agendas he needed. Defended a Future Perfect in HQ twice in a row though which was pretty good but taxing. Money wasn’t as forthcoming as it has been in previous games because I didn’t get a good chance to catch my breath. Noise GoW tag-me can set up real fast and do some serious damage, especially with Siphon. Got messed up.

Took out Data Loop because it seemed irrelevant against a nineteen card handsize, put in those Hortums. Put a Friends in, in case he trashed some Kakugos or something, but didn't end up using it. Best Defense trashed his Obelus but it didn't end up mattering really. Outplayed by a very strong deck piloted very well.

Conclusion

It's tough to recommend this deck competitively if GoW Noise ends up strongly represented in the meta. I don't think my non-sideboarded deck would have done nearly as well against x3r0 in the last game and the teched-out version still lost. It's real strong against a lot of other decks types, though, especially with limited recursion available in the Cache Refresh card pool. I think PU might still be a stronger Jinteki choice for the same reason, though, but that has the same econ problems as other Jinteki decks with this card pool.