Mythic Evolution (Loki combo, 75% win rate on jinteki.net)

This is the Corp deck I've been working on for quite a while now (since before the last rotation, in fact). It's a little inconsistent, but very powerful, and has a good matchup against many of the top Runner decks.

The deck can play a lot of different roles. The original vision was to play this as a combo deck, creating a remote server that the Runner may well not have appropriate cards to be able to enter – and it can still do that, leading to an inevitable lategame against a wide spread of decks. However, many Runner decks are tuned for the early game nowadays, or have ways around the combo, and you can adapt to those by transforming into a glacier deck instead, taxing them until they run out of steam (often the combo will never be revealed, and I'll win as a "Jinteki glacier deck" rather than a combo deck). It isn't terrible as a rush deck, either (especially as most counter-rush tech at the moment is focused on barriers and code gates); if you get agenda-flooded, trying to win in the first few turns might be your best counterplay. If the Runner goes through their deck too quickly, sometimes you can grind them out of cards (after all, you are playing as Personal Evolution); and to finish things off, there are a few surprise flatline combos on top of everything else. As usual for my decks, all the tactics play into each other, with a lot of synergy between the various card choices.

Strategy

There are a lot of interlinked strategies in this deck, but in this section, I'll try to tease them apart and explain how they work in isolation.

The Loki Combo

Your "plan A" for winning is to create an impenetrable remote, and score out in it.

The most basic version of the combo is Loki + Jinteki: Personal Evolution. Whilst unfortunately expensive in influence, this will make a server with an agenda in it impenetrable to normal icebreakers as long as the Runner is on less than 5 points, as long as the Runner can't draw cards mid-run, and as long as you have no other ICE rezzed: Loki isn't naturally a barrier, code gate or sentry, so decks using a traditional breaker suite won't be able to get through.

The "as long as you have no other ICE rezzed" restriction is fairly severe, though; sometimes you can go the whole game rezzing no ICE but Loki (against certain Tāo Salonga decks sometimes it's correct to go the whole game installing no ICE but Loki!), but normally you'll need to defend your centrals in order for an impenetrable remote to win you the game. So eventually you'll supplement this into a three-card combo, Loki + Personal Evolution + Rime. If you use Loki to copy Rime, you end up with an ICE – mythic bioroid with " The Runner loses 1" and " End the run unless the Runner shuffles their grip into their stack", even if you have other ICE rezzed. Loki and Rime don't even need to be on the same server (the combo is most reliable if you do put them on the same server, to guarantee an opportunity to rez Rime, but sometimes you'll want the Rime elsewhere to help out with some of the other interlinked strategies).

Of course, Runner decks will often have counterplay to a combo like this, but you have counter-counterplay to most of it. Here are ways that the Runner could break up the combo, and the ways you can try to stop them:

• Bypass effects (e.g. Inside Job, Security Nexus): these are generally once-per-turn (or require playing a card that isn't reusable), so you can normally use Anoetic Void to stop the first run, and the Runner won't be able to attempt a second (against Inside Job you can also just install another piece of ICE outside, such as your Rime);
• Pseudo-bypass (e.g. Boomerang, Botulus): Anoetic Void sort-of works, but Navi Mumbai City Grid works better
• Aumakua and Pelangi: you can often drain them too low on counters (even if the Runner has both Aumakua and Hivemind on Progenitors, that only comes to 2 strength, and Loki has 3 natural strength, 4 with Rime), and this deck is set up to be able to purge a lot; you can also block it with Macrophage (note that using Rime to boost Macrophage to 8 strength can be correct against some decks)
• AIs more generally (e.g. Brahman, Maven, Atman): Chiyashi is something of a brick wall for these late-game (and even if they do get through, you'll be able to pivot to grinder); or you can just ignore the Loki combo and play as glacier, AIs are generally quite inefficient and people don't play this sort of AI without basing their deck around it
• Engolo: you need to overload the paint ability, either with use of Anoetic Void, or (especially in the early game) forcing the Runner to paint something else (Engolo decks often have trouble finding a killer so you can place a sentry outside the Loki)
• Net damage prevention (e.g. Caldera, Heartbeat): Navi Mumbai City Grid works against many of these cards (based on the new errata)
• Emergency draw (e.g. Sports Hopper): either use Navi Mumbai City Grid, or use Obokata Protocol as the card you're scoring out
• Agenda trash (Imp): your only real counterplay against this is Macrophage, but it's fairly effective
• The Runner is on 5 or 6 points: ideally you would have scored House of Knives by this point, but if you don't have that option available, be aware that not all agendas will be safe (Cyberdex Sandbox is at risk at 5 points, House of Knives and Sting! at 6 points)

The reason the combo works so well in practice, therefore, is that although there's a lot of Runner-side counterplay, we can cover pretty much all of it with just three tech cards (Anoetic Void, Macrophage, Navi Mumbai City Grid).

The main counter-counter-counterplay that the Runner may have to our counter-counterplay is Political Operative. Your primary counter-counter-counter-counterplay to this is to protect HQ, either glacier-style with lots of ICE or using flatline combos. If the Runner does get the Operative installed, you can either just win without the combo, or sacrifice an agenda (or ideally an NGO Front!) to force the Runner to pop it.

Not part of the combo itself, but synergising with it, is Digital Rights Management (the combo and its protection take up 14 of our 15 influence, so this is the only discretionary influence expenditure). One nice thing about the Loki combo is that it typically makes it very clear to you when you have a scoring window, and DRM lets you grab an agenda to place into that window. It is nearly always correct to grab Cyberdex Sandbox, both due to its effects when scored, and because your other agendas are better at protecting themselves (thus removing a Cyberdex from your deck is removing one of the Runner's best opportunities to steal something).

Playing as glacier

If you're trying to win using an impenetrable remote, the Runner is likely to try to win off the centrals. You have two main ways to defend those; one method is to try to use flatline combos, but more commonly, you'll just try to make them really, really taxing to enter. (This also has the side effect of shoring up the matchup against Apocalypse.)

The normal plan for centrals defence is to pick an appropriately sized sentry to help keep your centrals protected. Early game, before the Runner has their killer out, Saisentan and Karunā are excellent defence (Saisentan is generally better, but we want more than 3 of the effect). Later in the game, when you have more money and the Runner has more breakers, you will be relying on Anansi and Chiyashi due to their massively high break costs; Runners typically can't generate enough economy to keep up with them, so that will help to keep random accesses down to a minimum.

The abnormal plan, but preferable against some decks, is to score out a Cyberdex Sandbox or ideally two, then use Macrophage as your main form of centrals defence. This is what you do against very heavy virus decks (Hivemind MaxX in particular is very popular, and will need to spend a lot of resources fighting the Macrophages). Virus decks often take a while to get set up, so you can often score a Sandbox early (with Digital Rights Management helping you to find them).

The main challenge with playing glacier-style is therefore not so much the ICE, but producing the economy to rez it. One nice thing about having a near-impenetrable remote is that it makes it easy to take all 15 from Regolith Mining License, which can get you much of the way there by itself. Mwanza City Grid is also usable as an economy card, at some risk; if the Runner is hammering R&D, and you place it on R&D, it'll gain you 10 or even (if the Runner has multiaccess) more with every successful run, quickly catapulting you into the range where you can rez a lot of enormous ICE. We also play three actual Hedge Funds, and two copies of Reverse Infection which turn into improved Hedge Funds once Cyberdex Sandbox has been scored. NGO Front rounds out the economy; this is partially there to generate credits, and partially there to make it possible to shell-game the remote a little (sometimes causing the Runner to waste credits running on an NGO Front, or fail to steal an agenda because they think it's an NGO Front).

Note that the "regular" ICE isn't purely for centrals; one problem with relying on a 5-influence card from out of faction is that you can't run many copies, so often you won't have a Loki available and will need to build a more traditional scoring remote. Generally speaking, though, you'll be putting more ICE onto centrals relative to remotes than you would in a typical glacier deck; your primary focus should be on R&D against almost everyone, with a secondary focus on HQ against Criminals and Archives against Anarchs (who have a nasty tendency to Rebirth into Omar; incidentally, Alice may be a better Rebirth target against this deck but only one opponent thought of it).

Flatline combos

When playing as Jinteki, flatline combos tend to turn up in decks naturally, and this deck is no exception. Some of them were added intentionally, though; in particular, against many decks, we can use them to defend HQ. This makes it possible to save more ICE for R&D, Archives and the remote, and does wonders in the matchup against most Apocalypse decks.

The primary flatline combo is Snare! + Snare! + multi-access, for 6 net damage. If you don't have 8 handy, or don't draw the second Snare! (of three), you can often substitute in agendas, but (as with any strategy which involves intentionally getting agendas stolen) this can be somewhat risky. Sting! is of course the best agenda for this; combined with the ID ability, it does 2 damage when stolen, or 3 damage (the same as Snare!) if you've scored one already.

Sometimes the Runner will be nice to you and provide the multi-access themself, but more commonly, you'll need to use Mwanza City Grid as the multi-access card. If you place this on HQ, the Runner will end up accessing four of the cards in your hand; so if you can ensure that you only have four cards in hand (or if you have enough spiky cards in hand that the Runner could miss one and still flatline), you can ensure that the flatline combo goes off. Docklands Pass is fairly commonly seen in Runner decks nowadays, and will increase the multi-access up to your entire hand.

Note that if the Runner has a way to avoid accessing cards (normally either Eater or Diversion of Funds, but there are a few other cards like Embezzle), Mwanza City Grid will not be able to protect HQ. So you'll need to use ICE to protect HQ in this situation, especially against Criminals.

It's also possible to place Mwanza City Grid on R&D. This is an incredibly volatile move that nonetheless is sometimes your best option for victory; think of a rezzed Mwanza on R&D as saying "Whenever there is a successful run on R&D, resolve one at random: you win the game; you lose the game; or gain 10". The value of this will obviously somewhat depend on just how much you need the 10 (it makes more sense to take risks if you'll lose the game if you don't take those risks); if R&D is getting hammered it's often worth it to be able to afford to rez ICE to protect it. (In theory you can overinstall the Grid with Anoetic Void in order to get rid of it if it becomes too much of a liability. In practice I don't think I've ever actually done this.) The odds of the various possibilities will be based on how many spiky cards are left in your deck, and how many agendas; many of the cards are situational in how much the Runner would want to hit them (e.g. a hit on Sting! can be game-winning for the Corp in some circumstances, and for the Runner in other circumstances), so you'll need to make calculations on the fly as to whether a Mwanza on R&D is worthwhile.

The deck also has an alternative, unrelated flatline combo: using Saisentan in a situation where the Runner can't break the subroutines. Most commonly, this would be either because they're facechecking, or because you used Navi Mumbai City Grid to prevent them using their Boomerang or Botulus. If both you and the Runner are low on credits and the Saisentan is rezzed already, another trick is to surprise-rez a Rime which the Runner has already passed in order to bump the Saisentan just out of the range where something like Aumakua or Carmen can break it. It can take both a little metagame knowledge, and a lot of luck, to call the correct card type, but even if you fail to land enough damage to kill you'll still set the runner back a long way with the cards you trash. (Note that if the Runner has 2 or fewer cards in hand when hitting Saisentan, and no apparent way to stop the damage, you should generally call Event; the only thing that can save the Runner at that point is I've Had Worse, and that will help compensate you for hitting it.) It's possible to do something similar with Anansi on occasion, although this is harder to pull off. (Chiyashi can also flatline runners, but that often doesn't need the help of a combo, especially as it's the only barrier in the deck and many Runners feel safe running without installing their fracter first.)

Loki is also usable for flatline combos against certain decks. If you somehow end up with a spiky piece of ICE like Saisentan or Chiyashi rezzed without the Runner having an appropriate breaker (maybe they survived a faceplant into it, or maybe they pseudo-bypassed it, or maybe they trashed their Paperclip to Simulchip), and the Runner is relying on heap breakers, you can use Loki to copy the ICE in question to hit the runner with all its spiky subroutines – because the Runner runs on their own turn, the heap breaker's install trigger resolves before Loki gains its subtype, so they won't be able to install it because it had the wrong subtype when the trigger was checked. Even if this doesn't flatline, it normally does a lot of damage.

If you score House of Knives, it will contribute 1 extra point of damage to your flatline combos, making it just a little bit easier to land them.

The other strategies

This deck can play as rush or as grinder in a pinch.

Rushing uses the same cards as a glacier strategy, but placed differently; you want to start with ice on a remote first, then start scoring agendas out behind it, hoping that the Runner won't find their killer in time. As always, if you think you have a scoring window, Cyberdex Sandbox is the #1 priority for scoring; this is especially important when rushing because it helps keep your economy going, in addition to the normal consideration of "Cyberdex Sandbox is the worst-protected card in my deck, the score area is by far the safest place for it". Although you hardly have any actual " End the run." subroutines, Loki is at its best when rushing and Saisentan and Karunā will both usually be able to keep a server safe if the Runner can't break or bypass them. Anoetic Void can also be used to help out a rush, although you often won't find time to install it.

The main issue with rushing is trying to afford it; you pretty much need either an early Hedge Fund or else a turn or two of clicking for credits. So this works best on turn 3-4, when the Runner has a slow deck and you're agenda-flooded, as a way to ease the flood rather than a way to win the game outright.

Playing as grinder isn't really a choice you make; rather, it's a choice the Runner makes. If they go through their deck quickly, it often makes sense to just play defensively until they run out of cards altogether (especially if they're on few agenda points at the time). You accomplish the actual grinding almost entirely with your agendas (when using this strategy, the rest of your deck is just there to encourage the Runner to play and install cards). House of Knives is obviously gold in this situation, if you can score it (or have already scored it). Alternatively, when the Runner is down to their last few cards, you can use Sting! (either as a score or as a steal, you often don't care) to knock them down below four cards in grip+stack, at which point Obokata Protocol becomes impossible to steal and you can use it to close out the game. This works especially well against decks that are burning through cards on every run (e.g. some decks will need to pop a Simulchip on every run into a deep server); it pays to recognise this sort of situation and work out what if anything you can do to make the Runner run out of runs.

Card choices

Agendas and ambushes

This is a Mwanza City Grid deck, so the mix of agendas and ambushes is very important in determining how much risk we're undergoing by giving the Runner additional accesses. This is also a Personal Evolution deck, meaning that the agendas effectively become ambushes in their own right. So it makes sense to look at the two categories together.

In order to get the best effects from the Grid, we want many of our agendas to be spiky 1-pointers. However, we don't have the deck space for too many of those, and additionally don't want to spent too long scoring out. So the deck runs five of them; 3 copies of Sting! because it's the spikiest (and works best in multiples), and 2 copies of House of Knives because it's the grindiest (and helps fill a gap in the Loki combo). There actually aren't that many "spiky in R&D" effects left in Standard; Snare! is by far the best, and the only one we use.

In order to fill out our agenda point quota, Obokata Protocol is the obvious choice; it's a huge tempo hit to steal (such a large hit that many Runners will choose not to steal it), and it negates the downside of most of our porous ICE (if the Runner is facetanking damage – or Loki's reshuffle – to get through to the agenda, they won't be able to steal an Obokata beyond it).

The remaining 6 points are filled out with a playset of Cyberdex Sandbox. This might seem like an odd choice, because it doesn't protect itself nearly as well as the other agendas, and does only 1 point of damage when stolen; indeed, they're a huge point of vulnerability in the deck. They did, however, turn out to be necessary, both to fight against the opponents' virus counters, and to help keep the economy going; additionally, there aren't many spiky options to use instead, so we may as well try to do something useful with the slots. Digital Rights Management is an effective "fourth Sandbox" that can't be stolen; its purpose is to try to get the Sandboxes out of danger in R&D, and into the safety of the scoring area, as quickly as possible. I would run more than one of these if I could, but I don't think it's possible to find influence for any more copies.

Economy

This deck has lots of very expensive cards, so it needs a powerful economy.

Mwanza City Grid is sometimes the deck's primary economy card. This generates 10 every run on its server, until it's trashed; the downside is very large but the rest of the deck is built to try to mitigate it. If you have a secure remote set up (and the combo is designed to allow for a secure remote) and thus can move agendas you draw to safety there, or if you have enough spiky cards in HQ to make a Mwanza run a flatline, placing the Grid on HQ is pretty safe. Placing it on R&D is much riskier, but sometimes correct; see the section on flatline combos above.

The primary issue with Mwanza as an economy card is that the Runner might simply just not run the server it's on, denying you the economy as a consequence. This is overall a good thing – the deck is built around a combo that protects the remote, and if the Runner is running neither the remote or nor the centrals then you can simply just score out – but you will need an alternative source of economy in this situation. The deck includes Hedge Fund because it's good enough to include in the majority of Corp decks (and this deck cares about credits early so it's a good fit), and Regolith Mining License because it's a crazily good card and this deck gets a lot of opportunities to use it, but six economy cards isn't really enough to power a deck.

As such, I dedicated a further 4 slots to economic cards. NGO Front is a decent amount of economy, and can occasionally ruin the Runner's economy (or waste their limited-use cards) by baiting runs into the scoring server, but I'm not convinced it's an ideal fit for this deck; perhaps this slot should be something else. Reverse Infection is occasionally a blank card, but normally this deck can score a Cyberdex Sandbox early, so this is effectively just copies 4 and 5 of Hedge Fund. (It is very unlikely that you'll be able to grind away a significant number of cards with it because it's too inefficient at that, but the credits are nice.) It isn't really viable to run more than two copies, though, because the card doesn't function until a Sandbox is scored.

Combo cards

Loki and Jinteki: Personal Evolution are required for the combo, and Rime helps keep the combo viable into the late game. I'm running only two copies of Loki for influence reasons. (I considered running one copy + a card to search for it, but there are no good options for the search card, with Localized Product Line too expensive in credits and the other options too unreliable.) As for Rime, two copies seem to usually be enough to draw them by the time you need them; playing more has the downside that they don't do much to defend your servers early on. (I've had more than a few nervewracking games where my best option has been to try to rush out an agenda behind a Rime and hope that the Runner is too scared to face-check it. One of the huge advantages of playing Jinteki is that some of your ICE is lethal to face-check, so unless the Runner is playing Deuces Wild, a Rime is often too risky to look at until the Runner has their killer out.)

Navi Mumbai City Grid and Anoetic Void are in the deck primarily to protect the combo. They also have some uses elsewhere, the Grid for flatline combos and the Void to stop hero runs on R&D and Apocalypse runs on any central, but normally you'll be using them on your remote server.

Macrophage is here because it's one of the best counters to viruses, and many of the cards that beat the combo use virus counters (additionally, the glacier half of the deck also has a mild virus issue that it would like to have shored up). It can also do a passable impression of an NBNish code gate when you have a Cyberdex Sandbox scored (it approximates to " Trace[5] – If successful, end the run.", because you can use the credits from the Sandbox to pump the run-ending trace, although it's more vulnerable to link and only works once per turn). Finally, if the Runner is going full-on Mwanza and giving you 10 or even 16 every turn, you can use the economic advantage to pump the run-ending trace out of reach.

Other ICE

The rest of the ICE is split between early-game ICE and later-game ICE. In both cases, we're primarily trying to defend the central servers, and we want to minimize the number of successful runs the Runner can make on them; the difference is that we need some cheaper ICE to be able to rez it for defence early, and more expensive ICE to be able to meaningfully tax a Runner who has their breakers out.

In terms of expensive ICE, we have Anansi because it's probably the best piece of ICE in the game, and Chiyashi because it's a hard run-ender that's large enough to meaningfully tax even Paperclip; the deck runs a lot of economy but has no spare influence, so we want to aim for the strongest ICE we can afford. I'm not so much of a fan of DNA Tracker because decoders are pretty ridiculous nowadays, and few other options fit the deck.

In terms of cheaper ICE, we're basically looking for something that will keep the runner out until they find their killer (normally the hardest breaker to find; many runners run fewer copies in this barrier- and code gate-heavy metagame). Saisentan is my favourite piece of ICE for early central defence; you can normally shuffle round your actions on turn 1 and 2 so that it protects the agendas in your opening hand right from the start of the game, and it has the huge advantage that it usually flatlines a Runner who tries to facecheck it. (A common Runner strategy is to face-check a lot of ICE early to force the Corp to rez it, slowing them down, and that could potentially be devastating against this deck. But if a faceplant into our ICE flatlines the Runner, we don't need to worry about the economic hit of rezzing it, so we don't need to worry about being able to afford multiple servers' worth of ICE.) Karunā is maybe a little expensive for what is effectively a run-ending sentry (few Runners will choose to take all four points of damage if they can't break it), but we don't really have better options available without spending influence.

Not included is "cheap, porous but taxing" Jinteki ICE like Aiki or Engram Flush. This sort of ICE doesn't protect servers well in the early game, and is inefficient in terms of install costs and deck space (i.e. you need more ICE for the same level of protection) in the later game; and we're aiming to run an economy that makes it possible to use bigger ICE than that.