CRispy Fried Neurons: 6th, Cache Refresh Online Tournament

Playing PU in Cache Refresh teaches you to embrace the zen of Jinteki. Sometimes the runner faceplants the snare... sometimes the snare, well, it faceplants you.

I went into the CR Online Tournament playing Jinteki largely because I wanted to see if a Jinteki list could work. My first pass at the deck was a spammy Rube Goldberg contraption with Moons, Health Clinics, Psychic Fields, and Replanting. This idea was not so good. I almost won a game where the runner stole the winning Nisei with 0 in stack and hand; but honestly, the deck didn't tax well enough, Bank Jobs and Temujins always had open targets, and it was child's play to run through the non-Kakugo'd servers. My only win was to a forfeit.

So after round 4, I switched to this contraption. It finished 2-0. Along with my 5-1 runner record, this was enough to snag 6th place.

This deck wants to put tax on centrals and create 2-3 remotes: one for scoring and the rest for Synth. Very few of your ice actually ETR, but PU creates boardstates where the runner has to break every single net damage subroutine, and Synth punishes them for doing so. Campaigns can go in either type of remote when the time is right.

The best card in the deck is, far and away, Kakugo. Kakugo should be on all your key servers. Depending on the board state, I like to throw the first one on either the most important central or the scoring remote, and the second on the option I didn't pick the first time. Kakugo plus Ben Musashi or Prisec is often enough to slam an early agenda or open a window for one. Late-game, the third Kakugo can fortify the server the runner wants to win out of. Cutlery is rare in Cache because the anarch big box is missing so much econ; Parasite is still a problem, but I didn't see one all tournament. Kakugo thrives in an environment light on both.

The SanSan might look a bit odd, but it served me very well. Your servers should already be taxing, and SanSan is must-trash--giving PU access to 1-turn House of Knives and Philotic (plus the later Breakthroughs) is a bad idea. If you ever find yourself starting a turn with a rezzed SanSan, the fun can really begin--any card in the server looks like a never-advanced Nisei. Including your Snare!s.

Main Friends targets are Synth and Ben Musashi, but there are situations where campaigns and ice are better choices. Obokatas are usually safe in archives, so there are also cases where it's right to Friends Obokata-Musashi into your scoring server with the intent to score it over the next two turns.

Overall, this deck performed well after I made the switch to it. I think it may be even better situated in a paper tournament where runners are more likely to tech against Sync.

published by AlwaysBeRunning.net