Miracle Gro

obscurica 1313

Tried out my Placebo Effect list the other day, and ran into a number of difficulties. Due to the transient nature of advancing assets, they did not work altogether effectively with Mass Commercialization. It was also proving difficult to make Reversed Accounts worth it in Jinteki, as your inability to rez it on the same turn as Mushin No Shin combined with the deck's relatively weak defenses meant that its impact on the runner economy was fairly negligible.

Worse: the same defense issues impacted GRNDL Refinery as well, making it difficult to work the economy. The three-credit drip from Shell Corporation was just barely keeping me afloat at times.

So let's boil the deck down further. What it wants is to be able to take two advancement counters from one card and put it down on a 3/2 agenda. That means you need to be able to stow away advancement counters on a card until you're ready to use them. While Project Junebug was fine in that regard, the opportunities to actually use them to score out were relatively rare, especially if they either overdrew to mitigate its impact, or had R&D on lockdown to prevent the score-out.

Tokens on ice, on the other hand, is inherently harder to budge. Only derez-centric Crim decks can manage it, and only if it isn't Weyland advanceables that can be charged up face-down. Anson Rose, too, is a strong option -- one that benefits from Mushin no Shin, even if you can't rez him immediately.

All that suggests that I should be looking to Weyland for FA strategies, but Weyland's token-distribution options are actually more limited in comparison. Excepting Red Planet Couriers, Weyland advancement tokens can go from asset to ice, but not the other way around. You ultimately have to go through Oberth Protocol and Jemison Astronautics: Sacrifice. Audacity. Success. for Weyland FA, which requires an altogether different approach.

If the intent is to use Trick of Light, though: importing Weyland tech into Jinteki seems the way to go. You not only have the Anson Rose+Trick of Light range of options, extending to any and all ice you choose to activate (and allow for a truly staggering MassComm), but you also have Crisium Grid+Excalibur->Shipment from Tennin combo. Run that through AgInfusion: New Miracles for a New World, and you have a hybridized Fast Advance+Lockdown strategy that neatly solves the asset defense issue too.

At that point, you can score out of hand with pretty much total impunity. Or so the theory goes.

0 comments