Tokyo Hold 'Em: Live from SanSan v7 (3rd Jinteki Tourney)

The thesis of this deck is 'Make the Runner sweat more than me', and I think I have it down pretty well by now. This is a highly flexible deck that can put itself in a winning position without a single piece of ice on the board simply due to the power of Mushin No Shin and the traps/agenda mix forcing runners into bad choices with no clear answer.

I tried a less spiky Mti at a store championship this spring, and it did fine...but I really, really missed having Obokata Protocol. Talking with the wonderful Spags after the tourney, he suggested that I try out Jinteki Biotech instead and I'm very glad to have done so! In a world of Liberated Accounts and Kati Jones, you need some kind of additional win condition that isn't just taxing economy. With a Jinteki deck like this, you not only tax credits and clicks: you tax their cards and their fortitude.

How it performed in the tourney:

Round 1: Smoke. They got set up fairly quickly and got two agendas without much reprisal from me. However, desperation makes Corps do risky things, so a Mushin+Advanced Junebug was too tempting to leave unchecked for them. 8 net damage got me win #1!

Round 2: Leela with Film Critic, the ultimate threat to this deck. Was not able to bluff much with plenty of Falsifieds on their side, and a few misplays that negated Mushin+Advances I'd made earlier sunk me. Defeated pretty soundly.

Round 3: Val! I had to play on mobile for this round, and it was awful for everyone involved, apologies to my opponent. Despite not being able to use Archived Memories or Preemptive Action I still managed to sneak out enough Mushins to get a 4-point turn with "Clones are not People" after 50 minutes.

Round 4: Standard 419. I elected to 241 this round to limit the amount of time spent on mobile, and it was another tense match where I landed several traps at just the right time to heap important breakers. Correctly assumed they'd go for an RD dig instead of faceplanting into another Mushin+Advance which was an agenda this time, able to again get a 4-point turn and score out.

I made the top cut and came back to a real computer the next weekend for much easier playing!

Round 5: Used my runner to great effect!

Round 6: Maxx with Levy! Either you win these early or wait until they exhaust their stack, and the latter gave me the win this time. Didn't land many traps but was able to stack up a Kakugo remote that led to a lot of painful runs.

Round 7: Apoc Val, didn't find the Mushins to make my plays scary, so my double-advance plays didn't work, and they quickly routed me with some good calls including the ultimate bluff-call of "Freedom" onto a naked double-advanced card that was indeed an agenda.

Round 8: Lost with my runner.

Biotech's abilities are all useful, but here you want to go Brewery almost every time. With Obokata, Kakugo, and plenty of traps, you get a good shot at leaving the Runner with 1 card at turn's end. If you land a quad-advance Cerebral Sadness, victory is just about guaranteed. I love Greenhouse for the ridiculous ways it lets you score 5/3s disguised as Nisei MK II, but it's not better unless you're against some insane Shaper deck that has Feedback guaranteed. The Tank is the worst pick unless you expect six Wanton Destructions or something.

This is an extremely fun deck except against Film Critic and to a lesser extent Levy. Once you see those hit the table, you have to play very well to win! There are enough tools in here that you won't be floundering against most runners once you have a handle on how they play, Have fun and good luck!