大丈夫ですか DIE-JOUBU

Don't worry. Go ahead and run. :-) Everything will be just fine. I mean, what could go wrong, right?

This is DIE-JOUBU. It's a deck I've played and tinkered with since Honor and Profit and like an old friend it's always stayed true and reliable to me. The idea is very simple. Create as many situations for the runner to die as possible. None of this thousand cuts business. Just one clean bite so that they can't recover.

There have been a lot of influences for this deck over the years, most prominently Elusive's fantastic Bag of Tricks deck that convinced me to start running Profiteering, and true to it's name it has undergone its own little personal evolution into the spiky, nasty pit of broken glass it is today. So what's the sitch?

Well, DIE-JOUBU plays loose and fast. Don't over commit to one idea. Have a multitude of insta-gib ways to hit the runner hard enough to knock them off their feet.

Oh, you hit my Kitsune? Here's a Snare!. But you had I've Had Worse? See. Everything is fine. Run again.

Ah, Cerebral Overwriter. A toughy. Especially when combined with all these Neurals and my advanced Ronin. Good thing you have that Feedback Filter. Everything is fine.

Watch out for Chairman Hiro and those Bio-Ethics Associations though. If they go off at once that could be it. But Apocalypse saves you! All is well!

Shattered Remains? Psh! What's the worst that could happ-

You hit my Fetal AI. Punitive. Punitive. Flatline. DIE-JOUBU?

Arigatou, Runner-san.

You see. The problem I've found with PE is that it's very easy to tech against. It usually relies on the runner making a mistake or hoping for a snowball effect of net damage or simply not having a specific answer to a specific thing. With DIE-JOUBU you set up the mistakes for them. Throw out flatline win-con after win-con until eventually one sticks. You don't care about their answers. You want to see their answers. It'll help you tailor your flatline accordingly. Be flexible but firm. Loose but hard. And when the time comes, spring the trap. Good game. Hope you had fun.

When playing the deck your chief concern is creds. Make lots of them. Always have more than the runner. That keeps you from being vamped. It doesn't matter if they have 10 credits or 30. Just so long as you have more. Score those Profiteerings early. Your ice isn't so much a tax as a speed bump to inconvenience them. Keep your traps online and then helpfully guide the runner into the minefield. Or don't and score out. Or zap them with your manual assets. Or if they get sloppy just hit 'em with a couple Neurals. You've got more answers than they do. Take advantage of that.

Of course there are other cards out there that cause problems for Blacktree, right? People sometimes wonder what's to be done about Keyhole. or Account Siphon, or a number of other cards. My answer: kill them. You have the tools. And if you know they've committed you know what trap to set. You can take a few hits. You can misfire a few kills. But don't worry. In the end everything will be DIE-JOUBU.