Prana shell games

OG-San 7

Inspired by Diogene's fantastic Facile Jinteki deck, there was one change I felt strongly about: Prana Condenser.

But why would you take away your win condition, I hear you asking? I can understand why people feel this way, but within the Startup format, it's nearly impossible to kill the Runner with a trap deck. None of the traps are individually scary enough to prevent the Runner from just taking their time and running everything. Also, I've found this style of deck generally struggles with their economy. If you throw your Prana Condenser behind either an Engram Flush or Saisentan, you can both threaten to fire off a kill as well as force the Runner to commit to a run when they'd much rather be advancing their game plan.

In general, this deck tries to slow the game down. Don't expect to kill the Runner unless you've already burned through their entire Stack. Sure, you can sometimes get lucky with a Saisentan, but that's pretty rare. Generally don't try to protect any server with more than 1 piece of ICE, and don't be afraid to just plop things down with no protection. It feels bad to lose those 1 point agendas at first, but it's actually perfectly fine. 1 point generally doesn't get the Runner too much closer to winning, and that net damage adds up over time. Prana Condenser is generally the only card I try to make sure I protect, not to stop the Runner from ever trashing it, but to force the Runner to pay a bigger cost to do so. Urtica Cipher and Cerebral Overwriter are both great to place out as traps as well as to hold your advancement counters for Trick of Light shenanigans.

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