[Startup] death by 1 really big cut or by 1000 little cuts

anvilfood 8

Loosely based off Diogene's GOBLIN CAVE and some discussions with Evie about how to build a good Jinteki: Personal Evolution deck

Goal: Set up a big flatline from accessing lots of agendas in the archives.

Mulligan targets: Gaslight, Punitive Counterstrike, or a Spin Doctor as a backup to control what's in your archives. There's plenty of ways to make do with other hands, depending on the matchup, though.

Requirements: Always have 4 creds so you can activate Snare! if they find it. If not that many, then at least have 3 creds so you can threaten Punitive Counterstrike if they try to score many agendas in a turn.

General plan: Discard agendas to archives (ideally without going over 7 points in there) via Hansei Review and Simulation Reset and hand size (and sabotage).

Runner runs archives, gets all the agendas in there for like 5-6 points and a boatload of net damage from Jinteki: Personal Evolution and Fujii Asset Retrieval. Every agenda in the deck represents 1 net damage per agenda point, except Longevity Serum, which I've done intentionally, rather than running Orbital Superiority. This maximizes the number of cards needing to be trashed from hand.

Hopefully, they neglect your Gaslight installed into a remote server that you then get to rez on your turn to get Punitive Counterstrike out of R&D and finish them off.

Along the way, use Spin Doctor, Snare!, Gaslight, Urtica Cipher, Nightmare Archive, and Mavirus to:

  1. Help the psychological game of whether you're playing any agendas at all. I've been able to slow advance Fujii to completion completely unguarded by bluffing like it was an Urtica Cipher
  2. Help keep the right number of agendas in archives, in case sabotage gets unlucky for the corp

Ice: Bathynomus and Anemone can be nice to protect archives if there's too much in it too early. The rest of the ice is just simple ETR stuff to stick a Regenesis behind if you can match it to something their rig doesn't break. Tatu-Bola can block early and help build up economy later since it grants +2 cred and is even on clicks if you have other ice you want out. Anemone can be nice to throw in front of something you're obviously telegraphing as an agenda because of the rez damage that's really hard to block.

Other thoughts: Trick of Light might be too cute, but it is a way to take an obvious Urtica Cipher that's been advanced and allow you to fast-advance one of the 3/1 or 3/2 agendas, so you could win off a 5-point swing of Regenesis from hand + Fujii Asset Retrieval face down in archives.

Also note that if you set up a way for them to score (but not win with) Fujii Asset Retrieval in a turn and you have more creds than them and Punitive Counterstrike in hand (or some way to get it), then you are representing 2 [net from stealing] + 1 [net from identity] + 3 [meat from scoring] = 6 total damage, which will flatline anyone in a single shot except:

  1. Anarchs running Marrow with a mostly full hand
  2. Anybody running Steelskin Scarring who happens to have it in hand
  3. Anybody running AirbladeX (JSRF Ed.) or Stoneship Chart Room who has it installed already
  4. Anybody who runs carnivore and can get to HQ (this has seemed very unlikely in the current Startup meta, from my experience)
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