Jinja Tower of Flowers (3rd at NH CO)

This deck was brought to a New Hampshire CO, where it went 3-0 on the day. My runner was a copy of CableCarnage’s Undefeated Slimes Ari list, which is a great list but I went 1-2 with because I don’t know how to play runner.

Background

At NANPC Boston I had a really good conversation with fellow A Teia enthusiast Cado where we shared tech about using Timely Public Release with Cohort Guidance Program on the board. Cado pointed out that even with no face-down cards in archives, you can use the triggered second install to overwrite a face-down asset or upgrade to feed the Cohort and score a 4/2, and I pointed out that you can do that even without an unrezzed asset or upgrade to overwrite, because you can do that by overwriting a facedown ice with the TPR ice install, as long as the face-down ice is on the Cohort remote. Shenanigans!

About a week later, I had a really silly combo idea, and in the following three weeks I have basically played nothing but this deck in person or on jnet, because the combo is delightful.

Jinja City Grid allows you to install ice clicklessly whenever you draw ice.

A Teia will trigger when you install ice on a remote server, and then allow you to install something in the other server. You can’t score it on the same turn, but as with any of the TPR lists, you can do it at the end of the runner turn to allow you to score it on your turn; Seamless Launch, Cohort Guidance Program, or La Costa Grid in the second server all let you score out a 4 advancement agenda very easily and a 5 advancement agenda if you have any two of these effects.

The final question is: how do you draw on the runner turn? The answer turns out to be Flower Sermon, which is a 4/2 agenda that sees no play but that lets you draw two cards and put a card back on R&D, once per turn.

So the gameplan is as follows:

1. Score a 4/2 behind ice, using whatever combo of Cohort, Seamless, or install-advance works. Sometimes you can push this very quickly, runners will not always try to contest the first score versus face-down jinteki ice. Ideally score a Flower Sermon.
2. Find a Jinja City Grid, and install it in one of your remotes, behind ice ideally. You can rez it earlier if your other agendas are safe and/or you are going to draw a bunch (Spin Doctors, etc) because stacking ice on that server protects it even if the ice is just cheap and annoying (Tithe, Rime, etc)
   • Important: do not overcommit ice to the Jinja server! Installs are free up to the 5th ice, but we need ice in hand in order to do combo shenanigans (and pad HQ), and realistically many runners are reluctant to run a 4- or 5-deep server anyhow.
   • Also: never rez all of the ice on the Jinja server, it cuts down your later options.
3. If you have a seamless and/or a cohort installed in the Jinja server, use Flower Sermon on your turn to draw 2 and put an ice on top of R&D.
4. On the runner’s turn, during or after click 4, rez Jinja City Grid and use Flower Sermon. Reveal an ice and install on the Jinja server, allowing you to install from hand in the second server. If you need, overwrite one of the face-down ice on the Jinja server to make sure you have a face-down card for Cohort.
5. On your turn, score out the agenda. If you have more stuff in hand to install, use Flower Sermon on your turn again to ensure the top of R&D is ice again.
6. Repeat!

Variations:

• The runner-turn A Teia install can also install a Rashida from hand, safely popping it at the start of your next turn. Keep in mind that if you do this you are definitely drawing a ton of cards by next turn (+1 or 2 from flower sermon, +3 rashida, +1 mandatory draw), so you’d better be ready to push something in the remotes the following turn.
• Flower Sermon is the easiest way to draw a card on the runner turn but not the only way; Spin Doctor also lets you do that. The play you want to keep an eye out for is being able to keep the Spin Doctor unrezzed in the non-Jinja server and then rezzing it to trigger Jinja and overwrite itself with an agenda or Rashida. In practice usually by the time you've demonstrated the combo once the runner will try really hard to remote lock you and won't let unrezzed Spins stay, so this has usually not worked out in practice, but in theory this is a possible tactic.

Q: What if my Jinjas get trashed?

Jinja costs a staggering 5 to trash. Unless the runner has Miss Bones, Imp, or Cupellation this should be a pretty sizable speed bump to their game plan. If the runner is trashing them out of R&D or HQ, this should definitely hurt their economy. You can often fall back on the secondary plan of "the runner is now broke, install advance in the big remote."

How to Defend Servers:

Scoring things out of hand requires the stuff stay safely in your hand. Focus on defending HQ - going to 2 or even 3 ice on HQ is very common (but you have the ice in this deck to support that). R&D is also good to defend, especially versus shaper (keeping an annoying facecheck on the outside helps combat Trick Shots), but it also turns out a scored Flower Sermon is extremely annoying for runners to deal with - if the top of R&D is safe, single accesses don’t do anything, and even stuff like Trick Shot gets way weaker.

Where you place ice depends on what you draw and what the runners are trying to do, but you want at least 1-2 big pieces of ice (Boto, Vampyronassa, Anansi) on HQ, and then any extra big ice either on R&D or remote(s), depending on what makes sense. Versus the Anarch fixed breaker suite, Boto + Rime is backbreaking, especially if you can successfully rush to 4 points. Versus Criminal usually any two big ice on HQ is enough of a tax. Versus the Begemot-Laamb breaker suite, your barriers are bad but a 3-ice deep remote with a thimblerig on the outside is basically unbreakable. Versus a lot of shaper stuff Boto is still pretty good. You’d run like 8 Botos in this deck if you could.

Individual card considerations:

Timely Public Release: I love this card. This card allows for incredible shenanigans and spawned the whole idea of this deck in the first place, but I’ve tried running it in place of the Offworlds and just wound up short on money a lot. You’re very tight on deck slots in this list. Offworld is a silly agenda.

Charlotte Caçador: There’s one copy in the deck as I had brought it to the CO; that was accidental because I had actually cut it in my more recent online lists. I have replaced her with another Tithe. The flower sermon-jinja trick does not really work well with Charlotte (it technically works if you have an active Cohort as well, but it comes at the cost of the first Cohort ability so it's not actually a huge upside), and while the ability is great, you both don't have La Costa in this deck and really would like to be able to use both of your remote server slots, and Charlotte tends to clog them.

The highlight of this tourney was definitely the final game versus Eric's Loup, where his last click attempt to access a random card from HQ when time was called (R&D inaccessible due to a 7str Boto) required letting Anansi fire, which let me draw and install using Jinja to place the only agenda in hand (BacPro) into a naked remote, keeping HQ safe and letting me score out on the following turn with double Seamless.

This tournament was a lot of fun. Thanks to Eric for organizing, and thanks to Erika and NotAgain for already having CBI invites so it could roll down to me somehow.