"Some beautiful paths cannot be discovered without getting lost."

Hee hee! Welcome to Necrofantasia!

Actually, welcome to Archives. You take one net damage. Try running again... There we go!

Welcome to Necrofantasia!

(Feel free to step through the Gap to the next picture below to skip my ramblings about the ID and get redirected right to the workings of the deck itself.)

Every time Fantasy Flight launches a new Jinteki ID there always seems to be something of a delayed reaction. Jinteki: Potential Unleashed was initially met with a sluggish 'meh' leading up to its release before everyone realised what a ridiculous card it was. And, again, there hasn't really been a whole lot of noise around AgInfusion despite it being one of the funkiest IDs in the game. Maybe that's because it's been spoiled for too long. Or because everyone is still recovering from the meta heart attack that is Skorpios. Who knows? The point is, AgInfusion is awesome and this decklist is my case to try and prove that to you.

So, what exactly does AgInfusion do that makes it special? I mean, upon first glance it just looks like a neutered Jinteki: Replicating Perfection. It deflects the first run of the turn but it requires a lot of investment to do so. Cards, clicks, credits... And they all need to be replaced to do it again... ugh! Why not play an ID that triggers passively rather than one you have to aggressively build around and can potentially lose the resources to fire mid-game?

Short answer: Because it straight up lets you take away a runner's action and make it over for them yourself. Like, wow! Excuse me while I wipe the saliva dripping from my mouth away from these little Jinteki bonsai trees I have planted in front of me.

Denying the first click of a desired run is powerful. There's no doubt about that. It taxes the runner through the most valuable and limited resource they have available - their clicks - but ultimately that's all it does. It's an effective time waster but it's not a win condition. Forcing the runner to run somewhere else is even stronger. It means they likely need to encounter something they don't want to before jacking out. In RP this means you can build up some very unpalatable centrals for the runner to taste test before hitting your remotes. It takes time and effort but it's worth it because the runner has to make a difficult decision and Jinteki thrives when hard decisions need to be made. Despite the investment, a properly built RP board state is a thing to be feared.

Now if only there were a way to invest even more into it. To force the runner to run the central server YOU want them to hit which, naturally, is the roughest, toughest server going that they'd never pick themselves in a million years. No one is going to run that Tollbooth when you have a Pup rezzed over HQ after all. And if only there was a way to drag them towards that spiky remote server too.

You know, playing against Jinteki always reminds me off that little mind experiment where you have to choose whether or not to change the tracks of a train set to hit a bunch of people or just one person. It sits you in a lose or lose more scenario where you have to be pragmatic and willing to make painful choices to survive. The greater good demands you steal that remote advanced agenda but it means pushing through a DNA Tracker first. Now imagine it's not even the Runner's decision anymore. Imagine the Corp has full control over where that train is heading. Yuck!

I mean that does sound a little absurd but a Corp can dream right... Oh wait.

The best kind of hard decision is the one with the least options. In AgIn the runner gets one. Stop or go? After they hit your first piece of ice that is. Most runners are probably going to stop at this point. That's the thing about trains - most of them come with breaks. Health and safety gone mad, right?

But this is exactly why I prefer AgInfusion to Replicating Perfection. If you build on the stop or go decision rather than just the initial encounter after redirection it allows you to do a whole lot more than RP ever could. This is because remotes are now relevant to your ID meaning you have full control over what lies at the end of the tunnel. And thanks to cards like Port Anson Grid and the oft maligned Ancestral Imager you can make the decision spicier than it initially seems. Suddenly, every unrezzed piece of ice in the game is a DNA Tracker with an advanced Cerebral Overwriter behind it and it's going to cost you a program and a card from your grip just to get out of the run.

Another thing AgIn lets you do is protect your centrals. This offers fluidity to the nature of your board state and makes your card layout a lot less predictable than it would be out of RP. You can also completely hose run events by redirecting them somewhere where they have absolutely no effect. That includes Account Siphon and Vamp. Or Keyhole for that matter. A Jinteki ID that counters Vamp, Siphon and Keyhole is alright in my books given the three have traditionally been the bane of Red players everywhere since the day of their respective release. Dandy!

Admittedly the deck can feel a little clumsy right out of the gate. You need a bit of time to set up your board state before you can start your shenanigans but, with a high ice count, you can usually manage this pretty fast and, again, you can rest easy knowing you're safe from an early Indexing or Account Siphon. A credit free EtR is a valuable toy, especially for those times when you're starved for low rez cost ice so while it can take some time to get started you're still far from being defenseless.

You also don't exactly want to be throwing away cards willy-nilly either though which is why cheap gear checks, especially ones that can be reset for later like Chimera or Himitsu-Bako, are important includes. Once you have enough ice and servers set up to start your game plan properly the fun really begins.

Ideally you'll want a proxy remote. This is a remote designed to be unpleasant to run through. Chiyashi into Port Anson Grid and Shock! for example is a good one. You can also score out of this though another Caprice remote can work better for this purpose. This way you can redirect from your scoring remote or even surprise the runner when then hit Jackson Howard in your scoring server and it turns out Philotic Entanglement was in the dummy server once the runner has been trained into viewing the two servers as such.

Speaking of, let's take some time to discuss mind games. Roll your eyes all you want but AgIn allows for some of the most genuine yomi in the game. Last time I redirected you to that remote server you hit a Cerebral for one brain damage. Now I'm directing you again with a double advanced card in the server and Ancestral Imager is in effect. Jacking out is a no brainer. Take your damage and then stay the hell away away from that server ever again. Psyche! It was a GFI all along. Bonus points if you keep it there and make them run and jack out again only to score it suddenly when you hit 4 points for the game. (Not actually advised but so totally advised!) Desperate plays might not win you a lot of games but they'll definitely win you a few, especially when you aren't being presented with many other options.

With so many moving parts and a constantly shifting board state a lot more goes into knowing what it is you're running on than usual. So it's nice to make every potential access appear dangerous. Heck, I've actually used Friends in High Places to pull back an Overwriter just to advance it the following turn. It's not a dead card even when it's telegraphed in situations where you want the runner to jack out of a Port Anson Grid server just to knock out one of their breakers and get your Chimera online again.

As such you have an odd double win condition. Psuedo shell game along with classic RP style glacier. You're still scoring out at the end of the day but your adaptability makes you hard to pin down completely. Also, you can grind the runner out of cards in a pinch but this is best avoided if you want to have any friends. You know that guy who made the Bloom Nobly, Ink Black Cherry Blossoms deck? Yeah, you don't want to be THAT guy.

WINNERS DON'T USE PRISON DECKS

So, yeah, the ID is a barrel of fun to play. Give the deck a whirl and tell me what you think. I've had a solid amount of success with it myself winning most of my matches so far on Jinteki.net. I'll probably make adjustments in the coming months but this seems like a nice starting point to show off the ID's initial potential.