The Mutalisk v1.0

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paddosan 3408

Mutate is a very interesting card, except for the fact that the best ice is hardly the one developed by Jinteki Corporation. So to better exploit this card one has to spend a lot of influence into acquiring big and bad ice from other factions.

My selection has been the following:

  • Archer: simply because it's still the number one ice on the market, if you ask me. Not to mention the possibility to ignore the forfeiting of an agenda was too good to pass.
  • Heimdall 2.0: is quite expensive to break and taking some brain damage against Jinteki can be a bad choice and become extremely dangerous the more the game drags on. It also can't be broken entirely with clicks (or at least not easily!).
  • Janus 1.0: again, brain damage is the one thing you don't wanna accumulate against the scary oriental corporation, and 4 subroutines ensure you either break or get at least 1 (most of the time).

No ice from NBN because Tollbooth might be awesome, but it's too much of an easy target for Femme Fatale and it doesn't really pose a threat to the runner's life. Maybe to his economy, but not to his life and with Personal Evolution I like to at least try achieving a flatline.

Having almost no barriers (only 2 you should rez only with Mutate anyway) means their Fracter will be nearly useless, since most of the ice is naturally of the Sentry type. There's also 3 cheap and Yog.0-targetable Code Gates, but there's also two Lotus Field and one Inazuma which might require a bit more effort from the Runner.

It might be worth adding Chum because with Mutate you install the new ice in the same position of the one you trashed, therefore possibly placing it under an empowering Chum. That would be nice.

There's enough small ice to sacrifice and hopefully avoid a starting hand with no ice to protect HQ and/or R&D. Still, R&D is dangerous enough that maybe they won't run so carelessly. In case you have too many of those cheap pieces of ice left in R&D to use mutate successfully, there's also a couple Precognition to help out.

I chose to add plenty of traps so you can play the shell game while fortifying your HQ and R&D, and a Psychic Field mostly to try and scare that nasty expose away. Also one Cerebral Overwriter to increase the sources of the oh-so-good-brain damage.

Economy is a bit tight, so scoring an early Gila Hands Arcology is a big plus (well, it always is, right?), but of course House of Knives if a big plus too.

Well, it's still a deck in a very early stage, so any comment or suggestion is greatly appreciated. ;)

2 comments
15 Aug 2014 Inodrev

I definitely see what you're trying to go for here, but there are a couple issues: 1. Yes, economy is not just tight, it's constricting. Not only because of the big ice, but also because of the traps you're using and still having to focus on scoring agendas. 2. Mutilate isn't always going to be in your hand, neither is the precog, so you should make sure, if you don't draw those, you have the money to rez what you need.

Here is what I suggest:

-Change the identity to Jinteki: Replicating Perfection. This will funnel the runner into your centrals, where they will have a bigger chance of hitting those heavy ice.

-Lose the PAD Campaign for a Sundew. It's an automatic $2 every turn if you have Replicating Perfection as an identity. If the runner doesn't like seeing it, they'll have to run at a central server to try and trash it, and that might not be so appealing with your big ice.

-I'd get rid of the of the Snares and Psychic field for 3 Restructure. If you Hedge fund, click for credit, then Restructure, that's $10 in one turn! That will shoot your economy up allowing you a lot of options for play.

-I might get rid of the Gila Hands for a couple of Braintrust. Might help lower the expensive cost of that ice.

Hmm.... I think that's it for now, but I think that should help make it more streamlined.

15 Aug 2014 paddosan

Thanks for your suggestions, @Inodrev, but those changes would create a very different deck. My objective was mainly to exploit Mutate in an otherwise quite typical Personal Evolution deck.

I've been playing Jinteki a lot recently, and so have many friends from the local meta, but PE always comes out on top as the Jinteki identity of choice. This is mainly because the sheer amount of Net Damage can drastically slow down the runner and force him into rethinking twice his moves. Basically allowing the Corp much more time to set up her traps and / or gather resources.

I do think, however, this is due to the unwillingness of many players to add defenses in their decks, such as protections from Net Damage or some expose to help them spot the traps. When there was only Project Junebug it was ok, but now I really think even runners need to protect themselves better.

Anyway PAD Campaign is essentially the only good long term option for the deck in my mind, because it's expensive to trash and it's neutral. While it would be very expensive (influence-wise) to add Adonis or Marked Accounts, for example. Sundew would be my choice as well, were I to switch to RP.

I think, however, that Gila Hands is better than Braintrust. I can hardly over-advance an agenda in Jinteki (and in many other decks too) but the real problem with this one is that it requires 2 more advancements for just a 1 credit reduction. Which also doesn't seem very useful because the big ice should only be rezzed with Mutate anyway (and reshuffled with Jackson if drawn too early).