Six-Point Exploding Heart Technique

I don't think Valley Grid can kill the runner. You can't go below zero credits, similarly, you can't go below zero cards in hand. It does line them up for Neural EMP though...

Wrecko: Don't wait until after you get flatlined by this deck to brush up on your rules knowledge ;)

Rulebook, Damage section: "If the Runner takes more damage than the number of cards in his grip, or if he has a maximum hand size of less than zero at the end of his turn, then he is flatlined and the Corporation wins the game."

"If the Runner takes more damage than the number of cards in his grip, or if he has a maximum hand size of less than zero at the end of his turn, then he is flatlined and the Corporation wins the game."

Because Valley Grid doesn't specifically state that it has a maximum penalty of a zero hand size, it's safe to assume that it can cause a negative hand size and, if the runner ends their turn with that state, the runner loses.

As for the deck, I'd fit in three Jackson Howards, which I might suggest replacing the Wraparounds with and then filling that ICE slot again by replacing the Neurals with either Rainbows or Wall of Statics. As with every deck, Jackson just helps with consistency. If you want the immediate draw boost instead of a slower one, use Anonymous Tip. Either way, the sooner you get your ICE tower and Valley Grid, the better.

I love the idea, I hope it works. It actually seems really solid. You might want to replace Enigma, however, since it can't really go on the scoring remote (they can just not break the first subroutine, which means it won't trigger Valley Grid). Lotus Field seems much stronger.

Oh! That's a great point about Enigma! I second the suggestion to replace them with Lotus Field. That may also be a good reason to not use Excalibur and replace it with another Guard or anything else that the runner MUST break and take that pseudo-brain damage or else end the run because of Valley Grid.

@PurinaBisonChow As good as JH is, I'm not sure if he is right for this deck. I'm aiming for pure rush, so I don't want to be shuffling Agendas back into R&D, or drawing cards that don't help me set up and score early. I'm also not reliant on having my combo pieces to get started either, just money, ice and an agenda, so I don't feel too much need for extra draw. As soon as I have two (different type, EtR) ice on the remote, I'll score out of it.

As for ice selection, I want very binary, gearcheck ice to support my rush strategy. Wraparound is great for this as it really needs a fracter, AI won't do. By contrast Rainbow to this deck as it can be broken by just about anything, so not ice I would put in this deck. The Eli's are an exception to the gearcheck focus, but they're so good on centrals that I think they're worth it.

@AKirkland That's a good point about Enigma. I've certainly gone back on forth on including it. At the moment it's in because it is so good for early game scoring at only 3 credits, and often losing that click stops them from using Special Order to get the breaker they need.

@PurinaBisonChow Excalibur is in the deck as it is part of a different combo which is probably even better than Valley Grid - if they can't break it and then Caprice or a Nisei token ends the run, they are 100% locked out of that server for the rest of the turn, and my agenda is safe. I may eventually have to cut it, but at 2 credits its too good to not give a good try,

I second the JH call. It'll save you from flood, and from Noise, and let you recycle your economy operations or trashed Niseis. The draw effect is almost secondary, but it will also help you at times.

This is just spitballing, but would it be worth putting in a single Ronin? I'm envisioning you get it up to 4 advancements, and then Biotic, trigger Ronin, and flip your ID to (hopefully) flatline. Or, Biotic, flip to advance 4 times, then trigger it. I'm not sold in the idea, just throwing it out there.

@AKirkland sigh ... I'll try JH sometime. Can't there be a deck that is better without him? :P I mean, I know he is awesome and goes in nearly every deck I make, just if any deck is gonna be fine without him, it's a rush deck like this.

Ronin is an interesting idea. If I find I can reliably get my remote set up, I may be able to put Ronin in there then prep to kill the runner by advancing him up etc while they can do little to stop me. Definitely worth experimenting with if the general concept seems viable.

Heh, yeah I totally feel you on wanting to resist JH, but I think there's a time and a place for Netrunner hipsterism, and Our Lord Howard is not that place. You may not need a full set though, 2 should be enough.

It looks like an awesome deck, I hope it works. There are a lot of scary runner archetypes you have to be able to beat, but I think this could make it. One other thing I would suggest is a third Celebrity Gift - I know the ice is fairly cheap and all, but 8 economy cards just doesn't feel right. Not sure what to cut, though.

@Dydra dude, flatline due to negative handsize is well known. not sure why you get so worked up over basically your own ignorance.

Why shouldn't it be able to kill the runner? What reason do you have for saying that?

If the runner's grip represents their mental energy, or brainpower, or however you want to see it, having less than 0 of that stuff sounds pretty lethal to me.

@Dydra Don't worry, setting up a lethal condition using Valley Grid is damned hard. It's a good card, but plenty of ways for the runner to work around it (unless you've already got a stack of brain damage I guess...).

@Dydra Yep, it's gonna be a blast of a card to play with as Jinteki, have fun :D

ps. I saw a pretty scary looking HB deck using it too that you might enjoy, I think by CodeMarvelous, ah here it is netrunnerdb.com

"...represents their mental energy, or brainpower, or however you want to see it, having less than 0 of that stuff sounds pretty lethal to me." I don't know man... I work with some people that have 0 of the stuff and they seem to do pretty well for themselves.

This is almost identical to the deck I sleeved last night to test today... Heh, I'll let you know how it goes :)

@pillowdemon hey dude, I'm not bothered by anything Dydra said, could you please dial it back a bit?

@PaxCecilia cool! I'd love to hear how it goes.

Me and a friend were talking about Valley Grid last night, and using a suite of rush deck ice to stack up on a server with it. Really love that someone has already built a deck list for this! :D Will definitely be giving this a go when I get my hands on VG! Keep up the jank!

@thecodetroll Yep, I thought other jank players would think of it too. I knew I had to get my list up quick or someone else would beat me too it! I'd love to hear how it goes for you :)

Almost died three times to this deck during (extremely bad play) casual Netrunner tonight. I'm imagining this in a Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded could turn very ugly very fast.

It seems like Guard is super useful in this deck - why only one? Also, did you consider Datapike?

Never mind on Datapike. Misremembered the card.

@ggDropbear It was some fun games. My favourite was when you ran two different Valley Grid servers and accidentally went down to hand size of 1. Lucky for you I wasn't running The Brewery flip that game!

@Wookiee Good call on Guard. I was scared off it by the 4 rez cost / 1 credit to break, but it was really good in playtesting. So I might reduce Enigmas and increase copies of Guard.

What about Shell Corp? Big remote with Edge Protection screams Shell. ;)

@Dydra, I don't think Beach Party (which I assume is the neutral resource you were talking about - +5 hand size) really kills this deck, since it requires losing a click each turn, which makes the Niseis (both Nisei MK II and Caprice Nisei) cost 1/3 of the runner's available clicks--and of course, it can be trashed, as a resource. But if this sort of deck makes things like that, or Public Sympathy more common, that'll be a fascinating meta shift.

@Ber, This looks like a really fun deck. I've been playing with similar things waiting for Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded to come out, but I had not thought of the Nisei synergy, or the Jinteki Biotech: Life Imagined option. Have you thought about including Chairman Hiro? Rez him at the end of the runner turn (or even better, after they run him through Excalibur and you end the run anyway) for a free 2 hand size reduction.

I really like this, but what would you do about Parasite recursion? Almost all of your ice folds instantly to it, and then no Valley trigger :(

@Comfect I agree, Valley Grid is going to be awesome in HB brain damage decks too. Chairman Hiro could be pretty interesting with The Brewery flip. You could probably put him in a server with Valley Grid to engineer lose/lose situations where if they run they're gonna be on negative handsize from VG, and if they don't you'll use Hiro, and then flatline next turn.

@bw Hopefully the high number of ice in the deck can help with that. And some ice doesn't fold too quickly to parasite. But you're right, parasite recursion would be pretty nasty. Changing some of the ice to Cortex Lock, Lotus Field, and Guard would be a good way to combat Parasite recursion.

@eulennatzer Well I think you've identified good reasons why this deck would be good for Shell Corp, but I'm not sure if Shell Corp would be good for this deck. Because the deck needs to keep up a very fast pace all game long, and Shell Corp is a pretty slow card in my experience.

@Dydra how did you feel Gyri Labyrinth held up? @Ber and i went back and forth a lot on our two decks and i found it to be very hard to play with despite how good it looks on paper it looked great on paper... id love to hear how you set it up and weather it hurt you early game (thats what i was finding) thanks...

ps great job @ber... this plays great!!! thanks

@Dydra to me it seems like there are basically 2 archtypes of Jinteki Biotech. This one feels very much like Supermodernism. You want to score as fast as possible and win very fast. Actually tinkering with the decklist I don't even know if you want to play Neural EMPs, because I would usually go for the Greenhouse. Greenhouse can threaten to either instant score a 4-2 agenda or go from no advance to 3 agenda points which is a huge threat for the runner. Once you get your scoring remote online the runner basically can only win by fishing agendas from RnD and HQ, because you can not run the remote twice.

The Chairman Hiro / Gyri approach is a totally different one in my opinion. You try to setup a possible combo kill with the Brewery. (I didn't test that one out, yet)

Overall I think Biotech is a very very strong ID. I was really surprised how much pressure you can apply with Biotech and The Valley.

Thanks @Dydra, those are a lot of the plays I thought of, but pulling it off was not easy... Regardless thanks for sharing, maybe I'll give it another shot

I just had a stroke of genius. Grail Ice!

What do you think?

@eulennatzer Grail ice .. yes an interesting idea :) Lancelot and Galahad have good subroutines for this deck, and Excalibur has an OK synergy with them.

A few issues to overcome - gotta find the influence, and individually Galahad and Lancelot are not better than no-inf options. Also, as a rush deck with no JH it might not see many grail ice before a game is over, or may find HQ squeezed to hold everything.

Merlin is not great, because the net damage is an anti-synergy with Valley Grid, and the rez cost is high, so I don't think I'd use it.

All that said, Galahad is a good gearcheck alone, and Lancelot is good stacked with any other EtR ice, and less parasite-prone than Rototurret. I think it'd be a variant that someone could try out :)

Have you considered Viktor 1.0? I used him in a similar deck and he does great work. Cheap as hell and synergises very well with Valley Grid.

Overall after a lot of tinkering this build seems to be really the one to go for. Maybe squeeze in some Jacksons and some Melanges. The Edge never hit anything for me.

By the way did anyone see how stupidly good Caprice and The Valley seems to be with Hudson 1.0?

I like this deck a lot, I'm going to have to try it out. There are a lot of invisible benefits to decks like this (and Jinteki decks in general) that would be supported with Hiro and Gyri labyrinth, and that's just to make the runner make hard choices all game. The more of those you set up, the more mistakes they're going to make, and in a tournament setting where you've been playing all day, those choices just get worse and worse.

@lolpaca Yep I sure have, Viktor 1.0 goes great with Valley Grid. The only reason he isn't in here is I couldn't afford the influence for him. But I think there is a really good HB Valley Grid deck, like CodeMarvelous's The Labyrinth of Consciousness, and Viktor 1.0 will go great in there.

I really like this deck! Surprised at how good this identity is looking to be. I wasn't sure what kinds of decks I was going to see when this pack was finally released.

The only part of this deck that worries me is that (as a few users have already pointed out) it seems very vulnerable to ice-trashing from anarchs (or even shapers that are recurring parasites). Especially since Hivemind/Progenitor decks can trash ice a whole lot faster than corp can usually purge.

Lotus's would definitely be good additions here.

@backstagehands Yeah I have come to agree about Lotus Field. I didn't want to go to ice that expensive, but its worth it in this case. I recently made the following changes: -3 Enigma, -1 Himitsu-Bako, +2 Cortex Lock, +2 Lotus Field. So far I like them. Lotus Field is really solid on a remote and OK on a central. Cortex Lock is very good on a central in early game. Both improve the deck's resilience to parasite spam.

@Dydra In the first instance of your example, I don't believe a kill would not be possible. If the runner only runs into Gyri Labyrinth once, they end their turn with a max hand size of three cards. When you rez Chairman Hiro on your turn (unless I've totally overlooked a rule or ruling) their hand size will not change since it is in the Runner's discard phase when they must meet the max hand size requirement. Of course, if the runner ran twice...kill away!

EDIT: "... I don't believe a kill would be possible. If the runner..."

@Callisto The way to use Chairman Hiro is to rez him in the action window after the runner's 4th click, before their discard phase. That way the reduction in hand size is applied immediately for that end of turn phase.

@Ber Think that Labyrinthine Servers or Fetal AI have a place in a deck like this? Running down a 3-deep server, getting hit by Valley Grid, and taking 2 net damage puts them in a place to be hurting. With the former, not sure if it'd be worth it to have the option to force them to finish that run. Have you seen runners jacking out on the valley grid server?

The problem that's not entirely obvious is that Net damage is effectively useless after hand size. If your hand size is 2, and you have 5 cards, 2 net damage is just discarding them a couple clicks earlier. I was running against a Valley Grid deck, and would take whatever net damage I had to, because it didn't really matter.

Ah, you're totally right. Never mind on Fetal then, that makes sense.

I used this deck last night and totally didn't realize how Valley Grid worked. That thing fires every time a runner breaks the ice. Otherwise, it worked great scoring things behind a Guard. Take that, Inside Job!

I really like the idea of the deck. I am wondering if Ash might be a good addition (due to being more reliable than Caprice), though I don't know what could be dropped for it. And have you thought about RSVP in combination with Caprice?

I also feel that the Greenhouse is much stronger with this deck, the threat of the Brewery is enough most of the time.

I might be an idiot newb here but if you hit Valley Grid and Edge of World in a 3 deep server, assuming you have 5 cards and a hand size of 5, won't you take thee brain damage (reducing you to 2 cards) and reduce your maximum hand size to 2? So you get to keep your 2 cards and not get "killed"

Brain damage also reduces your maximum hand size as well as doing damage (that's why it's both nastier and generally harder to land than meat or net damage). So the Valley Grid has reduced your handsize to 2, and the brain damage reduces it further to -1--thus you'll die at the end of your turn.

Sweet. Thanks for the explanation.

This deck gets absolutely smashed by Medium

@fetish Yeah there are archetypes that are gonna beat this for sure. There is so much end the run ice in here though, how are they getting through all of it to make Medium runs?

@ber I find that 2-strength ETR's aren't exactly reliable at Ending the Run, since many modern runner decks get their rig up pretty quickly.