37 Percent Evil Plans

Dropping just before Worlds 2016, Escalation introduces two interesting Jinteki cards (and a weird ID).

DNA Tracker is maybe the most taxing code gate in the game to date. Great stuff!

Project Kusanagi is basically a blank 2/0 agenda. Filler crap, right?

One will be the star in a lot of decks and heavily splashed.

Both are stars in this deck.

Welcome to the world of pain that is post-Escalation PE!

"I love the pace of Russian NEH but it just loses to R&D dig."

"Have you noticed that Criminals aren't playing much recursion beside Paperclip these days?"

"Temujin on Archives. Run, run, run."

"We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester. And certainly cyber is one of them."

If any of these are quotes you've heard in the past month, this is the deck for you.

Random net damage is very strong at the moment with most decks teching against Boom! and packing little recursion. Almost half of the cards in this deck deals one or more net damage when accessed from any zone other than Archives (a lot of them also damage from Archives), which slows the game down a lot. All the eighteen (yes, 18) agendas add to the constant stream of damage. Apart from being a flatline threat in itself, the net damage makes it hard for some decks to form a plans that span multiple clicks / cards.

We take advantage of the recursion part of Russian NEH to play Turtlebacks, Assembly Lines and Team Sponsorship. This is extra disgusting with six 2/x agendas. We don't run the fast advance parts of Russian NEH, instead we play an additional 9 agendas that can be never advanced. The guessing game gets real when you drop Project Kusanagi - House of Knives - Snare! on the same turn. Guessing correctly yields a whopping one agenda point and one net damage. Guessing wrong or taking no action is usually much more damaging.

To win, the runner often must steal five or more agendas. This leaves them vulnerable to our kill with Philotic Entanglement which we also can fire through 24/7 News Cycle. 24/7 can also be used on Chronos Project or House of Knives to gain extra benefit out of Project Kusanagi. It is very possible to also wear down runners with the combination of Chronos Project and constant net damage from almost any action that they take, even through Levy.

During testing, the deck is about 60-40 in flatlines vs scores in its victories. Archer (which is very affordable with Project Kusanagi and one-pointers) does a lot of work, especially when combined with the single Marcus Batty and can allow for a score-out. Same for sniping Paper Clip with one of the three Chronos Project and scoring out behind outside Ice + Vanilla vs Criminal.

I realize I haven't mentioned DNA Tracker yet. DNA Tracker.

I've iterated the list a lot in testing, trying out things like Profiteering (you really don't want bad pub), Dedicated Neural Net (does something fairly unimpressive sometimes) and different numbers on the ice / Sponsorships / Turtlebacks.

The cards that are most likely to be a meta call are Cyberdex Virus Suite, Hokusai Grid (mostly anti-Keyhole tech but not necessary a great one), Cortex Lock / Tsurugi and the amount of Psychic Fields (go up if you expect a lot of Obelus).

Shoutout to chex for tireless spectating like a true stalker and Sam Gullman for making me excited about PE again. Feedback is appreciated as always, and may all your Chronos Projects make your opponent sigh. Thanks for reading.