Mitosis

Mitosis

Pros:

  • This looks like a remarkably good accelerant for Jinteki. For 2 actions and $3 you get 10 basic clicks worth of value (2 installs, 4 advancements).
  • Most runners can check a card with 2-3 tokens in the current cardpool without getting immediately vaporized, so the decision-making and consequences might be more interesting than with Mushin No Shin.

Cons:

  • Jinteki's cardpool is still worse than Adam's.
  • Advanceable traps benefit most from this card, but adding advanceable traps to your deck tends to reduce tempo and increase vulnerability on central servers.
  • Doesn't work very efficiently with non-advanceable traps like Snare.
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"Doesn't work very efficiently with non-advanceable traps like Snare."

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"Doesn't work very efficiently with non-advanceable traps like Snare."

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If a Snare! triggers from R+D, it didn't cost you any clicks or draws. If it triggers from HQ, it didn't cost you any clicks but you did have to get it into your hand. If it triggers installed, you've now invested both a draw and a click into it. With Mitosis you're investing multiple draws and a click and some extra money.

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In order to cope with non-advanceable assets and missed traps, and wasted advancements in general, I present you my dear friend Trick of Light

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Mitosis Snare: I'm investing multiple draws and a click and some extra money, in the hopes that I can later on invest another card and MORE money to Trick of Light a 3/2 out of hand? Oof. Using Mitosis directly on the card you want to score is a lot more efficient. If you're trying to score something out of hand, everybody else has much better options than Jinteki does, and also more money to pull it off.

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(Also, if you're thinking of scoring agendas out of hand, everybody else has higher-impact 3/2 agendas than Jinteki does, and Jinteki's kind of weak at 2/1 as well).

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Envelopment

Envelopment

Paperclip can trash this unassisted for $4. If your gameplan generates a huge amount of value from trashing your own cards, cool. If not, drawing this card is probably worse than clicking for a credit. The fair market price for a card which drains $4 from the Runner one time is zero credits. So, if you're not playing Envelopment hoping to getting it trashed, this is not the ice for you.

In Ob, this looks very playable. The turn it’s rezzed, the runner can trash it for $4, beat it without trashing it for $5, or let it end the run. If you haven’t fired Ob yet this turn, Envelopment is a bit more efficient than Fire Wall. If you have already fired Ob, the runner will easily trash this for $4 and you’re losing the exchange. In Ob you’re building around a ID ability which can only be fired once per turn, I think this ice will probably be less reliable than it looks.

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It does seem like the obvious intended interaction is with Om, which can immediately install a 4 cost card and rez it for free.

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Yeah, for Om, Weyland has many good $4 ice. Border Control (another self-trash card) and Mausolus are monsters and maybe a surprise Winchester.

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Maybe Echo Chamber if it's last click, though you aren't firing Ob off it.

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Just imagine how hilarious Street Magic would be

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I usually break all the subroutines because their $4 cards look better than Envelopment

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Stavka

Stavka

This looks very strong. A 7-strength, $4 sentry will surprise a lot of runners and it looks to be the most reliable program-destruction printed in a long time.

Major matchups

  • It ruins Aumakua. There are not many ice which can surprise a 5-6 strength turtle and Stavka's the most broadly useful in its price range. Turtle decks tend to run rather adventurously and you will find opportunities to destroy them.
  • Against MKUltra, it's reasonable value-over-time. It costs you $4 and usually costs them $3 to break. And maybe you snipe like a Botulus or Fermenter on first encounter.
  • It produces very little value-over-time against Bukhgalter, Echelon and Na'Not'k. I'd suggest waiting on the rez as long as it takes to find a window where they'll be unable to break the subroutines.
  • A runner exploring with Engolo will have a very bad time.

Stavka's value is heavily short-term, so you may find experimental uses for it with Nanisivik or (!?) ZATO City.

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The card's power level is reasonable, but I think the card will be unfun. Losing 2 icebreakers (or economic programs) is unusually severe punishment on an ice which will usually be a 7-strength sentry on facecheck. In the spirit of not having a game end because you already discarded a backup breaker or you're in a mini-faction that can't reasonably stock multiple copies of breakers/recursion or are just sick of conspiracy breakers, I'd suggest giving the runner a costly option to prevent the program from being trashed.

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I think that you have in each faction something to face this. In criminal bypasses, boomerangs. In shaper you have simulchip by default (and now a boat). In anarch you have bin breakers and botulus. It's definetly something to take into account.

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I think the real lesson here is that maybe runners SHOULDN'T discard their backup breakers. Rigs are a lot less safe these days, and runners should probably play as though they will need to replace some breakers at some point during the game. Whether that means stocking up on simulchips or just keeping backups in hand, program destruction is a thing that is going to happen sometimes.

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I agree with the two above me, Stavka is good, but not OP

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I agree with the two above me, Stavka is good, but not OP. If you're going to lose the game cause you get a program trashed then you aren't playing well. Redundancy is key ;)

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I don't think it's overpowered/underpriced, or that it's exceptionally hard to prevent it from landing, but it is unusually severe when it lands. "If you're going to lose the game cause you get a program trashed then you aren't playing well" - redundancy comes at some cost, and it's a higher cost for some factions. Take Adam, for example. He's desperately low on influence and often has only 1x of each breaker and probably less recursion than most. But, I think for most runners not on conspiracy breakers, losing 2 programs is a major setback even if you have a replacement for one of them in hand. If you're trying to find 1-2 remaining copies or a Simulchip from your deck, that'll probably take 10+ draws.

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Bathynomus

Bathynomus

Bathynomus does quite well against a popular killer (MKUltra) and is okay against most breakers on Archives, which could help on maybe 3-4 runs most games. It also fares reasonably well as an early draw against Aumakua decks but produces little value over time against Bukhgalter. If you find yourself frequently needing early Archives protection, which is rare, this is reasonable at $3. Off of archives, it usually has an impact of $0-1 except against MKUltra. Considering how little value ice on Archives usually produce, I think a fair rez price would be closer to $1 for an ice which is only semi-viable on Archives and nowhere else.

How does it do off-Archives? Most breakers besides MKUltra get through it for $0-1 off-Archives, which is so inexplicably bad for a $3 ice (or even a $0 ice) that rezzing it non-Archives gives the runner useful information about how desperate your draw has been. (On another central server, it suggests your draw has been starved for ice, which reduces the deterrent value of ice for your early game*. A remote Bathynomus suggests a lack of ice or possibly an exotic ZATO). Most other factions shy away from cards which are so bad that using them indicates you are in an existential panic. In Jinteki, you might not have a choice.

Unfrequently asked questions

Why would showing this card off-Archives weaken my position elsewhere? If I've drawn so few ice that I have to rez a Bathynomus off-Archives, I'm showing very low confidence in my ice draw, and the next ice I install will probably be whatever I draw next even if it's situationally terrible. It might be an ice I can't afford yet, a Bran that I don't particularly want to rez right now because it'd bankrupt me for too little short-term value, or a low-impact ice like Aiki on remote. In a situation like this, there's an above-average chance that the corp is not willing or able to rez that ice right now (or that it's unusually low-impact in its position) and that the runner can be more adventurous until they've seen otherwise. In contrast, if I lead with 2-3 ice early or if you access multiple ice from HQ, my installed ice are probably closer to what I was looking for rather than desperation installs.

Is Bathynomus an unusually terrible card? Not compared to most Jinteki cards, arguably. The worst 5 cards in a 2023 Jinteki deck will range from "how did something better NOT get printed?" up to "legit, is our card-pool actually worse than Adam's right now?" Depending on how worried you are that the ice is tied almost exclusively to the least important central server and not even all THAT good at defending it, this feels more like the second than the first.

Why no Aikis on remote? Remote server runs access cards which the corp has already paid to draw and install and also are more likely to be agendas. Aiki doesn't produce enough pain to create scoring windows on remote or adequately protect early assets. If you install a Rashida and they let Aiki fire, you're probably losing more from Rashida getting trashed than they are from Aiki's subroutines. If the run to trash Rashida was on R+D instead, I think you're probably ahead on the exchange with Aiki firing. (You have invested fewer resources into an R+D Rashida than one that you've drawn and installed).

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Marrow

Marrow

Spoilers plus Brain Cage in a 1MU console. This is priced like +2 hand size and/or 1-2 sabotages are a major benefit. Unless some crazy synergies get printed around brain damage or trashing your own cards at random, this looks kinda lousy for a console.

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Feels like it's meant to combo with Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist, but yeah, I'd rather have a Brain Cage too. Maybe Esa wants both?

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Yeah, if you're ALL IN on Esa and think the game will go like 8+ turns, having both Brain Cage and Marrow feels like it might work. I don't have a good handle on how many Esa triggers I should be aiming for. Most brain damage cards aren't exceptionally good.

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Marrow, Brain Cage, Light the Fire!, Running Hot. Is anything else worth considering? Is anything else even still legal?

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Ah... Begemot and Ghosttongue. Hrm.

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Definitely feels like I'm slotting mediocre cards just to trigger Esâ. I don't want any of those cards in my deck except LtF.

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Ghosttongue looks excellent. Light the Fire is a lot of work if you're mainly using it for 2 sabotage. If you're not getting a lot of value out of trashing all of the cards in a server, Chastushka feels more efficient if you can swing a run on HQ.

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It's super early but my hunch is that Esa's highest and best use is adding 6-10 sabotage onto an Augustina deck. I don't think these 6-10 need to happen early and it's okay if it takes a while to find the cards that cause them.

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Okay, I've come around. I was testing an Esa virus deck and I think you got it exactly right. Sabotage starts out just okay, but the 16th sabotage is worth a whole lot more than the first.

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I'm testing in Startup and it's quite powerful. I'm not generally sold on Ghosttongue, which seems like a worse Prepaid VoicePAD, but in Esa, definitely. And Begemot is a beast, especially with Pelangi... more synergy with Avgustina Ivanovskaya and The Nihilist.

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