MURDERFACE MURDERFACE MURDERFACE v1.0

What's this?! A deck I've ACTUALLY TESTED.

I've been struggling a bit with enthusiasm on the corp side of things since my Cybernetics deck got repeatedly and comprehensively battered by anyone with a pulse. So I turned to my old luvver, Jinteki.

Initially I played around with a PE deck, but then I switched my attention to Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions, and boy am I glad I did.

Anarchs are everywhere in the London casual meta at the moment, and IG murders Anarchs. Hard. With extreme prejudice.

You can play the deck two ways, depending on how your opponent is running. There is some general strategy that applies to both that I will go over first.

General

• Be flexible and sparse with your ICE. There is more ICE in here than your standard Cambridge package. I know a lot of people favour 6-8 pieces, but that's flying far too close to the ground for me. Somewhere between 9-11 gives me enough ICE out early for comfort without taking up too much deck space. Work out what type of runner you're playing. If you're up against an Anarch, slap down a Cortex Lock over HQ or R&D; Lotus Field is for remotes you really want to protect (perhaps the 5/3 for the win). Kitsune is obviously great in combo with Snare! and can be a good remote protector too (what if that's a Fetal AI??). Viktor 2.0 is in as a bit of a surprise for runners expecting an early Eli 1.0.

• Ideally you want an early Hostile Infrastructure. Two is even better. Rez it alongside Kitsune and watch in amusement as your opponent accesses a Snare! that they can't trash.

• Hokusai Grid goes on whichever server they are running often. If you suspect Keyhole/Eater shenanigans then it goes on R&D. It's another good protector for a remote that might contain a Fetal.

Anyway, on to the different tactics.

Method One

If the runner is being cautious about unadvanced remotes for fear of net damage, or they're running a solitaire deck like Noiseshop, install a 3/2 along with one or two other simultaneous remotes in a turn and then just score out the next turn. I like this tactic in IG more than any other corp because having to discard at the end of the turn actually benefits you. You'll rarely see more than three pieces of ICE go down in a game, so ICE you don't need is a good candidate for dumping.

Get to 4 points in this manner and then try and score out a The Future Perfect for the win. I try and install alongside a Ronin and then double advance the Ronin. It's game point so they'll run the advanced card, see it's a Ronin and hopefully back off, giving you the window to score. Alternatively ICE it and try and bait them in to a run which will kill them.

If the runner is being shy on remotes use your Sundews for their intended purpose and get dat paper.

Method Two

The patented MURDERFACE technique of just killing everyone. Doesn't work very well against Shapers.

Be aggressive. Bait the runner in to making mistakes and punish them for it mercilessly. Be the Jinteki you were born to be.

Keep your Hostile Infrastrusctures up. Dump cards in to Archives as often as possible to make things even more untrashable. If you're feeling ballsy use Power Shutdown when they don't have anything installed.

Basically, the world is your oyster. However, Cortex Lock is your best friend here.

For some reason almost everyone I've played against with this deck things running Jinteki aggressively is a good idea, and boy does Cortex Lock punish them for their hubris. The deck is 5-1 in testing so far and 4 of those wins can be directly attributed to Cortex Lock. Anarchs forget it exists. It's out of basic Mimic range. What more do you need? Of the 4 wins it gave me 3 were flatlined Anarchs. The other was against a bizarrely aggressive Silhouette who ran turn 3 without breakers and never recovered.

Sundew is super bait here. Put one down early when the runner thinks it will be easy to trash and then stick a Cortex Lock in front. Thanks for playing.

Issues

The deck, and IG in general, HATES Silhouette when played properly. Sure enough the rematch against the unfortunate player mentioned earlier was not a barrel of laughs for me. It's still not worth including a Zaibatsu Loyalty though.

It's a bit slow econ wise, but one of the great things about IG is that clicking for 3 creds often isn't a terrible turn. A fair deal of the stuff you want to Rez is 3 or cheaper, and it can usually bring you back to Snare! range. Plus you get to dump a card in to the bin to make stuff more expensive to trash! I'd like to get Celebrity Gift in here as another econ card but I'm not sure what gets cut.

Potential Changes

• Shi.Kyū could go in here if you can find the room, though it can be an expensive card to pop.

• With the exception of Cortex Lock the ICE suite is fairly flexible to your own tastes.

• For those of the Bioroid persuasion, you could switch out Red Herrings for Ash 2X3ZB9CY, but personally I think 2 net damage and 7 for a Fetal AI is much funnier.