Tower of Pain

This is my evolved version of a 7th place Durham, NC Regionals (and top Jinteki) deck. It won me 2nd in a recent store tournament. It's competitive and, piloted right, very very consistent.

Economy FTW

The big difference between this deck and medioxcore's Tower of Defense is settling for Bastions instead of Eli 1.0 so I can afford GRNDL Refinery. It's a super versatile econ card that's perfect for this ID: if your runner isn't checking remotes because they're bored with finding more econ assets, install it unprotected. It can pop you from 2 to 8 credits in a pinch or you can advance twice and protect to gain 16 next turn (or ICE, Ash, and advance once- even better). If you have a scoring server, throw it onto your Ash or Caprice and grab 16+ creds off of it. It's polite and gets out of the way for the sundew or agenda you want to put in its place next. You can also keep a slow burn of advancement tokens accumulating on it to confuse the runner- very fun if they think it's a trap and suddenly you grab 24 creds.

This brings me to Sundew. Word's gotten out how powerful it is in RP and most runners will really want to trash it when they see it. Ash 2X3ZB9CY is the perfect antidote to this troublesome behavior. A Bastion or even a Pup plus Ash means the runner is spending two clicks and 7 - 8 creds to trash the sundew in the early game, which cost you a click to install. In the late game it can easily take them two 10+ credit runs to trash the 'dew, which is making you a clickless 2 creds all the while. If they do happen to trash it throw a GRNDL or another sundew right in there and add another piece of ice. You're golden- they're not making it back in any time soon. Scoring position for this identity is 15-30 credits, depending on how much ice you have rezzed already. Which brings me to:

ICE

MVP is definitely Tollbooth. I wish I could have 3. In fact, that's a common use of Interns: reinstalling Tollbooths that got trashed somehow.

Start slow

Above I mentioned that you shouldn't even really think of scoring until you've iced centrals, have a protected economy, and have 15-30 creds. This deck really wants you to have centrals iced early. Chill out and click for credits if you have to- make sure you can get that ice installed and rezed. Preferably with ETR ice innermost and the nasty sentries or code gates that don't just ETR as outermost. You need there to be more than a click tax for the runner to come over and trash your Mental Health Clinics. The biggest thing that will lose games for you is rushing to get econ or agendas set up. Patience. Don't fear the runner scoring. Most of your agendas are hard for them to score or hurt them. An early NAPD Contract score can put you way ahead.

Draw first click a lot once you have a slight surplus of money over ice rez cost. You'll often only have 2 or 3 pieces of ICE when you hit your first Jackson Howard. Install him and use him to dig for the others, as soon as you have money to install and rez them. You want to be 2x deep on the centrals, and preferably install another nasty sentry on the outside any time you rez something. Pups and Yaguras are amazing both early and late game: they cost the runner more than they cost you, which makes the math work on this deck.

Midgame: Get ready to strike

Once your centrals are iced you're solidly in midgame. This should be turn 3-5. Mental Healths are the safest to get started with as remotes, saving sundews for a more complicated multi-turn setup. At this point, that runner should be panicking and setting up their rig, taking the temp hit that they'll never recover from.

Gifts

Celebrity Gift\s are a great way to show off a snare or be able to rez tollbooth turn one if you suspect Siphon. I don't worry too much about showing agendas- all i really want for myself is two Niseis and a Future Perfect. My ideal world is the runner scoring 3 NAPDs while my severs become impenetrable. Against andy or any runner who I know has Siphon I'm happy to leave R&D undefended turn one and Celeb > install Tollbooth. Better to do it turn two when R&D is safe but I'll take what I can get.

Pain

There's not much pain in here for Jinteki but a lot compared to most RP decks. Snare!, Tsurugi, Komainu, Fetal AI and, to a lesser extent, Pup and Yagura are where you do damage. Snare really is a great card here. In a recent tournament I had a runner almost flatline on turn 2 with a Legwork-interface grab, seeing 4 of 5 cards. He had two cards in hand after taking Fetal damage and the only card he didn't see was a snare, instead taking 6 points. I was able to come back and win, though, from the tempo hit he took from the Fetal he did see.

The impenetrable Server

Over time, get your Sundews onto Ashes in a 2-4 deep server. Susanoo-No-Mikoto is great for this one (except for Knight players- damn you knight!). This mega server is where you'll score the Nisei MK II and where you'll put Caprice Nisei. Possible exception of needing Caprice on HQ or R&D to stop event based shenanigans from Criminals or Shapers, respectively.

Ash + Caprice on the same tower server is devastating. With a Nisei token scored you can often be in a position where you know the runner cant' possibly win before you score that Future Perfect. You want the game to turn into math, and the numbers to come out in your favor. Once you're set up it only takes 4-6 turns to score your three agendas. And that's if you haven't been able to squeeze any through ahead of time.

Agendas

Don't be afraid to treat NAPDs like trash. You have Jackson, but sometimes you might choose to let the runner get an NAPD as their first agenda and jackson some econ back instead. You have to score 3 agendas, while the runner (usually) needs 4. Obviously alter this strategy if they score a The Future Perfect that's bad news for you.

The Niseis are the first thing you want to score. but don't rush. Get that math working in your favor first or the tempo hit can doom you.

If you're ahead tempo-wise, Interning a Nisei out of a Jackson-protexted Archives and advancing once to setup the first score is a thing of beauty. You'll be so focused on getting ice in the beginning (and jacksoning for these pieces) that you'll be very likely to have an interns in hand when you're ready to score. That one of is a great include. If you don't need it for agendas, pull out a sundew or GRNDL into a protected server as needed. It's #2 on the Jackson-recursion list after other Jacksons.

Weaknesses

Decks I've noticed that can trounce me:

• A poorly managed Siphon Spam Gabe or Andy. One game recently I never got above 5 creds. That doesn't work. Remember that Desperado effectively lets them trash for one less, which means taxing (damage or tollbooth) exterior ice on centrals is crucial.
• PPVP Kate with Lucky Finds etc. She's so rich it's hard to keep her out enough. Parasite can be particularly devastating. Also, as I learned, Don't trash femmed ICE- just keep making the tower. Kate likes to Scavenge a lot and she has to un-femme to femme.
• Big Rig Shaper in general. Morningstar crushes Bastion, Torch and/or Femme kills Tollbooth. The sentries are really the only thing that taxes them. If they Parasite things too you're hurting pretty bad. My advice in this case: Tower R&D and rush best you can.

Parasite recursion is a problem but not that bad if you keep 2x+ ice on all servers- it's hard for them to get sucker tokens for instakills. Komainu still dies to Grimoire every time though :|

Finally, a big weakness for this deck in tournament play is game length. In the cut to top rounds it can be more likely to go to time. Be decisive and know what you're doing and this is less of a problem. You may have to take more risks in a 35 minute half game than you would for a 70 minute match.

Sorry for the ramble. That's my strategy dump for the deck. I've always loved Jinteki but was never good at playing PE. RP is my thing now: set up, control the game, and win with high certainty. Big thanks to @mediohxcore for kicking off the idea.