HB Brainbuster -The Purple Jinteki - update

x3r0h0ur 8969

Intro:

People have been asking me to see if any H&P cards would update this build so here's my immediate thoughts on that. 5 games later I'm very happy with the improvements.

I feel like once Brainbuster was out there, it became slightly less viable. I had to come up with a way to reverse how knowledge of the deck composition hurt the build.

Progression:

I've been playing Red Coats and I did okay with it, but I still felt like if I was putting something into a remote and advancing it, I was never quite sure if the runner had tricks to get in (stimhack, specialty breaker, etc). It made me long for more than the 1 of aggsec in the deck (old habits die hard). The great thing too is this can kind of masquerade as Red Coats up front, which will lead people to face check to keep the cash down, and stick a fenris (which isn't in Red Coats). Thank the FSM for shifting metas!

So I'm inspired to bring some of the 'big boy ice' into the advanceable archetype. Having tested it a little with junebug and snare, I found that people just would stop running remotes after 1-2 brain damage out of fear of junebugs spotted from R&D, and the traps went to waste.

Clarity:

This lead me to think...if they refuse to run advanced cards, what are my options? There is always put agendas in, but expose takes care of that, and that's always an answer. Haas, but that's hardly worth my time. GRNDL is too much to splash. Trick of light, but that's too slow...what is like trick of light, and in HB? Haas Arcology!

This was a moment of clarity to me. You can still tax the runner by dragging them down your remote to trash it, it works off of the trap style, and can lie in wait while you draw your 3/2s while bluffing a failed CO. If it shows up before any other brain damage, it programs the runner to run on advanced cards. It answers a problem this deck had with scoring the last 2 points after the runnner's rig was up. It is a beautiful addition that I'd like to see maybe a 3 of...

Outro:

The changes made do turn off never advance punish, short of taxing the runner down the remote to trash assets. RIP EoW.

Inazuma can stick you a second fenris, or if you're rich out of control, maybe even slam a full heimdall 2.0! It's even more gross with ichis, and is still effective as a second breaker check on central ice. Also it sucks ass to break with anything other than yog + 2 suckers.

Variation:

I can easily see this sticking to the redcoats style and run 3x tollbooth instead of the inazumas, but I'm not so sure the deck supports it. YMMV.

Post Scriptum:

2x Tori Hanzo triggering off a scored SDP is a pipe dream for the Johnny in me, so that variant might be out there :P

3 comments
22 May 2014 GPWK

Ooh, I wish I'd seen this yesterday. I didn't bring my whole collection along today, or this is what I'd be running at my FLGS tonight.

28 May 2014 spaco

I like this a lot! What do you think about including Mushin No Shin in this deck?

28 May 2014 x3r0h0ur

Nah, you have to use the brain damage to get a flatline or else the brain damage is worthless, so to use mushin you'd have to get rid of some of the important moving parts.

I will offer this though, -3 EMP -1 toll booth +2 mushin +2 punitive might work, but that's so few ice.