Labyrinthine Servers

Labyrinthine Servers 5/3

Agenda: Security

Place 2 power counters on Labyrinthine Servers when you score it.

Hosted power counter: Prevent the Runner from jacking out. The Runner cannot jack out for the remainder of this run.

Illustrated by Lili Ibrahim
Decklists with this card

Up and Over (uao)

#63 • English
Startup Card Pool
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Up and Over
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Reviews

I'm from the future. I've traveled back in time to warn you - Beware this card! Beware Mars!

AgInfusion.

You don't yet know it, but you will. It's everywhere. It's the Jinteki identity from Red Sands. It lets you move the runner to be running on new servers, mid-run. It seemed harmless at first. Janky even! Throwing away ice to shift run targets? Pure silliness!

But then corps began to realize. Traps. 3-advanced Project Junebugs can easily end a game. And there are worse things than Junebug. All you need is a way to keep the runner form jacking out. Whirlpool was the obvious go-to, followed by Port Anson Grid. And then people remembered that this poor, mocked, forgotten card existed.

And now, in my time, Mushin No Shin'd traps are eveywhere. And once the corp scores one of these, it is no longer safe to make a run against servers with unrezzed ice. Not without the protection of Employee Strike.

Beware! Sleeve up your Exploratory Romps! Dark days are coming!

(Intervention era)
756
In the slightly further future, everyone still plays NBN anyway. —
With the majority of the Red Sands out (or spoiled). This is an actual viable option for Jinteki. Sure it requires nerves of steel to bluff out a 5/3, but the mere existence of this cards can cause lots of headaches when playing against AGInfusion. —

The Anti-Nisei MK II. The Whirlpool-on-demand. This agenda is fantastic for psychological deterrence and punishing miscalculations and misreads - but you have to build around it and you have to score it.

IAA plays are typically pretty good for Jinteki decks. They'll be always thinking Project Junebug - and if you're running this agenda, they'll be right. Cerebral Overwriter, Shattered Remains, that idiotic Komainu-Lockdown-Cell Portal loop everyone dreams of landing. Once you score this, Watson, the game is afoot.

An interesting combo that seems anti-synergistic at first is with a couple of scored Ancestral Imagers. Every action window on a run becomes a tense staredown as they pass your Chum and then look at your scored no-jack-out tokens. But they have to decide first. Jack out and take a net damage or two? Or continue knowing you might spend a token?

It's never going to be Tier 1 - the self-protecting The Future Perfect is the reigning king of Jinteki 5/3s for a reason. But if you like Jinteki mind games, this agenda warrants some consideration.

(Data and Destiny era)
Labyrinthine and Ancestral Imager are both cards introduced to strengthen the oft-bemoaned positional ICE. I agree that there's synergy between the two for that reason, as they both discourage the runner from jacking out. Chum is the obvious beneficiary here, but other shout-outs go to TL;DR, Vikram 1.0, and possibly Marker. —