Pay To Play

Overview

The concept is an extremely taxing shell gamesesque Jinteki deck. You run weak, taxing, potentially easy to get through ice, with a gameplan centered around making them too broke to run/break, which makes all the psi junk a lot more powerful and lets you score out while they're behind on econ.

It's basically an attempt at a netrunner tempo deck.

I've played it a little and really like the feel, to the point that it's probably one of my favorite decks. Although I think it's ultimately going to be casual only, I'd like some help tweaking it. Hell there's shades of greatness in the basic idea (psi ice is taxing as hell if you can get it to be relevant.)

ID

Barring a major change Palana is always going to be better than Nisei, even if you are running enough psi. I run a lot, but probably not enough, and don't have space to shoehorn in what's needed to make it work. Credits that I can use for anything are much more valuable than credits that I probably drop on games.

It's also worth mentioning that even if nisei was somehow better in games where the pis games triggered, you'd likely still be better off in palana which is going to be MUCH better in the "dig for pieces" combo runner decks that are everywhere.

Agendas

TFP/Fetal/NAPD

Inherently taxing. You will actually score fetal's.

Chronos/Neural Net

I like running a variety of 1 point agenda's when I need to, especially since Neural Net doesn't really stack as far as I know. Everyone and their mom is running a gazillion levy's so chronos becoming a 3 of is possible.

Clone Retirement

I hate Val with a likely unhealthy passion. I'm sure it won't even work and she'll top deck the stupid thing every match, but god do I hate val decks. Also you have a hard time scoring since this is one of the slowest agenda packages possible so being able to score from hand for the last point is nice. Could probably swap it out for something not silly since I run nisei which val hates as is.

Econ

Gift, hedge, ID, and windows. The windows and ID feel especially important as you just barely have enough money to stay in a strong position (enough to fire the psi games or bankrupt the runner).

Jank

Reversed Accounts:

I think this card is heavily underrated, although I can see why. It's got a VERY strict window where its good (early/mid game before the runner is going full econ engine), but it's just so damn good. I love throwing this in a scoring server with a few advancements, or as a mushin bluff that's left on the board. What they may think is a dead snare/june/overwriter is instead a potential 12-20+ credit hit waiting to go off, which is always relevant vs the previous ambushes or the very conditional ronin.

Judge

So in order for the deck to work I NEED to be able to land closed accounts (ok not need, but it's nice vs runaway's in the late game). Jinteki is really really bad at tagging, but putting judge in your scoring server to keep it warm while they power dig R&D is surprisingly effective. Watch them faceplant a snare, flip the judge, and bankrupt them next turn. Tag and trash is also the only way, currently, to deal with resources like film critic which just ruin the whole deck. Further you actually have to deal with judge once he's up, which promotes another dive through the scoring server, taxing them more.

He also makes mushining a snare much much better. Runners will usually just run everything you mushin while making sure they have another click to clear the tag and enough protection (cards usually) to survive if they're wrong. With judge in a server you can mushin out a snare, maybe even give it ice to look really serious, and then flip him on the tag and leave them in a horrible situation.

Other stuff

MY GOD HE RUNS 3 JACKSON AND 3 NISEI! DECK OF THE YEAR FOR INNOVATION!

ICE

Barriers

Wall of static because you need some hard ETR ice. Vanilla might work but I also hate parasite. Snowflake, like the rest of the PSI ice is actually obnoxiously taxing to get through and gives you options with Upayoga.

Code Gates

Everything here is obvious except Upayoga, which is arguably half of why this deck works. If they run through it you can force the runner to lose 4 if it puts them below an important threshold, play the 0/1 game, or just fire off another sub. Snowflake for the ETR, Chetana for the hand wipe OR the money gain. The second one is important if you've say, been siphoned, and are sitting on nothing and can't fire the nisei to keep them out. Remember you can give you and the runner money if you really need to.

If they break it it's obnoxiously expensive (4 for gordian blade!) and still in your favor. I usually put on on HQ, R&D, and my scoring server.

Sentry

Assassin should maybe be mamba for various reasons, but it's still a great facecheck.

Chetana is also a nasty facecheck and makes your upayoga's, but probably the most misused ice i've seen.

It's basically positional. If possible do NOT put it on the outside of a server, or if you do put it on a server put it on one they really don't want to run all the way through (HQ after a neural net for example). The obvious worry is that they can break half of it for money, but you gain on that deal (-1 to break the other sub and +2 on fire vs your +2 on fire). They just spent a click to gain 1 and give you 2. Yay?

Assuming instead you put it behind a pop up window, they literally gain nothing by letting the sub fire (-1 to break, -1 from popup, +2 from the sub), and you gain 3 for that run (+1 from pop up, +2 from the sub). I'll take that swing every time.

Things I should probably add

Any sort of resource punishment. ASI seems mandatory these days even if you don't autolose to film critic, so finding room for that instead of dying to resource spam is probably a good idea. Beyond that I'm all up for suggestions. Oh also i'm pretty sure I just lose to Ice destruction as parasite + cutlery destroys me.