Untrashable v3

I've also been playing around with a similar deck and I am falling more in love with the Jinteki RP + Sundew engine the more games I play with it. Though I have been trying to fit more ETR ICE into the mix, specifically Ice Wall and utilizing it to help power Trick of Light combos.

I just feel like your inclusion of Closed Accounts is fueling your inclusion of Shadow (even though I understand the idea behind Shadow taxing the runner).

I'm also not sure what the Agenda mix is for. Braintrust, without Trick of Light, doesn't seem like the optimal choice. Nisei MK II is a great change from your previous versions. PSF also is an odd choice, again looking along the lines with the deck carrying Closed Accounts. Though I am not sure of any better choices immediately.

"Tag-me" runners are certainly a concern and prevalent currently, but the danger they pose is well before Shadow or PSF are going to be into much play.

I'd swap 1 PAD Campaign and add another Snare. Shadows swapped for Ice Walls, and Closed Accounts swapped with Trick of Light. I also think this deck has a chance to play a shell game so figuring out how to fit a Shipment from Kaguya or Shipment for Sansan. With some of the changes I think another Ash would fit in place of a Hokusai Grid.

what made you stop using private contracts? I'm 100% behind passive econ, but I'd think the 5 trash and ability to burst up 6 credits + passive would be be unpassible in this deck...esp with interns. I'm liking it and cant wait to play it.

I swapped it out because almost every time I drew it, I wished it was something else. In the early game, I had more of a click problem, than a money problem, and in the late game I'm usually so rich that the 1.5 click-per-cred optimization of PC just is not worth using. So quite often I play PCs and then hope they run them to lose clicks.

But generally in this deck clicks are very important, especially with all the interns and agenda advancement I need to be doing, so being able to make money passively is much more important. Another option would be to change Server Diagnostics with Celebrity Gift but I wanted to see how those work first.

@heartlesgamer: Actually it's the other way around. I started with Shadows and moved to Closed Accounts when they were required. I don't know, people seem to severely underestimate shadows. They work much better than an wall of ice would in this deck. And hell, why would you ever put a wall of ice when one could put a Hitsumi Bako and save the influence?

PSF is simply there to threaten tag-me runners more if it's scored early but also because there's no other 4/2 agendas that fit in this deck.

Braintrust is there because it's quick to score and because it can put pressure on the runner to run unadvanced root cards, who might turn out to be Hokusai and Ash instead.

I am experimenting with something similar. It uses Ruhr Valley instead of Hokusai Grid and no closed accounts. Your deck looks more consistent for sure.

I also wanted to make a version with Ruhr, but it has prohibitive cost :-/

That is a really clever deck. i didn't understand what made it tick, until I saw the video on youtube and realized that Encryption Protocol works for all the cards and not only for the one in the same server.

It must take steel nerves to set it up though....

It's not an easy deck to pilot. I lost a lot while tuning it but at some point I realized I was actually playing it wrong, playing often too conservately, like HB or Wayland and clicking for credits and so on. But at some point it clicked that this deck needs to just draw cards and spam the world with Assets and Upgrades. Once you have 2-3 encryption protocols out, people stop bothering to trash your stuff, at which point you become rich. If they haven't gotten to match point by then from HQ and R&D, you can really bankrupt them by forcing them to try and steal your agendas and having to pass through crazy expensive ICE + Ash and Hokusais.

In the past few days, I've started having crazy success with this, losing like 1 in 5 games and that only because of bad agenda luck. In fact I've been able to completely reverse horrible games (where whizzard was 6-0 at turn 6, or where I had 5 agendas in hand) which does not happen easily in other corps.

Hitsumi Bako is a fixed strength vs a variable strength Ice Wall that can play with Trick of Light and enable Ronin to be effective. Shadow could serve the same purpose with ToL as Ice Wall. I guess I miss what Shadow does in this deck when there is, to me, a clear need for ETR ICE that can help provide crucial set up time or early game economy protection.

Shadow can actually provide a much stronger early game econ protection. Not only is it annoying to encounter on a central when planning to bounce, but it's economy on its own when unbroken and it's also more expensive to pass through than ICE wall when the optimal breaker is around (mimic). With a suboptimal breaker (e.g. ninja) it's even better. Hell, sometimes I even protect my sundews with the lowly shadow itself. In the early game, passing through the shadow to trash a shadow can easily drain the runner's early credits, significantly slowing them down, without a detriment to me. And then I interns the sundew.

I think you miss the fact that there is ETR ICE in the deck if you need them. Chimera is there exactly for this purpose, to protect your sundews in the early game or even to advance some agendas in case your econ is ignored, and they work better than wall of ice since they do a gear check on their own and work with Swordsman.

So is your agenda server solely held by Ash and ETR Ice? As is there is no reason for them to try and run one of your advanced cards, and only braintrust can go unadvanced. Just a lot of misdirection?

Pretty much yeah. There's no reason to run my unadvanced cards but that is usually true against Jinteki, which is why Braintrust is useful.

But then again, I don't even try to bait them with unadvanced cards, which is where Ronin comes in handy, as I can force them to waste their run resources on a useless run and if not I get to smack them for 3, place 1 4/2 agenda and advance once. Many runners find it very hard to run when starting their turn with 2 cards.

Alternatively, since they tend to not run unadvanced cards, I've managed to sneak quite a few braintrusts naked.

True, with Ronin, you'll force them to pay for the trash even if they don't take the damage from the access because Encryption Protocol will drive up the price. If they can't trash it, they'll have to see their hand up, which is time spent not running. If it was a Junebug you could kill them outright, but fails to reveals and they can just outright ignore the run needed to drop it. If it's a Ronin, you leave that threat on the table, and they'll either have to pay to get rid of it, which is time spent not running another server, or shore up against it, which is time spent not running.

Not to mention that they WILL have to run against a second 3-advanced card, because if it IS another Ronin, it's GG :)

SO I have never used or seen Executive Retreat before. Do you usually just burn the token on the next turn?

It depends how much pressure the runner can put in HQ or R&D really. If I'm at matchpoint and can protect a remote, I will use it. If not and R&D is not that dangerous, I may leave it for a bit until I build up again.

Would it be worth it to drop the two Closed Accounts for a third Ash? I just played a round with this deck and didn't see Ash once.

Also, in that match found myself against a Shaper who quickly got a full breaker suite, using Mimic, Gordian Blade, and Corroder. Because there wasn't enough money to go around to rez it again, and because I only got 1 wall of thorns which got quickly derezzed by an Emergency Shutdown, there was no secure way to advance agendas in the remotes.

Did you just fail to get any econ? Normally it shouldn't be an issue rezzing your ICE, unless the runner is very aggressive. And if they are, they should be getting their rig up very early.

My first time around I had 2 pads, an active Server Diagnostics, and a Sundew. Had around 20 creds at match point. Was facing a guy running Ice Destruction though, and should've just put my Ash under the Sundew that was behind a Datapike, and put the agenda in my unprotected hand into there. Had a Nisei token. If he spent one extra click running my hand I would've been able to keep him out.

Though actually he was pretty broke too, wouldn't have been able to trash the ash on the one run that would've got him in. Wasn't trashing the Houksai on my HQ while he was running that.

Maybe just draw and use Interns on the discards.

I was up against a Datasucker-Parasite Kate with this deck and had about no cash throughout the game. I never had enough cash to successfully trace her, and never enough cash to trigger the one turn-4 Snare! I did get. Everything else was getting trashed, meanwhile.

(I should also mention the Imp, which does wreak havoc on the whole idea of this deck.)

Against Imps and Whizzard, I found that it's kinda imperative to protect at least one Sundew. Put some decent early ICE on it and maybe even Ashes and Hokusai if you have it. If they're hellbent on keeping you poor, make sure they become just as poor trying to achieve it.

Part of the problem I ran into with this player is that the Kate identity doesn't have the problem of becoming poor from Imps and Parasites, and consistently ends up resurrecting them just about constantly, for almost no money what with Clone Chip, Scavenge, Same Old Thing, &c.

That's why I said you need some decent protection on your Sundew. Put 2 ICE if you have to. Put punishing ICE so that you actually slow them down on their exploratory run before they can parasite it. Put your upgrades if you have to.

The good thing about the ICE in the deck is that most of them costs as much to the runner to encounter, as it costs you to rez (more with shadow), and even if they trash your sundew, they're not making any points. And at some point they're just going to run out of tricks and will have to start drawing and making credits somehow as well, and this deck is very good at comebacks.

Check the video I've linked above for an sample match against Whizzard who was completely dominating me the whole early game.

I finally got around to testing the deck - it's very fun to play (I haven't played Jinteki for ages). Congratulations on the clever design! BTW, "True Colors" datapack brings RSVP, which is probably an autoinclude here, possibly replacing Shadows and/or Closed Accounts (RSVP is 2 inf, which makes it problematic to run 3 of them, as one can't really ditch Ash or Encryption Protocol as this would dismantle the entire mechanism). With Shadows gone, there is very little reason to run PSF and Closed Accounts and RSVP is an incentive to run Fetal AI for added hilarity. :) I have to admit, though, that the tagging subtheme works better than I expected it to (I was skeptical in one of my previous posts on the v2 version).

2 Influence for ICE is quite a lot for this deck, and I don't feel it's worth it just for RSVP, especially since it's not punishing to use for bouncing on centrals. Shadow just seems better.

But what about Tsurugi?

This decklist was made before True Colors. The new (yet untested) version I have naturally runs 3x Tsurugi :)

Yea my first thing I did was drop Katana for Tsurugi. So far money doesn't become an issue with enough turns, but having the right taxing ice seems to be an issue. The one guy I played against had Dino, Morning Star, and a Femme sitting on top. I guess dropping the Swordsmen is a good one, Money to rez it isn't an issue.

Is it redundant to say how much fun this is with 3 Shock?

-2 Server Diagnostics -1 Ronin

I'm considering finding a place to bump Ronin back up to 2, since I'm starting to figure out more how it works. Last night I looked down, realized that rather than waiting for the flatline, if I just hit it now, that there's no way the runner could safely run next turn, and I can get a Nisei scored if I do Ronin/Install/Advance

Atm I've removed Server Diagnostics in favour of Hedge Fund, for early support. But I may try one with shock one of these days.

Do it, Shock is so much fun.

Love what you've done with this deck. I've been trying to use encryption p with Jinteki RP ever since that identity came out. You've given some great tips on making it work.

My build has Shipment from Mirromorph and I've been very happy with it. Have you tried it? Can get your remotes up quickly and empty your HQ nicely...

What do you think about swap 2 snares and close acc. for 2 ice wall and 2 trick of light?