Worlds 2014, 2nd place

The deck in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76uJ68st4VQ

The original idea comes from Chris Hinckes who won the Cambridge Regionals with it. It had only 8 ICE and low economy. Then Jurgen Marx won the German Nationals with an improved version. I started experimenting with variations of this version on OCTGN and at local tournaments with great success. Not only is it strong, it’s also very fun to play.

Then at the Dutch Nationals something surprising happened: 3 of my opponents out of 6 played Feedback Filters (FF) and won. Those games were very close but still, that card had a big impact. Suddenly it’s more like 30% chance winning instead of 90%. At least half of the top 8 had FF in their deck. A card nobody would even consider playing few months ago, suddenly it's the new Plascrete Carapace.

After further testing, the best way to handle the deck was clear. Generate a mountain of credits with Security Testing, Desperado and ignore all the remotes while digging for the FF with John Masanori and Mr. Li. Once the FF is on the table with 40+ credits, simply run all the remotes and laugh at the net damages. The matchup boils down to 90% chance of winning if your opponent doesn’t have FF + a recurring source of money. Or 10% chance of winning if he does.

For the Belgian Nationals, the big question was how widespread will FF be? I decided to stick with the Jinteki deck and hope for the best. It was undefeated till round 6 of Swiss where I faced a french player who knew the perfect counter: Security testing and Mr. Li till he had FF. I played him again in the top 8 and lost again to the same scenario. Rushing agenda while the runner was digging for FF was the counter plan. But the Jinteki deck doesn’t have enough economy to do win the race, especially when Account Siphon comes into play.

For Worlds I decided to add my own original variations to the deck to address the above issues: 1 Shattered Remains to kill the FF and laugh at the useless mountains of credit, 3 Sweep Week to have a shot at winning the agenda race against Andromeda. For that I had to cut the Pop-Pup Window, Cerebral Overwriter and Subliminal Messaging (which is useless anyway with Security Testing)

Worlds

I didn’t have time to test the changes before Worlds and almost played Cerebral Imaging (Reuse is awesome) or (god forbid) Near Earth Hub. Fortunately I remained faithful to the Jinteki church. I had so much experience piloting the deck and tricking people with traps or Psi games (100% on Psychic Field, 80% on Future Perfect) it would be a shame to play another deck.

At Worlds it turns out nobody plays FF. That was quite unexpected and it made the deck extremely successful.

The only deck without FF that have a shot at winning is Kate with recurring Deus X + Levy AR Lab Access and Same Old Thing to use LARLA from Heap when the Stack is empty. Even then it’s still a good matchup for Jinteki. At round 7 at Worlds, I played against Spags who was running such a Kate deck. His deck was emptied twice and he only had 1 card left in hand with 6 agenda points. In R&D there were 3 Snares, 2 Fetal AI, 1 Future Perfect and one 3/1 agenda remaining. Gaining 3 credits and running R&D each turn was his last hope of winning. He miraculously hit Future Perfect and won the Psi game. That was the only real defeat at Worlds. The other defeat was in round 6 due to time running out while being behind in agenda points.

Some players were also overconfident against Jinteki. I faced El-Ad, the Canadian champion in the 1st match of the top 16. Being top seeded, I could choose which side to play. From the intelligence I gathered he was most likely not running FF so I chose to play JInteki. When I arrived at the table he was shuffling his NEH deck convinced he had such a good match up against PE that I would chose to play Andromeda against hist NEH. Of course he got burned quickly by Jinteki. His plan was to run R&D and ignore all the remotes. This strategy doesn’t work because there will be Ronin and Philotic Entanglement lurking among the traps. It also let the Corp scores Agendas freely. Sooner or later the runner will hit Snares or Fetal AI and will be finished by a combination of Ronin, EMP or Philotic on the Corp turn.

After the match I asked El-Ad if he had FF. He said he had 65% of winning against PE so the extra 5% from FF was not necessary. It was clear the meta in America was quite different. The Cambridge deck is dismissed as something easy to beat. In Germany, it’s as dominant as NEH and many runners play FF and infiltration.

Another highlight of the deck at Worlds was round 5 against Andromeda. I played Sweep Week first turn. My opponent and the people around were cheering at the surprise. Then came the 2nd Sweep Sweek as click 2 to the loud cheers that could be hear across the room. ICE on HQ was click 3. On his turn he ran R&D and hit… Snares! Two turns later his 2nd access was … Snares!. What a bad luck for him :D

Card choices

A lot of people asked about the removal of Cerebral Overwriter and the addition of Sweep Week.

The Sweep Week turned out to be good. They provide a big boost in economy and help keep the Corp above 9 credit to rez Komainu or absorb Account Siphon and still be able to pay for Snares! They also help pushing for Agenda points if necessary.

Contrary of the opinion of other Jinteki players, I don’t feel Overwriter is a must have. It’s certainly a good card and is better than Project Junebug against Kate. But Kate is already a favorable match up since nobody plays Kate with FF. The real threat to address is FF.

Even with no FF at sight at Worlds. Shattered Remains turned out to be decent. It kills Clone Chip (less recurring Deus X), Pre-Paid Voice Pad and Desperado.

Overall I’m quite happy with the current version and won’t change any card at the moment.