Run, you fools!

Hey there, I hope I can somewhat help.

I've been playing Jinteki decks for a while, so I hopefully can throw some insight to help you on your way. First off, you've got an interesting identity to play with, I forsee lots of psi games in your future!

Ok, major points to note - Jinteki suffers with money, and money 'will' be an issue for you. 3 Hedges, 2 Gifts and 2 Sweeps are not going to carry you against paying for Psi Games, Rezing mid-to-expensive ice like Kakugo and DNA Tracker, paying for Snares, etc. Sweeps Week is only going to do so much with you attempting to hold the Runner's hand size down with Enforced Curfew; be aware of anti-synergistic cards.

I feel like this deck has a bit of an identity crisis, and that's somewhat reflective of the number of 2x cards. I can see what you're trying to do, you want to build a toolbox of nasty stuff where this deck can not only score, but kill the Runner. By all means experiment with it, but if I was going to suggest anything go and take a look at the Nisei decks by Kelfecil, he's a Nisei division fan and has been constantly refining the process. In the meantime I'll just give you my two cents based on general observation.

1. Have a clear strategy and prioritise it. What is your deck doing? Is it scoring or killing? Focus on the strength and make the secondary a back-up; (see Kelf's Scorch plan in some of his deck.) Cards like Fumiko and Tori will drain your credit pool without proper support. Which leads me on to -

2. Increase your econ. You will suffer in tempo without proper econ support. Hyoubu Research Facility is worth a look, but there may be better econ cards that could take its place.

3. Take advantage of more ICE that synchronises with your ID. You aren't including Upayoga, or Chetana, which could help keep the Runner at bay; more so than Data Mine which would only ever fire once and not synergise with Synth DNA Modification.

If you have any questions, let me know, otherwise I strongly suggest looking at Kelf's decks and net-decking them for a feel of how the ID works. Good luck!

@Mechanoise thanks a lot. I definitely agree with your points.

I'm only playing less than a year, and most of my decks I try to come up with suffer from having a lot of 2x cards, indeed. I don't always have a clear strategy in mind, because I also still don't know what a good, clear strategy should look like translated into cards (when building something new that is).

I do want to keep at least one sweeps to be able to gain 4 turn 1, but 2 sweeps will indeed get redundant once curfew/damage hits. I really do see the antisynergy with cards, but I don't see any more synergy either :p

I'll definitely continue to play with different Nisei decks, but thanks already for the insight.

@Soulcow

No problem. To help you on your way I'll advise on a couple of deck design options you could consider and how to use cards to leverage your overall plan. Use this to help when considering what your deck wants to do.

First is Rush / Jammy - This deck wants to use a combination of light and medium ice to just keep jamming cards in remotes, scoring them as fast as you can as the longer the game runs through the harder it will be to win. Ice like Aiki, Vanilla, Quandry and such as really good for this, and you could add a few Shocks as nasty surprises here and there. To leverage this you'll want quick bouce-back money, such as Beanstalk Royalties and consider Psychokinesis to speed up finding agendas, or even Subliminal Messaging to gain an extra credit each time the Runner doesn't make a run.

Denial - This is a deck that wants to look for breakers and destroy them. Here you'll need a fair bit of money, so 3x Celebrity Gifts, Hedge Funds and Restructures might be necessary. You're going to mix up damage ice with program destruction ice, (Ichi 1.0 for your best bet), and you're going to want to use Marcus Batty to fire program trashes, with Ark Lockdown to remove those breakers from the game. Salem's Hospitality is also a consideration as its influence can be mitigated, and Enforcing Loyalty is great if you're running rich.

Kill / Brain damage - Self explanitory, and you'll need strong econ for these decks since Jinteki has no teeth if it can't fire its traps. Here your ice is designed to inflict net damage; you're taking advantage of Marcus Batty again to fire off cards like Chetana to attempt to wipe the Runner's grip. You could include Synth DNA Modification with Hostile Infrastructure, which you can rez with Breaker Bay Grid to mitigate costs, meaning breaking ice is going to hurt, not breaking ice is going to hurt, and trashing cards is going to hurt. Consider using Cerebral Overwriter to bait the Runner into Brain Damage, then follow them up with Cerebral Cast to give the Runner a choice - More Brain Damage, which makes Snares, Ronins and Neural EMPs pretty bad for them; or the tag, which could allow you to Scorched Earth them if their hand size has been battered. Psychic Field is also good here, especially with your ID, and works nicely with Enforced Curfew.

Hopefully this makes sense as I was in a bit of a rush, please let me know how you got on, or if you have any questions. :)

Hi

I think Snowflake/Mind game/aiki are the main reason to play Nisei division and should always be a 3-off in these decks. Upayoga and chetana are nice and often a good include over the more expensive ICE. But after yesterday I can understand why you want a lotus field :p

Sapper is a nice card, but I think it's not ideal in jinteki. Sapper punishes runners that break gearcheck barriers/codegates and are starting to access cards in your central servers. The problem is that most runners will install a killer before they will facecheck ICE against you because they have to respect cards like komainu.

But most important, is the name a reference to The Lord of the Rings?

@Mechanoise Thanks again, will play some more, test different kinds of decks etc. I know that's kinda mandatory anyway, but the rundown of archetypes is helpful.

@ryanbantwins well I should have tought about sifr + parasite decks, but I found I did not include enough hard ETR ICE anyway. After a couple games on jnet I also found out I need to make up my ice again, because gordian blade giggles at stacked low str codegates :/

And yes the reference is from lotr, but has not that much to do with the deck I guess. I tought it was fitting for the idea I had in mind :p

@SoulcowSo disappointed :p It's a common misconception, but Gandalf doesn't say "Run, you fools!" but he says "Fly, you fools!".

Yep I am a 'betweter' :p