[Startup] Restoring Humanity folly

After a moderate amount of iteration, I am happy with this version of a Restoring Humanity deck, which I feel makes good use of the new cards for Jinteki.

How it started: Prior to the release of Midnight Sun, the Startup Jinteki card pool struggled to tax runners, score agendas, or make money. I frequently found myself gazing enviously at the efficiency of HB and spending 12 influence on purple cards. Gateway offered some promising cards, such as a way to gain money and a way to end the run, but they were... incomplete. It was difficult to find good ice to put on Archives to keep RH money flowing, and defending Archives really compromises your budget to defend centrals, much less defend a scoring remote. With those budget troubles in mind, my End The Run ice either didn't tax very well, or just let them in during those critical early turns.

How it's going: Midnight Sun is pretty glorious for Startup Jinteki. I am truly spoiled for choice, and had to think hard on how to spend influence instead of playing all in-faction cards. I think this is a pretty complete vision of this idea, but there's room to try different angles in this shell.

Card choices:

"We have Engram Flush at home", aka Diviner: In an opening paragraph saying that there wasn't good ice in startup, have I forgotten that we have this cheaper than dirt, banned-in-standard, outrageously taxing monstrosity? Not exactly. In my offline life, I'm playing against a few newer players, and the face they make when they realize how much Flush will cost them breaks my heart. Spinning the wheel to end the run also makes me happy. You can trade these for Engram Flush, I won't judge you.

Blood in the Water: A thoroughly exciting card. You shouldn't expect the Runner to give you random free scores, but a payoff for hitting them with Snare! is the most fun you can have in netrunner. With Anemone floating around, the runner has to play pretty carefully, which might let you get away with other tricky Jinteki Business. Since I won't make a section for Snare, I'll just say it here: I'm only running 2 copies of snare due to card slots, and so the runner will never see 3 snares in Archives. They should always have to live in fear of the third snare.

Regenesis: There's 2 main ways to get a bonus agenda: discard the bonus agenda, install Regenesis, and hope the Runner disrupts neither. You can take safety precautions against the Runner running archives, but ultimately you'll just have to use your judgement in when to try this. (This is why folly is in the title). The other option is to put both Moon Pool and Regenesis on the table, and hope both make it to the next turn. At the end of the Runner's turn, you can drop an agenda into archives, and you avoid the Regenesis restriction on your turn. There's other play patterns you can do, but ultimately this is a fun, tricky card. But let's talk about what I'm not doing: 3 point agendas. I'm viewing Regenesis as a 3-point agenda (some assembly required). If I opt to make it 4 points... this doesn't reduce the number of agendas I have to score to win the game unless I'm on all 3-point agendas (and regenesis). I think that's a valid choice, but... I wanted to use Blood in the Water, and opted for mostly 2-pointers. I don't like the runner randomly finding 3 points in centrals!

Moon Pool: A powerful fast-advance/un-flood tool. It can combo with Regenesis, to cheat an agenda into your score area, but it can also score a 3/2 from hand, assuming you have 3 agendas and a Moon Pool in hand. If it's already installed, you can fast-advance a 4/2! My agenda suite is full of 3/2s to make these plays easier, and to enable never-advance scoring.

Anemone and Bathynomus: The shiny new Jinteki stuff. Bathynomus imposes a decent tax on runners for a low price, enabling the archives defense that RH wants to do. I was on 1 copy, but found it important enough that I bumped it to 2 copies. Card slots are fiercely competetive, and I decided to cut an Anemone for it, as it's a pretty anemic tax after the rez.

Ivik: Finally, a chunky taxing, ETR ice! No clicking through it, just go get your fracter and pay 5 credits. (Or play a Boomerang, but that can happen to any ice.) Its cost scales down in the late game as well, which is awesome. It's a pretty simple ice, but the strong numbers it provides are very welcome.

Magnet: I wanted more ETRs, more code gates, and the incidental Botulus hate is nice. This could easily be Enigma if you want to find influence for something else, but I didn't feel short on influence.

Stavka: It sometimes gets them. You don't really need to reserve a lot of money to deal with Jinteki sentries, you just need to carefully defuse the occasional Anemone or expect Bathynomus on Archives. I wanted to impose a huge punishment if the Runner is spending their money too freely. You normally protect your important cards from net damage by installing them, and I like a threat that punishes that behavior. Also, I once trashed 2 breakers with this, and I'll be chasing that high for the rest of my life. If you want to try something different, this is the spot to make weird influence choices.

The odd choices, Predictive Planogram/Tranquility Home Grid/Archived Memories: I wanted card draw, money, and was out of good Jinteki operations. I've tried various campaigns, but when you need money the most, the runner just trashes them. When you want to free up your scoring remote, they sit atop direly important credits, withholding them unless you're willing to do nothing for multiple turns! Regolith can give you credits now, and the Planogram can give cards or credits, also now! Tranquility used to be the 3rd copy of Regolith, until I realized I needed to spend 2 influence. Archived memories is there because I expect to have good cards in archives, but it could easily change.

Failed Ideas: I've mentioned most of them above, but I want to give a special mention to Wave. It has a strong sales pitch: "I only cost 1 influence. I'll give you money when they run centrals. I'll find the single Bathynomus for Archives. I'll find Ivik for the scoring remote. I'm a code gate to reduce Ivik's rez cost!" How enticing! However, it turns out that there are 3 big problems with this idea. First of all, it does nothing to the Runner. It doesn't damage them, it doesn't ETR, and they can just ignore it to land a Deep Dive. Secondly: it tells the Runner what ice you're about to install. You can try to be tricky and install different ice, but... are you really going to install Bathynomus on R&D just to deny information? Third... sometimes they just don't run it, and you're stuck waiting for Iviks to show up naturally. Don't be like me! Play ice that has relevant text on it.

Conclusion: Go read "how it's going" again. I know you're supposed to have conclusions, but I have nothing new to say here!