Tennin Space Ice Within - 1st place Fair Game tournament 2/2

Snipafist 91

It's Tennin with space ice, which makes for fantastic Trick of Light targets and some taxing servers. It's got some extra added Anarch hate for all the jank that's common nowadays: Clone Retirement shuts off Valencia decks if you can play it at the right time and Crissium Grid/Caprice cause big trouble for Eater-based decks. The good news is that even if you're not up vs. either of those types of decks, the silver bullet cards still do work for you with this deck build.

Otherwise it's fairly standard Tennin, in my experience. Try to fast advance agendas out. Some basic tips:

In general, I prefer icing up HQ over R&D if I need to choose. It's a combo deck and so you'll be holding onto combo cards for a while before everything comes together. Caprice likes to guard HQ for this reason.

Crissium Grid is amazing and just put it wherever you want to mess with the runner. It's great in Archives to turn off cheap Datasucker/Dirty Laundry runs, but it allows your ID ability to stay on as well.

Future Perfect will almost never be scored, it's just there to be hard to steal and use up agenda points.

I like to guard Archives with 1 or 2 ice, and preferably the outermost one as something mean. Sooner or later I usually draw into Susanoo no Mikoto and being able to use Susanoo or a Wormhole to bounce a runner into a Grim is pretty fun.

Shell Corp should hang out with Caprice on HQ. Make dat money.

Don't be afraid to set up a legit remote server in the late game if you've got the runner going poor trying to win. With 3ish ice and a Caprice (assuming HQ is okay without her), you can form a legit scoring server in about 2 turns. This is far preferable to just flailing around waiting for your combo engine to come together to score out the last 2ish points.

Jackson should not hit the table unless you're ready to throw him into a dumpster during the runner's turn.

The fun upside of this is once a runner has gone after a Jackson who disappeared one time (don't forget that because the server vanishes, that run was neither successful nor unsuccessful so your Tennin ability still triggers), they'll assume future face-down unguarded installed remote cards are Jacksons and not really worth chasing after. I like to exploit this by installing Medical Research naked when the runner is poor. They're working on rebuilding their economy to run again and see no benefit in wasting a click on chasing a Jackson into a dumpster and so often won't run it. If they don't, put your agenda counter on Medical Research then triple click to score it out. If they do, you got the first Medical Research scored by SOMEBODY anyways, and now it's much easier to score out the ones remaining in your deck. Wasting two Trick of Lights on one agenda is for chumps.

You need a ton of money to keep piling up your ice towers and scoring things out. When in doubt, always more money. It's surprising how quickly you can go from $20 to almost completely broke when the runner is making you rez ice and play psi games and such.

4 comments
9 Mar 2015 moistloaf

I highly recommend swapping Nebulas for Grims and the Shell Corporations for Medical Research Fundraiser. Asteroids could become 1 Himitsu-Bako and another Lotus Field. just my 2 cents, Grim really sucks now

9 Mar 2015 moistloaf

then again you won an SC with it so wtf am I saying ;d

9 Mar 2015 kojku

I play a very similar deck. Have you tried space camp? not have to worry about defending the files. Space Camp + Susanoo + Whormhole is funny .

I play Cerebral Static , is a very powefull card against some runner, you should try

9 Mar 2015 Snipafist

Grims are in there so the Clone Retirements have some functionality beyond just shutting down Caprice. They're also influence 0 in a deck that's topped off on influence. I also don't like Medical Research Fundraiser in cred-taxing decks, as it helps reestablish the runner more quickly. Honestly those Shell Corps have done much better than I expected - needing to make an expensive run through HQ for a 1/3 chance of passing Caprice to hit a Shell Corp is not something most runners have a lot of patience for.

Re: Space Camp I originally wanted to try Space Camp but the influence costs didn't really work out for it. I preferred to spend the influence on taxing ice instead of Space Camps to dump into Archives. I've also found from past versions of Tennin relying on Shock that replacement effects like Sneakdoor (especially Sneakdoor) and Security Testing neuter the threat and they're fairly common, whereas taxing ice in general works against everybody.

Re: Cerebral Static I don't like how it's a dead draw against some runners. I'd much rather use cards that are a silver bullet vs. some runners but are still functional within the deck (like the Crisium Grids and Clone Retirements here).