This is based in part on the Deckspace article Tropical Jinteki, and partly on the featured IG:GS deck on the front page last week. It's highly experimental.

Like Genes to Die For, this deck aims to tax the runner by playing a lot of must-tax assets while filling up the archives with Shock! and Shi.Kyū. Hostile Infrastructure also increases the tax on the runner for trashing these assets.

But, if we can keep the price high for trashing assets, can we not reduce ICE thickness on remotes? Sure we can! In fact, let's try to go ICEless.

Playing Tropical Jinteki

Typically, I'm looking at 9 - 18 pieces of ICE in my Jinteki decks, depending on ambush density. I'm not sure if this is typical, but now we have an extra 18 slots for assets and upgrades.

To start with, we're going to include three each of Shock! and Shi.Kyū. We want to pile them up in our archives. Also we'll include two Hostile Infrastructures. Since it's so expensive, we probably won't want to rez more than two of them. The other ambush I'm going to throw in is Cerebral Overwriter: this allows us to chip away at the runner thanks to the brain damage.

Now some economy assets; these are as much meant to tax the runner by inducing expensive runs as actually gain us economy, so we're looking for high trash and low-rez. PAD Campaign, Sundew, and Turtlebacks are all perfect. I initially considered Server Diagnostics (finally a place to use it in an ICEless deck) but the rez cost is to high and the trash cost too low. A last include is Shell Corporation: this is like Melange for inducing runs, but has the advantage of being able to be placed on top of a Cerebral to make the runner take a nice hit. At the edge of this category is Executive Boot Camp, which allows us to rez these assets at discount, so we break even all that much faster. A trash cost of 4+ is a nice bonus. Plus, we can tutor for some of the other assets we want to see.

I included Jackson Howard over Anonymous Tip because he allows some card recycling, giving us more to throw into archives when we need to pump up the cost of trashing. Chairman Hiro is a great one-of because he will also induce runs, and can help keep the runner's hand down. Zaibatsu Loyalty is expensive to trash, I don't mind throwing it in archives, and keeps the runner guessing as to what all my face down card sin remotes are. It's also partially a meta decision, but since this is a giant shell game, I feel the intelligence denial is worthy even in other locales.

Contrast: Genes to Die For!

I chose not to include Ronin as Genes prescribes because I wanted to play this as never-advance. So far , this has not been a spectacular choice. Similarly, the lack of Neural EMP is not working out well. For some reason I kept Mushin No Shin around, and I'm thinking I ought to put Ronin and EMP back in to pressure the runner more.

I completely agree with an early overdraw to fill up archives, but why not get more benefit out of that? Reuse is perfect for this situation. I'm guessing it was just influence that kept it out of Genes.

Moving Forward

After a couple games, this deck is pretty evenly split for wins/losses. As I mentioned above, Ronin and Neural EMP would be great includes to keep the pressure on the runner. I'd probably drop the Chairman and the Zaibatsus to make room for three Neural EMPs, and one each of Turtlebacks and Sundew to make room for two Ronins.

This is a highly experimental deck, and comments / critiques are highly welcome.