Blackwheat

Some people looked at Consulting Visit and thought "Mumbad City Hall". Some people thought "Midseason Replacements". And I thought "Mushin No Shin", because I only play Jinteki Mind Games.

In principle, the idea is sound. One of the biggest issues of making a deck around Mushin No Shin is that your gameplan is defined by having that card. But Consulting Visit is Mushin No Shin #4-6. Now Consulting Visit uses up the third click, but that was never your issue anyway because Mushin No Shin installs and advances 3 times, meaning that it's still a click efficient good deal when searched. And unlike Scorched Earth, it's not imperative that you have three clicks to perform your entire combo (e.g. SEA Source-Scorched Earth-Scorched Earth).

Unfortunately, since the heydays when a Blacktree deck got second in a Worlds Tournament FFG have turned around and decided that they ABSOLUTELY HATE IT WITH A PASSION. Sports Hopper, Guru Davinder, Political Operative and I've Had Worse have destroyed the power of Ronin to the point where it's basically unplayable if your opponent is running those counters - and unlike Feedback Filter, those cards are all viable outside of the Jinteki Mind Games matchup, ensuring their place in many decks. So while we're still running it, relying on a one turn kill is out of the question.

So instead I turned to scoring out. I mean, I'm still running 3x Ronin, but as I'll explain, scoring out is a terrible idea which should be avoided if possible. The triple advancement of Mushin No Shin allows for a Advance-Advance-"Clones are not People" turn, letting us score 4 points. That means we can win in 2 agendas. In theory, that's brutally powerful, forcing running advanced remotes after a single score.

But in practice, running 3 pointers is just painful. This deck is brutally difficult to play, and it fails my one rule for Mind Game decks: the gimmick has to be much riskier for the runner than the corp, and the reward much greater for the corp than the runner. Think the risk/reward of Bio-Ethics Association/Psychic Field. The reward is indeed great, but not much better than the runner's; and the risk is almost on par with the risk for the runner (thanks to the above mentioned counters and Wyldside). Punitive Counterstrike just doesn't show up early enough to be a real threat, and besides, Film Critic exists, and playing Consulting Visit and meeting the alliance massively hinders room for ice and other cards that would shore up this deck's weaknesses.

But since this is a deck of finesse, maybe I'm playing it wrong. Feel free to make your own changes and let me know how it goes. Do whatever you like with the ice package: whatever makes you feel comfortable. So far I haven't won a single game, so you'll already do better with it than me