Jinteki: Restoring Humanity

Jinteki: Restoring Humanity

Identity: Megacorp
Deck size: 40 • Influence: 15

When your discard phase ends, if there is a facedown card in Archives, gain 1[credit].

An End to Suffering.
Illustrated by Emilio Rodríguez
Decklists with this card

System Gateway (sg)

#43 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Rulings
  • Updated 2021-10-11

    Can the Corp trigger Jinteki: Restoring Humanity if they have no facedown cards in Archives for most of their turn, but they discard cards to their maximum hand size?

    Yes!

  • Updated 2021-10-11

    What’s the difference between "when your discard phase ends" and "when your turn ends"?

    We sometimes write abilities with “when your discard phase ends” to emphasize that they resolve after your hand size is checked. There is no difference in timing or functionality between this wording and “when your turn ends”.

Reviews

It's not a very fun ID to play or play against or watch. We already have a generic Jinteki ID (Palana) that reliably generates $1 per turn. Maybe there'll be some clever play for Restoring Humanity in the 40-44 card range but whatever high-tempo options Jinteki has are probably better in a Palana which doesn't need to spend time/resources worrying about whether there's a facedown card in Archives.

Many newer IDs allow for strategies that wouldn't be doable in most IDs. Azmari gets paid to know what the runner wants to be playing and the runner can disrupt this by playing things out of order. Acme mixes ice into asset-based play and it's much more fun to play/watch/fight than most horizontal IDs. Built to Last gets paid to charge forward, often into thin-margin high-danger situations. Restoring Humanity usually gets paid to take things slowly, and incentivizes the runner to check archives more than normal. Whatever Jinteki is lacking, it's probably not archives management and it's definitely not slowplay.

Theorycrafting: I think Jinteki’s card pool could support an interesting discard-oriented ID but it should be different than the passive $1/turn Palana already offers, and hopefully more proactive than RH -- maybe a conditional ability like "once per turn, after installing a card you may discard a card to do X" or a mandatory discard each turn for some benefit. Instead of incentivizing players to move slowly, using a high-tempo condition like installing a card or advancing a card would probably encourage more interesting play.

(System Update 2021 era)

You know how Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future was so powerful because it gave you a reliable credit every turn. This is roughly the same thing. It says "at the end of your discard phase gain 1 if you have a facedown card in archives" at the end of your DISCARD PHASE, so you could just draw over your hand size, dump a card, and make a profit.

This also works a bit like Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions: you put a trap face down in archives, say Shi.Kyū Breached Dome or Shock! Space Camp or Cyberdex (make sure the trap works in archives, so no Snare!) then leave the runner at a crossroads: either give me money every turn or run archives and suffer the traps. This is also a 40/15 identity, which is always good. Although, I haven't played this deck enough or seen this get played enough. So mabye i'm stupid and also wrong =)

Ok, turns out that most of the archive-traps are rotating, but Cyberdex sandbox works very well with the Virus suite, if they want to stop you from making money from your ability, you instead make money from Cyberdex sandbox. And you can use Hansei review to make Restructure(?) levels of money and trigger your ability.

Jtfq99999 is right, instead of overdrawing, just use Genotyping to put cards in archives and pull the cards that you want back or you can try to score out a Bacterial programming and choose what goes away or the 1-influence Helheim servers to also buff up your ice.

To me this just looks like a balanced version of IG, so if you enjoyed playing Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions, you may very well enjoy this.

(Salvaged Memories era)
5

Close, but overdrawing is harder than having something to install

When this is legal to play I think the only legal traps to fire from archives will be Shi.Kyu, Cyberdex Virus Suite and Space Camp. Not exactly a terrifying selection.

My mistake, Shi.Kyu's in Honor and Profit, so that's rotating too. We'll have to see what's in System Gateway. It seems unlikely that there won't be a trap to continue Jinteki's proud tradition of rigging archives.

part of the reason ETF was busted was because you could also fire it on runner turns, which doesn't work here.

In the 40 cards deck size, for the Jinteki faction, there was Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneer, which rotated. Now we have Jinteki: Restoring Humanity. Is it good? Yes.

The ID combine well with Hansei Review, Genotyping and Space Camp. Hansei Review let you trash a card from hand, thus putting a facedown card without overdrawing. Genotyping will put two facedown card in archive and let you get back 4 cards, just leave one of the two in archive to activate the ID. Space Camp will penalize the runner from trying to deactivate you ID.

Of note, if you are running Cyberdex Sandbox and Cyberdex Virus Suite, you further penalize the runner from running archive.

The ID is pretty easy to activate, making it likely that you get about 1 a turn for about half the game, maybe more.

The only downside is that you'll need to put at least one ice on archive usually. thinning up a bit your ices.

Finally, the 40 cards deck size allow you have a better consistency. I dare you to actually go for 40 cards, and not 44 cards.

Beautiful art, beautiful quote, beautiful ID.

(System Update 2021 era)
3864