I've been thinking at building a Barrier only Weyland deck for a long time, with Lag Time and now with Superior Cyberwalls. Such a deck has only a problem: the (almost) complete lack of variety of the Barrier-type ice.

So recently a friend of mine build a Code Gate only Jinteki deck and I've played against it with my Nasir and Leela decks. Lost with the first, won with the latter, but both games were quite interesting and his deck proved to be quite solid.

I liked his deck a lot, so I made my own version, which is probably a lot similar to his.

Why Replicating Perfection?

We both think that the only good identity for this kind of deck is Replicating Perfection, because it's the only one what actually adds something of significance.

• No traps and no net damage make Personal Evolution not an option. No space to add them either.
• Given the nature of the code gates, you usually need to stratify them to obtain a good result, and you also need either Caprice or Ash to smoothly score an Agenda. So Harmony Medtech doesn't seem a good choice either. Too much setup needed to actually benefit from less points to achieve a victory.
• Tennin Institute might work out, but of course you would need a quite different Agenda selection, and Trick of Light.
• Nisei Division is, in my opinion, one of the worst identities ever, so I hardly even consider it... and in this case with so few Psi cards it's not worth it anyway.

Early game

This is not a fast advance deck, so don't rush and try to act safely:

1. Obtain a good economic base, so try to spend a few turns at the very beginning doing that. Spending some clicks gaining credits is better than drawing extra cards, you don't want to draw an Agenda when you're not ready for it.
2. Defend the central servers first, don't start building your remote servers unless you have at least 2 pieces of ice on R&D and HQ. No point in spending resources somewhere else if you end up leaving yourself open in the process.
3. No need to defend your Sundews, just let them out in the open. Even if the runner goes and trashes them, he'll have spent 2 clicks and 2 credits. You lost nothing because it repays itself. There are 18 pieces of ice, but you'd better not waste them, since only 14 have end the run anyway, and 4 are placement-dependant.

Once you're set, start building your scoring remote server, with two or three layers and some higher-strength code gate like Inazuma or Tollbooth on it.

Scoring your Agenda

When your scoring server is ready, you should place Caprice Nisei and Ash 2X3ZB9CY in it. With enough money it means he won't be able to steal anything.

• Your first priority should always be Encrypted Portals, simply because it makes every ice in the deck more expensive to pass (Rainbow is *also * a code gate and Mother Goddess will be when rezzed), plus it gives you some money.
• It's precisely that money that makes Gila Hands Arcology less of a priority, but it's still important to score that too when possible. In the long run the economy it provides will be useful.
• When it comes to 5/3s you should go for Utopia Fragment first, since it makes stealing every other advanced Agenda more difficult and expensive, then Hades Fragment because it allows you to infinitely recycle stuff like your very important Upgrades. The Future Perfect is in the deck mostly to have something hard to steal, so it's the less useful of all, obviously.

Extra tricks

The main difference between this deck and the one my friend had is Will-o'-the-Wisp, which I added because removing the Decoder means no access anywhere, and thus can easily lead to a scoring window. It might actually be worth sacrificing an Agenda for it.

• Just keep in mind that Caprice Nisei and Will-o'-the-Wisp don't exactly go all that well together, so either you place Ash & Will or go for the usual Ash & Caprice and use Will on the central servers instead.

Last trick in the deck is the wonderful Mutate which was another brilliant idea of my friend. The reasoning is this: if you sacrifice a Quandary you can't go wrong, it'll always be something better or at worst the very same.

Sometimes a good mutation can drastically change the game, for example he got a Quandary mutated into a Tollbooth on R&D (and it had strength 7 by that time of the game)... so no dilemma about it, just do it!

What to fear / not to fear

• Gordian Blade is your #1 enemy. With a strength that stays for the entire run, there's little advantage in stratification too. That's why you should try and keep a Tollbooth for the scoring server, so it'll always cost some more no matter what.
• Atman can be a pain, at least in early game, because most of your ice has the same strength value: 4. You also have Enigma and Quandary though, so they can help. Moreover, by scoring an Encrypted Portals you completely screw with his Atmans, so another good reason to go for that Agenda first and foremost.
• Knight is another big problem for this deck, since unless you score all 3 copies of Encrypted Portals he will be able to pass any ice you have with it. If he also uses Ice Carver there's not much you can do about it. Just try to trash it when you can by installing another ice, so he'll at least have to install another one or recover that copy.
• Femme Fatale, given the single subroutine you have on almost every ice can be annoying. Especially of course on Tollbooth. What you can and should do if femme'd is use Mutate to change that piece of ice with something else. Anything will be better, or at worst the same since Quandary will still cost 1 credit to pass.
• Yog.0 shouldn't be a big problem, since you have plenty of Ice that can screw with it even in early game. Just try to place Lotus Field on central servers to stop him accumulating too many Datasucker counters. Once you set your defenses on centrals and purge, he should have a really hard time passing anywhere.

All in all, however, these problems are solved by using Caprice Nisei and Ash 2X3ZB9CY, so in the long run your main concern is always the same: credits!

P.S. no Lag Time uh? Well, unfortunately there was no space for it. I also don't think that, so far, the runner currents are dangerous enough that I need to protect myself from them by playing my own.

If anything, I would rather add Cerebral Static to protect me from the annoying Noise Mill, and maybe also from Leela Patel, why not?