22 PLAYER INDY STORE CHAMPS Jerkteki 3.0 2nd place 2/7/15

@Dydra I am not a fan of EMP. Here's what happens: you draw EMP, Snares, and agendas, and at some point you cannot push out scoring in a remote. Now you have to decide, do I throw agendas in the bin, give up on Snare, or ditch EMP. In short, it can make you play poorly if you get this kind of draw. I would rather have a Shock hit them on access than try and cobble this together. In short, I think EMP, outside of something like Cambridge, is an antiquated way to play PE here in the now.

More importantly, this deck kills through tempo, not trying to draw multiple EMPs. Flatlining is incidental, hence the ice count. You have to push the runner to make bad decisions, and the best way to do this is scoring. I know this may seem a bit outside the norm, but this is my best deck by far. I have played it for ages and had a tremendous amount of success with it, refining it as newer and better options have emerged.

Bah! I hit submit too quickly! @Dydra thanks for taking a gander and commenting!

I trust your choices, and will be giving it a shot. I'm curious how you feel about hokusai grid. I love the tax, and it is pretty cheap, and is extremely annoying vs eater only decks that choose to keyhole (though wraparound is a better solution obviously).

Do you think that it could replace shi.kyu, if you don't have access to the card? Or do you find hokusai to be completely worthless?

@x3r0h0ur No way, Jose. This is one of your many tools against Noise and a corp making an Archives run after Keyholing the shitake out of you. Grid isn't even close. It also pairs with your Philotic. Pay 2 is the sweet spot. The deck already has House of Knives for pinging. It's just too good of a tool, since you have no Jackson--which you don't need it really.

How do you play this. 1 remote, 2? lay naked things here and there for mindgames? This is obviously glacial. Have you considered tollbooth for tax over janus or do you just like that surprise? I guess I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd play it. What is an ideal scoring server for you?

@Four_Leaf the deck is pliable, reacting to the runner. Typically, you are pushing out agendas early game in a remote two ice deep--preferably a Chum to stop them cold. It's all about understanding when scoring windows open up. A lot of the ice help in whittling away at the runner when paired with the traps, but "glacial" is not the word I would use at all here. If you count agendas, this deck has 22 cards that can damage on access--Shi Kyu obv being a little more conditional. Clone Retirements are shurikens to the runner's head. Celebrity Gift and show them a mix of agendas and traps and then drop one in a remote behind a couple of ice. Scoring out House of Knives goes a long way in grinding out the runner's hand. Bottomline, the runner will have to spend a lot of actions to draw, treating cards more like hit points than options in many cases.

As I stated in the main thread, Janus is just in here. I am not particularly enthused with it OR Janus and am trying some new digs now. For example, I think Checkpoint is a nice addition to the deck. I wouldn't play Tollbooth over this because it is not as high impact, nor presents the runner with some of the types of choices I want them to make.

Isn't Scorched Earth 100% dead draw if your opponent isn't playing tag-me? you have zero ways to tag the runner aside from last click Snare! and who runs last click against Jinteki anyway? you don't even have False Lead...

Also, isn't Medical Breakthrough better than Braintrust here?

@Kroen no.

@Kroen so by this logic people shouldn't play any edge case cards right? I mean why would you play plascrete not every deck is playing scorched-earth or ways to kill you.

This card was there for a very long time because of accounts-which is a highly played card. You act as though I did not comment on the fact that I wasn't crazy about its inclusion in the first place.

Why is Braintrust better? This is not a cambridge-style never advance deck. Braintrust serves no purpose once it's stolen other than 1 net, and Medical Breakthrough also does that, with the advantage that if 2 are stolen and/or scored then the 3rd can be scored out of hand. And why the hostility?

And my logic is that putting a card in your deck with 0 ways to activate aside from runner mistakes is a waste of slot, not to mention influence.

There is no hostility. I would say that yours is reading this way in your other post. Brain trust does not require to be advanced ever. I don't like playing around someone having to steal a medical breakthrough so I get that advantage. I have tried it and I do not think it is a good strategy at all

Then don't play the card. But to say this is "wasted" is to pretend we haven't been living in a Siphon-dominated game for 2+ years. You also are making gross assumptions on how the deck pushes tempo, meaning risks often have to be taken. Like I said, I was never crazy about it. But it killed a lot more people than it felt like a dead draw.

@Kroen, if I misinterpreted your intentions, apologies. But the initial post read more to me as an attempt to criticize, not open a dialogue. Also, I was out when you commented, and replied remotely--which was why I was more on the side of brevity.

Now, if you would like, here is a more thorough reply.

SCORCHED EARTH: It is worth mentioning I have since changed this deck twice, wherein the influence is used in a more general sense. Before Clot was released, I moved over to playing 2 San-Sans, which worked amazingly--and was another reason I preferred Braintrust. I have morphed the deck again, moving around influence which doesn't include Scorch.

Now, as far as Scorched being limited, yes, it is. As stated in the main article, this deck doesn't aim to kill. It aims to push tempo, wherein the runner often will kill themselves, and it does this very, very well. I state outright "it is a high-variance trick," which it is. Against decks that play tag me, which more than a fair number do, it is a great tool. Yes, Snare is the only means to land a tag outside of the runner doing it themselves, but that is not an issue. It is one card, which will win you a game, massively disrupt the runner, or be a single dead draw that, at worst, if the runner sees, they will begin to play more conservatively around. I am playing into the odds here, not building a Sea Source deck, which, to be fair, can just as easily fail at making Scorch work with a bevy of tools at their disposal. I look at this like a reverse Plascrete. It may work; it may not. As many decks play Siphon, the odds are in my favor. If they remove tags, then I am being given more tempo windows.

As far as Medical Breakthrough, I think a more reasonable suggestion would be them over Fetal, as the deck is not trying to kill. And I have tried this. And it did not work. Hoping a runner steals an agenda so the next one will be do Braintrust already does (which is be a no advance agenda) seems extremely counter-intuitive. Further, hoping this happens, I then score mine as an effective Braintrust and then hope to see another in no way appeals to me after playing this deck for close to 2 years. Braintrust having no ability is irrelevant to a deck that can, 9/10 put the runner on slamming into a trap or risk losing the game. I never wanna see or play Fetals. They are there to provide more tempo hits. If I have to score one, sure, but Med Breakthrough doesn't cost them 2 creds and and 3 cards, therefore it did not make the cut.

I have not posted the most current list on here, as I am still testing it. I am playing Cortex Lock and 2 Archers now, which has been a massive skull beating for leveraging game states back to where I need them, even at the cost of a 1 pointer.

I hope this provided insight.

Fair enough, and sorry for jumping to conclusions. One final inquiry though: Have you given any thought to using that slot for Biotic Labot? it can have many uses in this deck. Here are just 3 off the top of my head: 1. FA the final agenda needed to win. 2. FA Philotic for a killshot. 3. FA House of Knives if you're swimming in money and have nothing better to do. If you did test it, can you say why you didn't like it? thanks.

Oh btw, I acutally played with this deck today, and really liked it. Very creative. I've been looking for a while for a non-cambridge PE deck as I suck at shell mind games, and your deck is right up my alley. Good job.

@Kroen, glad you like it. I did try Biotic, but San-San being another feint and requiring the runner to blow resources helps keep the wimpier ice relevant.

I have been testing a new version that is playing Eli, Pop-ups, 2 Archers, 2 Cortex Lock, and Mental Health Clinic. The additional Archer is just nutty. Cortex is rad. The deck has some more expected beats, but I esp. like the Mental Healths.