Jinteki - Brainscorch

steevo15 110

With Cerebral Cast being a thing now, I think that Jinteki Scorch decks are a bit more viable. Here's my take.

Strategy

As you can tell, this is a kill deck. Basically the first thing that you want to do is ice up your centrals with something painful, then rush out one of your utility agendas (usually Profiteering and/or House of Knives). Continue to build up your econ (don't be afraid to click for credits), then start looking for your kill pieces. While you are setting up for the kill, continue scoring some agendas to keep the pressure up and hopefully bait the runner into doing something stupid. Use Cerebral Cast to either give the runner enough brain damage to go for the Neural EMP kill, or land a tag for the scorch kill. This deck doesn't always need to flatline, however that is where most of my wins with it have come from. You definitely can still win by scorching agendas, and the 2 pointers really help facilitate that.

Notable Cards

Cerebral Cast - Obviously the workhorse in this deck. Don't start using it till mid game until you at least have an EMP or Scorch in your hand. Like I said, if they are taking brain damage, go for the EMP kill, if you land a tag, scorch them. If you need to, use a combination of both.

Tori Hanzo - She can hurt real bad. She helps you land extra brain damage in addition to what Cerebral Casts gets you. Put her over a server that the runner runs on often. I want to maybe find room for a third copy of her.

House of Knives - Also a very painful card. Combo it with Hanzo for guaranteed brain damage, or pop a counter before a deep R&D dig to threaten the flatline.

Profiteering - This is one of your main sources of econ. Scoring one of these early is very important, and the first one you score you should usually take all three BP. The second one that I score I'll usually only take two BP, and I tend to not score the third. Bonus points if you score a profiteering, then score a clone retirement next turn.

Celebrity Gift - This is an interesting one, because I am still having mixed feelings about it. With this deck, sometimes you don't mind revealing your hand, and sometimes you do. If you haven't been able to land any brain damage, and you have both your scorches in hand, then you usually don't want to use CG. However, if you are trying to go the brain damage/EMP route, showing the scorches in your hand can force the runner to take brain damage instead of a tag from Cerebral Cast. A possible replacement for this card could be hedge fund or restructure.

Problems

One of the main problems that I've been having with this deck is the ice. With such a low ice count, sometimes I'll even go two or three turns without seeing any, and that becomes very problematic. Net shield and Deus X can really cause some problems, Komainu and Ichi try to take care of those things though. Komainu to bait trashing Deus X, and Ichi tries to kill net shield, but they are not always successful at doing so. Speaking of Ichi, I don't know if it's what I should've spent my last 4 influence on.

I'd love to hear suggestions if anyone has any, especially on ice makeup and just general card choice.

1 comments
30 Aug 2014 ItJustGotRielle

I built a similar deck (not as good as this one though) to take to a store tournament tomorrow, and I'm laying in bed the night before desperately searching for something better. This seems to strike a good balance! I wanted something focused on cerebral cast, scorch, and brain damage, so the runner doesn't have any easy choices. The only thing I'm considering to give the deck more speed and pressure is, switching the ichi for two fenris, since bad pub doesn't seem to be an issue. Since I'm removing the program trashing edge, perhaps work in Will'o'the Wisp to create some late game scoring windows.

Now that some time has gone by, how has the deck handled? Hope you can get back to me before noon on the 30th :P