A newbie's farewell: Tag me baby one less time

pouchsurfer 334

A newbie's farewell to rotating IDs: Jesminder Sareen: Girl Behind the Curtain

I've been playing the game seriously for ~ 6 months, and it breaks my heart to see so many IDs rotating with the new Borealis cycle coming soon. So I've decided to take a peek behind the curtain and take a look at a sneaky runner.

Most of the credit for this list goes to sanjay, an outspoken supporter of Jesminder's, and authors of this list, which mine is heavily based on. I swapped some anarch toys for a plushy friend, replaced luxury cars for a fashion piece, and introduced a couple ways to deal with pesky ice and corps in a rush.

"Tag me baby one less time"

Having a Citadel Sanctuary built into our ID would be already pretty great. How about it firing every run instead of at the end of turn? And what if we could not worry about money? No annoying traces, and money wars with the corp. We just don't care about a tag, once per run. Pretty sweet.

Even sweeter is leveraging tags to our advantage. Not running against NBN? Let's bring them tags from home! * Maya turns tags into pseudo-multiaccess. * Hot Pursuit makes us loads of money, without giving up access. And that tag? Jes-min-der just-don't-care.

"Girls don't wanna have Fun"

Funhouse completely shuts us down. Jesminder's ability is not a may, so we must avoid the first tag. And if we take no tag, Funhouse says we shall not pass. That's not fun at all. Luckily, we learned some cybetricks from our Invasive friend. Hunting Grounds lets us bypass on encounter abilities. No more Unfunhouses, Tollbooths, or cheecky Brainstorms.

"That's why in front of your eyes I'm invisible"

Again, this was Sanjay's idea, so I won't take credit for it but rather celebrate how brilliant it is. Thematically, it makes a lot of sense to have a stealth-based Jesminder. And considering we're going to be running a lot to avoid all those tags, having a versatile and extremely efficient decoder seems like a good idea. Taka and Mantle fuel our Net Mercur, which gives us money or cards, whichever we need most.

"All they wanna do is BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!, cha-ching and take your money"

We're good at hiding, but we're bad at dodging bombs and bullets. When the bad news hit, it's good to have a way out. Keeping a Self-modifying Code on the table gives us the flexibility to clear a bunch of tags or pull out a clots in a pinch.

"Can't stop starin' at those ocean eyes"

Sure we're running cheaply once we're set up, but we often want to commit to a big-run turn. Maybe we get our wallet nice and full, install that Penrose and plan on popping the Simulchip to cycle our Gauss to maximize on those "remainder of the turn" effects. And there's nothing less impressive than running big to access just one card. Maya helps, but takes multiple runs. Our 1x Turning Wheel also helps, but it's not quite enough. One option is to include the Eye, which synergises well with Maya. But here I ended up going with Deep Dive, which is intended as a closer. If we can leverage the Beth click, and go wide on our big turn, we're likely to pick up the last 2/3 points.

Thanks for sticking with me until this point. This is by far not an optimized deck, but it's very fun to play. And of course as a new (and pretty bad) player, I'm always happy to get some feedback!

3 comments
3 May 2022 pouchsurfer

After a little more playtesting, and consulting with Jesminder luminary @sanjay, dropping a Hunting Grounds for a DJ Fenris might be a good tweak to try

3 May 2022 Diogene

This is the best title for a Jesminder deck! Also, could Security Nexus be good with the ID? This would allow you to face heck with no consequences whatsoever.

Thanks for sharing.

4 May 2022 pouchsurfer

Haha, thanks @Diogene! :) The list rn runs on little money, leveraging stealth credits. I think for Security Nexus to work you'll have to rearrange influence for and ways to install it cheaply (Kiting or Creativity?). And with HG+SMC down you can facecheck with relative impunity.