noPE... noPE... noPE... 8-5 (4th and 37th) 2022 EACC

MrBuggles 592

nope

Lostgeek: Testing in a big group never goes linearly. It splits up, diverges, meanders, hyper-focuses on dead ends… welcome to one of those. This deck sprung into being when Jakuza and I sat in a voice call one evening and discussed the fate of Jinteki in the current meta and how the new cards offer an exciting new direction for the faction. I did play around with a horrendous Regenesis Jinteki: Restoring Humanity deck before, which managed to cheese out 4 points way more often than it had any right to, but struggled to get to 7. Jakuza in his typical fashion found one asset (Bladderwort) he liked, threw in 20 others and called it “tempo”.

So we compared, discussed, and evaluated cards on their power level. And we found that two things stood out: Mitosis is ridiculous value for 2 clicks. You get 6 clicks of actions and two(!) threats the runner has to respect at once. Way more than Mushin No Shin ever did for us. Secondly, Moon Pool made unadvanced cards dangerous as well, as any “Rashida” you ran could spontaneously combust in a flame of 2 core damage, while filtering your HQ as a happy little accident.

After finishing the call, we opened a thread in our Discord server and over the next few days attracted both TugtetguT and MrBuggles, who showed a morbid interest in our list. I don’t think any of us seriously considered it to be relevant for Continentals at that point, but it felt like a fun little exercise.

[Several hundred messages later… ]

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MrBuggles: After testing basically every corp anyone could think of, we couldn’t find anything that even came close to consistently beating boat.dec. And the games those other corps did win often required an awful lot of mental energy, either squeaking out the narrowest of scoring windows as PD/Asa, or melting your brain with Pinsel’s Ob deck. And none of them were really winning any more consistently than this deck. So Lostgeek and I bravely decided to shift as much of the mental load as we could on to our opponents. Yes it can be coinflippy. But the addition of the new tools (especially Moon Pool) means the corp is definitely flipping a coin that’s weighted in their favour. We also assumed that nobody would be playing Caldera, leaving Stargate and Stoneship Chart Room as the best “tech” we were likely to come up against (Hoshiko with Dreamnet and Steelskin is also a problem, but we didn’t expect to see much of that outside of our testing group).

Lostgeek: One problem we faced while working on this deck was that how you play it depends very strongly on how experienced your opponent is against it. A problem we already slightly faced with other decks, where non-Standard lines became the correct move, because we had played the deck too often against each other, but now turned up to 11. A few of you might have encountered us on one of our many smurfs, actually playing this deck together against random players on jnet, to get a more realistic view on how games during Swiss might look like.

So here are some pointers to how to actually play with and against this deck: Mitosis is your strongest card, so try to spend a good number of clicks simply drawing for it, which will also deliver you good install targets with it. Still, you will have to manually install and double advance cards, to keep a steady flow of threats on the board. A good move can be to first throw out some probing cards like NGO Front to check how likely your opponent is to run double-advanced cards, but be aware that good players will vary/randomise their patterns.

Landing a Cerebral Overwriter makes the game much easier, so try a variety of ways of landing it, including manually advancing, Mitosis, and unadvanced tricks with Moon Pool to move counters at instant speed. Speaking of Moon Pool, it is a very strong card that wants to survive on the board undetected. Try to deter runs on it by also regularly installing unadvanced cards like Stings and Snares.

Generally you will find yourself scoring out in about half the games you win. Kills typically happen when the Runner tries to play aggressively and overextends to one of your hidden threats.

When playing against it, be ready to take some risks. You will eat some number of Snare! and Urtica Cipher, but not interacting with the Corp leads to them being able to set up traps that you will be forced to check later on with the added threat of Moon Pool turning it into a bigger problem.

MrBuggles: PS. yes I did ID twice and get to run in my first three games in the cut. No I am not ashamed.

Replays Round 1: Lostgeek vs Oneiromancer (Sable) - win: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1580545265?t=00h28m44s

Round 2: Lostgeek vs Baa Ram Wu (Lat) - win

Round 4: Lostgeek vs Heinzel (Lat) - loss

Round 3: MrBuggles vs Matuszcak (Lat) - win

Round 5: MrBuggles vs Pinsel (Padma) - loss

Round 6: MrBuggles vs Guiot (Lat) - win

34 comments
7 Sep 2022 percomis

NPE = NWE Personal Evolution

Congrats on the finish!

7 Sep 2022 pspacekitten

800+

7 Sep 2022 lostgeek

Proud to say that after the cut-off for that graph, we've quickly broken the 1k message barrier.

Great finish @MrBuggles! It was very fun theorycrafting with you!

7 Sep 2022 Council

Such a lovely deck. Thank you for giving PE some time in the sun. I always laugh when I randomly die to it.

7 Sep 2022 JackMade

Nope!

7 Sep 2022 Council

I do feel that piloting PE also takes A LOT of mental load from both players. Definitely a feat to run it in a 7 round tournament, even with IDs.

7 Sep 2022 Tamijo

nope

7 Sep 2022 thebigunit3000

I'd like to ask the burning question on everyone's minds:

Is this Grinder?

7 Sep 2022 MrBuggles

Only if the Runner wants it to be 😉

7 Sep 2022 Jakuza

This is tempo.

7 Sep 2022 Diogene

This is now one of my favorite list! Thanks!

7 Sep 2022 anarchomushroom

well, not touching jnet casual for a few weeks now

7 Sep 2022 dnddmdb

Really loving the new directions Jinteki decks have taken. They don't even tilt me as much as the old stuff did.

Also, a simply marvelous writeup. Thanks for giving us a window into the testing process!

8 Sep 2022 percomis

Is this Grinder?

I know the comment was made to jest, but to add a bit of detail to that (and the other guys can correct me if I'm wrong), there will be games where you have to grind out your opponent. We saw that a couple of times during testing, for example against Esa with Obelus where you can't really realistically kill them with a combination of cards.

However the decks that protect themselves by drawing cards (Stoneship, Obelus) seem to like to draw quite much, so when they do run low on cards in their deck, you can shift focus to just making as much damage as you can (compared to setting up a kill turn) so that they can't steal the points they need and eventually die.

8 Sep 2022 lostgeek

Yeah. This can grind, but does not want to. If the runner has too much protection (Stoneship and Obelus as mentioned) or simply does not bite any of the Cerebral Overwriters and rather just tanks some Urtica Cipher instead, you quickly get into a situation, where the Stack becomes single digits and grinding becomes way more enticing. It does a rather bad job at grinding though and those games typically go down to the wire.

8 Sep 2022 ataraxis

thanks for making me believe in PE again, after it reemerged from the (ban)-grave!

8 Sep 2022 napalm900

Otoroshi'ing an agenda is just such fun mind game

9 Sep 2022 Labbes

"Yeah. This can grind, but does not want to." can't believe I'd find my ace spiritual animal in a PE deck

9 Sep 2022 Diogene

Could Kakurenbo be useful in this deck? It could complement Mitosis.

Of note, this deck is making me waver for what to bring to World 2022. I do really like shell game in PE, (again) great ideas here.

9 Sep 2022 JakeHelms

I love this list.

9 Sep 2022 MissPanic

I tried this yesterday and it runs so smoothly, I'm still learning, but it felt so good to play. A great deck

9 Sep 2022 MrBuggles

@Diogenewe half-heartedly considered kakurenbo, especially because it has fun interactions with Moon Pool, but eventually decided it was too much effort for it to be worth the slot…

9 Sep 2022 Frank

I haven't played this deck yet but all these comments have put it on my to do list!

9 Sep 2022 Diogene

What is the reasoning behind not putting Trick of Light in the deck?

10 Sep 2022 MrBuggles

@Diogene It’s been in and out of the deck constantly, but surprisingly often it does very little, and it’s hard to cut any of the existing cards. Fast advancing Regenesis or Sting isn’t that exciting, so it’s mainly there to score House of Knives out of hand, and it’s hard to cut something else just for that ability

10 Sep 2022 gilesdavis

Congratulations, this deck has forced me into quitting Netrunner.

Can someone please wake me up when PE isn't every second game on jnet k cheers

10 Sep 2022 Diogene

@MrBuggles thank you for answering my questions, I really like the deck and I'm trying to understand some points about it.

How do you deal with Stargate or Diversion of Funds. With PE being encountered often on Jnet, it would seem the natural defense against it, aside from Apocalypse. In faction, Hokusai Grid is generaly used.

From my play experience, you just put as much threat on the board as possible to "out race" the runner taking out things from your R&D (with Moon Pool and Spin Doctor). But I wanted to know if there was something else I was missing.

Thanks again!

10 Sep 2022 Diogene

Also, do you think Gene Splicer could be good here?

11 Sep 2022 Two_EG

Now I only install killer breaker when I encounter PE decks on Jnet :P

11 Sep 2022 gegenzeit

Congrats! Now please #banPE :)

11 Sep 2022 Maww

Trick of Light may not be competitive but it does allow you to get the fabled 6 advanced card in 1 turn. Mitosis out a clearinghouse/cerebral + moonpool. Trick of Light from moonpool onto trap. Moonpool 2 agendas to get a 6 advanced clearinghouse/cerebral and now the runner has a 50/50 to not lose the game

11 Sep 2022 MrBuggles

@gilesdavis sorry to hear that – I suspect it will soon be supplanted by an Econ Warfare HHN deck with Urban Renewals, along with people constantly asking for takebacks because they misordered their start of turn/Ob triggers. Perhaps that’s more to your liking?

11 Sep 2022 MrBuggles

@Diogene Stargate is the biggest issue, for sure, and there’s not really a good way of dealing with it, to be honest.

If Criminal had any presence in the meta I just wouldn’t play this deck. You can’t beat Steve recurring diversions and playing Caldera!

So in summary, no you aren’t missing anything, but all corps have problems right now!

27 Oct 2022 Gaurav

@MrBuggles I'd love to study these replays but unfortunately the links seem to be down. Any chance you still have them on hand?