I have no idea if what I’m trying is any good, but when thinking about breaker denial, hitting all the breakers is just too hard. So my thought is, why not only aim for one? Kill the killer and run all sentries!
13 influence spent (max 15-2☆=13)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Salsette Island
Bio Ethics is great because if they don’t run, you still do a net damage. If they do run, you can hit them with a Neural Emp.
I often get to the point where I can lock people out their heap with a blacklist behind a guard.
The problems are . . . . Anarchs. Ugh. Criminals are fun because so many are running Mongoose. Just stack sentries. People will often run through Architects without breaking.
That’s a reasonable approach. How do you deal with it once their killer is on the board, though? Batty + elite psi games skills?
I highly recommend house of knives (really puts a crimp in runner plans when scored early), cortex lock (absolutely brutal to facecheck, only 2 to rez), and shock (nothing in your list punishes deep R&D digs or farming archives for datasucker/security testing/desperado).
Mother Goddess might also be worth a look as well if you find yourself short of end-the-run ice (and it will typically just be a 4-rez, 4-strength straight-up ETR sentry).
I tried to focus on cheap ETR across all types (with the aim of scoring behind whatever’s safe at the moment), but knowing that you just have to focus on sentries is good-- swordsman can take care of the rest.
Batty and Psi. I figure so many Jinteki decks live or die by Psi games that it didn’t matter.
One of the biggest issues is the sheer volume of toys to deal net damage. What are the best ones for each deck? So far, I have liked the really low agenda density. There are lots of cards that can be great in Chronos (shock, snare, HoK, hokusai grid) but at some point I had to make cuts.
All that said, the deck is super new and I am testing the current iteration more before making any big changes.
Hats off for trying Chronos. Chronos was my pet project when it first came out, until I bailed on it.
There is definately too much recursion in the meta for the deck to really take off, although there is also a few cards that have me excited to try it again. Namely Salem’s and Cobra.
Cobra and Batty seem like they would work very well together.
Salem’s seems like a no brainer.
I guess the hardest part is finding a balance. Maybe after Salem comes out in pack 6?
Seems like Aiki is a real shot in the arm (1 to rez, 3-strength, psi for a draw and then hit them). Chrysalis might be helpful also as a worse version of shock (but another way to ping net damage without paying for it…wish it worked from archives). Vanilla is also a great gear-check ice if you’re going for a rush-y strategy.
I haven’t really tried CP in the last few months, though-- moved onto other things shortly after my last post here in May.
Oh, but then again paperclip is seeing a lot of play so this is totally non viable (assuming black orchestra and the other from the heap breaker are even remotely playable).
Since fracters are part of Anarch’s slice of the pie, Paperclip will probably be noticeably more efficient than its counterparts. You could probably get some distance out of focusing on code gates and/or sentries. Blacklist and/or Chronos Project could help, too.
That’s a good point. I remember seeing some “undecodable” lists a while ago that focused on breaker-denial and ETR code gates. That would probably have a better chance at working.
I hear you on chronos project + blacklist, but I always found it too hard to line them up and permanently lock out the runner than it was to rely on short-term scoring windows. They definitely help and are worth including, but making them central to the deck’s strategy was just too fiddly for me.
Fair enough. 3/1s, in particular, are risky. But you’d only need enough to back you up against Anarchs running the conspiracy decoder. That and Shaper recursion. Maybe there is too much recursion to make a shutout better than pressure through speed and painful-to-facecheck ice.
I haven’t put together a list yet, but I was thinking of seeing if a horizontal version worked. Hostile Infrastructure, Bio-Ethics Committee, 2-3 blacklists, some asset economy (and/or temples) to keep it all running, perhaps. On the ice side, you have Quandary and Vanilla for cheap ETRs, And you could have some psi fun with Aiki, Mamba, and Upayoga giving you unconditional net damage on cost-efficient ice.
Maybe that’s too much setup. I guess I’ll get around to trying it to see if maybe it’s halfway workable.
My prior experiments with CP have told me that relying on ICE to do your net damage is not a viable strategy.
Additionally, trying to take out breakers from hand during a run also doesn’t work, because they won’t run with the breaker in hand. They’ll install it instead and then run.
To me, this actually does line up quite well with an Asset-based strategy. (Hokusai Grid in particular is great.) The reason is that if they run on your assets without dropping breakers, they’ll have them in hand in order to be hit with net. If they drop the breakers and then run, they shouldn’t have the econ to trash your assets.
I believe the list would end up looking similar to a Gagarin or NEH Asset-Spam list, not as much an IG list. Also you could probably get away with porting in Rototurrets and Encryption Protocols to get Jeeves.
While I don’t think playing it like IG is the best idea, I think you have some good reasons to use some of their cards.
Bio-Ethics Association lets Chronos Protocol pluck a card out of the runner’s grip even when they’re playing it safe. Maybe you don’t need 3, but 2 would be nice. I wouldn’t look to lock out the runner by having 2+ rezzed at once; keep one hidden so you can keep threatening key cards.
Hostile Infrastructure makes the runner extra cautious about trashing your assets (and it’s expensive for them to install something important first and then pay to trash HI).
As long as you’re protecting it with HI (and maybe Encryption Protocols), asset economy is preferred, but you could go a lot of different ways with it, not necessarily Temple. Rezzing HI is expensive, though, which makes me wonder if Temples might be worth it, anyway. Alternatively, Mental Health Clinic could give you more targets (or it could make it easier for the runner to hold duplicates, making your job tougher).
You don’t want a long game (too much access to recursion), so parts of the IG suite such as Museum are right out.
As for out of faction cards, 2-3 blacklists and 3 Jackson Howards puts you very close to being able to include the Salem’s Hospitality, which could work very well with a damage on your turn from Bio-Ethics or Neural EMP. Rototurrets and Encryption Protocols are cards you can use on their own and would let you include Jeeves in the same deck.
And that’s where I run into my problem every time. Too many things I want to include to make it work. Maybe the speed from Jeeves is what you need more than more card elimination. Has anyone had success using it to never-advance Improved Protein Source?
I tried the defracter version of this since we got a couple of pieces recently that make this easier. Namely - Paperclip is played into the bin by a lot of people, Aiki is a nice facecheck to force extra cards into the runner’s grip, and Vanilla is fantastic.
My current list was for experimenting with certain cards:
I think I want to drop a couple of the barriers (probably one of the wraparounds and one of the himitsu bako) and add a couple of swordsman. The numbers are all out of David range and spread out for Atman. 24/7 can either be a surprise Project or a surprise Philotic. The rest of the deck is all over the place, but I definitely missed certain cards like Wisp. Also wanted to put in a Bio-Ethics but couldn’t find the slots and felt like it would never fire.
Haven’t tried it yet, but I do think that fast track → install agenda is a pretty strong play when you have an opening and you know what they have in their grip, and that leaves you with a free click to advance protein once and score next turn (or never-advance it if you have jeeves). Improved protein source seems like it will be a nice way to get the density down in R&D.
Now there’s some lemons-into-lemonade thinking! Nice thinking with making the heap a worse place to stash paperclip than anywhere else.
How have you been finding Chrysalis? I was viewing it as a worse version of shock since it can be defused for 1 credit with mimic and doesn’t fire from the bin, but I haven’t played with it much.
I put it in the deck before I cut down on my traps. Honestly this probably needs to go back to having three shocks and Chrysalis is probably what makes that happen.
Other (2)
2x Data Mine(Core Set)
15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Blood Money
Played two games won both, but on Casual room… And against Nasir and Leela. Against Nasir, I started rushing behind a Rototurret + Batty, and when he finally ran on it with 0 credits I rezzed both and fired Batty during Approach… Nuked his rig somethin fierce and he conceded. Against Leela, I had a very odd draw where I ended up turtling on the Centrals and slowly throwing out bait assets/agendas to see what she would and wouldn’t run on. Then ended up having 2x Bio-Ethics + Hostile Infrastructure and she ended her turn on 1 card and died. Very weird.
Definitely need further testing but for now it feels pretty slick. Everything’s pretty cheap so I just need one econ card to supply the Pain Train.
Two more games, two more wins… However I can identify play mistakes from my opponents, so I’m not confident in the deck yet. It at least has some legs, but whether it walks, runs, or crawls yet is to be seen…
Aiki is a bit weird. It hasn’t fired yet; runners keep breaking all the subs…
Rototurret+Batty is ridiculously good. Like, I forgot how good this was.
If I were to make changes, I’d try to sneak a 2nd Hostile Infrastructure. Card is good to me every time I draw it. Since we’re seeing less AI, might drop a Swordsman? I’m still worried about DLR or Keyhole/Eater decks.
It is basically a gagarin deck ported over to Chronos Protocol. But between live and jinteki I’m 6/6 with it. The deck is designed to score out while forcing the runner to loose additional tempo using the Chronos ID ability. Political Dealings combined with DBS allows for a very interesting scoring train in the mid-game. I haven’t yet played a DLR or Keyhole deck yet, and I agree that it is a major concern.
Though skorpios is undoubtedly a better ID for a rigshooter-type deck, chronos protocol has gotten a couple of decent support cards recently (recently = since last august / Blood Money).
Ben Musashi: Even if you can’t set up the unsteal-able obokata, this raises the stakes/tax on other agendas.
Georgia Emelyov: seems probably too clunky, but maybe playable. Then again, most net damage ICE doesn’t ETR, so I’m not sure what role an additional 1 net ping plays when you have a server that is actually keeping the runner out.
On the other hand, rotation has claimed Shock, which was really helpful for keeping R&D spiky without costing you. Chrysalis is pretty bad in comparison, probably better to just put in Breached Dome.
I imagine the ID is still worse than pretty much any of the other Jinteki IDs, but it seems maybe less bad than it was pre-Red Sands. I’m thinking a rushy deck that leans on SfT to get the first or second agenda scored, and uses stacked net damage to tax the runner out of stealing obokata for the finisher.
Anybody pulled this one out of the binder recently?