I think Cerebral Casts is only valid where both options can be very bad for the runner. Obviously they don’t know you haven’t got scorched earth to back it up, but if they suspect you don’t then clearly taking the tag is correct. It’s hard to fit it all in. I think Bad Times might be good for this sort of job.
As an aside, I hadn’t seen the strength of synergy between TFP and Punitive until this thread. That looks like an interesting game.
Bullfrog seems like such a lot of fun - I’d still quite like to whirlfrog someone to death, even just once… but probably not in Nisei.
Apologies for bringing up a long-inactive thread (should it be a new one?), but with the new asset and ice, I’m wondering what people’s thoughts are on the right direction for Nisei Division. I’m thinking of leaning towards a glacier-y (some rush, maybe) build – you have a low-cost barrier, you have Caprice and Nisei MkII for ending runs, and Upayoga can drain money or pull off some fun tricks with other Psi ice. I took a clumsy first (second, really, if you count pre-23 Seconds) stab at it here:
Hyoubu should maybe be a 3-of, but, while it’s a nice bit of economy, it should never be necessary with your 1-credit back ability.
NAPD Contract is iffy. Lots of film critics. Might be better as a Philotic or a couple useful 3/1s.
Voter Intimidation has been somewhat useful in past attempts. Since you’re not clearly trying to tag and kill the runner, they often don’t have a problem running down the money to grab an agenda, figuring they have time to rebuild before you can score a 4/2 or 5/3. Cerebral Casts, on the other hand, really has to be built around to make both threats work, so I’ve found it less valuable.
I used to include Eli, but there’s a lot of Strength 4 ice here, so 4tman is a problem. Hence the Spiderwebs. And the Sandburgs to screw up cost calculations.
On occasion, I’ve needed to end the run with an Upayoga, making for an iffy psi game with Snowflake. Mother Goddess lets you stick an unconditional EtR in there instead, so I want to give it a try.
I’ll probably miss Batty. If anything, I figure it’s probably between him and the Sandburgs.
Recurring credits are nice with Nisei Division. I used to use PAD campaigns, and they were fine, but the no-cost MHC might help with siphon recover. I suppose I could always go the next step, drop Architect for a second Crick (the way it was before), and drop Celebrity Gifts for Sweeps Weeks to capitalize on increased hand size.
I love that corp, it’s my favorite corp last two monthes.
Batty grail is life.
And Dedicated Neural Net totally shutdown Criminals.
Dedicated / Chetana / Upayoga / Voter intimidation were really great Mumbad additions for this ID. Upayoga and Voter are really sick cards.
I think it’s #4 or 5 best Jinteki ID now (competing with RP, PE, Palana and IG is hard).
I admit that I hadn’t been thinking of the Grail suite. Do you use the full 9 influence and a lone Excalibur, or do you just use the more damaging parts?
Full 9/no excalibur/Jackson/triple interns and 3 fancy inf. Sometimes rototurrets / archived mem. Lately Lizzy Mills and an unused inf (Cobras kills, or Roto, depends of the mood).
Hyoubu’s a weird card. It basically just invalidates your own boardstate from consideration of how to bid. So, the Corp is able to bid all 3 values equally without concern for their own credit pool or how the board looks. This is strong, and yet, doesn’t actually help you with winning those games, unless you fearlessly still bid 0. (By the way you should probably bid 0 a little more often with Hyoubu rezzed…) Like all Psi games, it becomes a weird mini-game. Like so:
I can bid 2 without caring! It’ll make the runner have to pay 2 just to beat my psi game! But most runner economies can withstand that kind of hit, and bidding 2 is an obvious choice… No one would expect me to rez a Hyoubu and then bid 0, right? Well, by that logic, there’s absolutely no reason to ever bid just 1 credit, since 2 is banking on draining runner econ, and 0 is banking on Mind Games… But if that’s true, then 1 is an even further Mind Games play…
At the end of the day, Psi games with Hyoubu are still the same as Psi games without… Is your opponent better than you? Bid 2. Are they worse than you? Bid 0. Are they about equal skill? Bid 1. (Respectively: If your opponent is better, it’s best to play the Economy game instead of the Mind Game. If they’re worse, level 1 Mind Game works. If they’re equal skill, gotta go with level 2 Mind Game.) After the first psi game, roll a die, then ignore it and bid 2.
While I think Psi is actually in an ok place (Caprice + upay + chetana + mother is a nightmare), I don’t think nisei divison is ever going to be the go to?
Palana seems so much better in that it’s drip econ that triggers most turns and can be spent on anything, vs nisei’s very conditional trigger that means you’ll usually spend it on a psi game (and if you didn’t you have to bet 0).
The one thing that maybe saves this is the new research facility card.
Anyways my current deck uses psi ice well, but it’s palana and uses closed accounts + reversed accounts to keep the runner econ in “need to care about the game” land. I don’t think i’d ever consider switching to nisei, even if I added more psi triggers, simply because I feel like you’re then screwed if you hit a runner who’s willing to play solitaire and just set up while trying to trigger as few games as possible.
I really think nisei needs:
More psi ice with non psi game options. Upayoga is a great card, and being able to fire a real ETR, 1 net damage, or gain 2 can be really really helpful
Better ways to force psi games if the runner decides not to run. Either something like NBN’s 5/3 that can force traces, or an asset that if ignored/protected lets you turn clicks into psi games for advantages. Otherwise I feel you’re forced to build some never advance style to try and get the runner to trigger psi games more frequently, because if they aren’t you’d be better off in palana.
I think Nisei Division is similar to NBN: Making News is that its real power is not an economic advantage but simply being able to play cards you normally wouldn’t be able to, Namely, it allows you to play with Snowflake (Great right now) and Upayoga, which is amazing.
It also boosts The Future Perfect, Caprice and Voter Intimidation which is very nice. You can’t get drained out of credits by playing PSI games which matters far more than it seems at first glance.
I’ve been toying with the identity a fair bit on Jinteki though the build I have listed right now is obnsolete and actually complete jank:
Agenda (8)
1 Corporate Sales Team
1 Global Food Initiative ●
3 Nisei MK II
3 The Future Perfect
Asset (9)
1 Aggressive Secretary ●●
2 GRNDL Refinery ●●●●
3 Jackson Howard ●●●
3 Melange Mining Corp.
ICE (17)
3 Ashigaru
1 Chetana
1 Crick
2 Enigma
1 Mother Goddess
1 Pup
3 Snowflake
3 Upayoga
2 Wall of Static
Operation (11)
2 Archived Memories ●●●●
3 Hedge Fund
3 Restructure
3 Voter Intimidation
Upgrade (4)
3 Caprice Nisei
1 Mumbad City Grid
The problem with the deck is that it’s short on money. You rush very well, have cheap ICE and Melange so it’s not obvious at first, but after a while you realize that around 15% of your games you are poor and there are no games you are rich. You don’t have drip economy and it shows.
It’s also a very foward deck, you have to bluff/Caprice your way through and lead the Runner in. Otherwise you don’t make the best out of your ICE. I like it that way, though, it’s easy to make people hit ambushes lately.
It also works better with 3 Corporate Sales Team, I’ll even take them over Nisei MkII. Madness, I know but you really need the cash. Oh, and Archived Memories+Voter Intimidation is hilarious
Nisei Division’s power is not the economy it brings long term, but the burst economy you can potentially have. If you can bid over and over again, psi becomes better. This is why I hate seeing scorch lists, as there is no reason to play scorch just because you get an extra credit on the off chance that the runner loses the psi game, takes the tag, doesn’t have protection, and you need just one more credit to scorch kill. That’s silly. Scorch is probably best played out of Palana. Nisei is better for rushing or program destruction builds, as psi games work better without breakers, and they are still taxing with them, much like HB Bioroids.
That rant being over, I think there’s a Sandburg build to be made in Nisei Division, so maybe it could just be a weird deck identity it was always meant to be
The Cerebral Cast builds I’ve seen keep recurring them (Jackson, Allele Repression, Clone Suffrage Movement, etc.), so it makes sense to me that they would play it in Nisei. You should have a way to answer them if they call your bluff and start taking the tag instead of brain damage.
Cast is one of the few ways to proactively play the psi game, which Nisei wants. So it might not be worth it if you just do it a couple of times, but if you play it a bunch times, it makes sense.
How often are you really playing CC that it becomes an economic advantage? With Hyoubu out, you could have cost-less psi games in any Jinteki ID, and probably still make more money with Palana.
I agree with cmcadvanced that Nisei’s strength is not in overall economic advantage, but in how it swings the psi game math for this turn and the next one (if I’m understanding correctly), both because of the psi games themselves and because Snowflake and Upayoga have favorable rez/break ratios. Once the runner has breakers out, they generally (I’ve found) don’t want to take the gamble, especially when you can (net) pay 1 to make them to pay 2 to get through each subroutine–and maybe, on occasion, just bid differently to keep your funds up and get one to hit.
With Snowflake, Upayoga, and Caprice being your strongest psi cards (and Voter Intimidation, which is strong but situational), I think I’ll aim to play around with some Batty-Destroyer rush, to focus on the early, low-cost ice advantage. Sandburg seems good to push the opponent into psi games rather than just paying to break ice, so that’ll probably go in with some burst economy, too.
If I wanted to go full jank, I would include mostly ice that gave an economic advantage like Errand Boy and pop-up and every single psi ice to maximize the chances of you winning one of them, and having enough small ice that you can consistently rez and win psi games. Plus fetal AI and chrysalis to potentially kill the runner with mamba or chetana occasionally. If you wanted to go full jank of course
I’m not saying that Cerebral Cast and Scorch is a the best strategy for Nisei. What I’m saying is if you want to play Cerebral Cast spam, Nisei is a reasonable ID to play it in. And, Scorch is a good win condition if you’re spamming Casts.
You can probably get 3-7 uses of CC if you’re on the spam plan. But, you still have all the psi ice, upgrades, and field as well. That should be enough to make the ID worth playing. And, since you’re on the CC-spam plan, the goal isn’t to have an economic advantage, because you don’t need that to land the kill compared to SEA/Midseason/HHN Scorch archetype.
The release of Hyoubu doesn’t invalidate Nisei, just like Sahasarara\MacroDrive doesn’t invalidate Kate, Scrubber doesn’t invalidate Whizzard, Primary Transmission Dish doesn’t invalidate Making News, etc. There’s an inherit value with getting the ability from turn 1 and not relying drawing the right card.
My current list. As always it’s basically Nisei rush, not glacier. So a lot of event econ, and yes I need all of those.
I used to play pop-up as well but people don’t run often enough to be worth it anymore.
No asset econ because they are too unreliable vs Sec testing and there is too much asset hate anyways. Also they are often too slow.
No HRF because it’s a trap!!! Most of the times that card is worse than MHC and even MHC was not good enough.
Why I think “Nisei Rush” is better out of Nisei than Palana:
You get 1 cost Wall of Statics
Upayoga is amazing
If you go full rush, you don’t get the full potential out of Palana anyways
Runner keeps running Caprice remote, they are not getting you poor.
Noise trashed a TFP or a runner sees it first click on top of naked R&D. You can actuallly contest it and try to safe it or at least waste as much time as you can.
I agree with you on HRF. I don’t think this card should be put in Nisei decks, but horizontal Psi, an archetype that do not exist in the first place.
I would replace one Restructure by one Interns in your deck. I play Batty Grail with 3 Interns, it’s awesome
Yeah 2 interns is great. I used to always play with a second interns and I loved it. It gets back a caprice, a batty to annoy crims or even just ICE vs dumblefork. Had to cut one card for the Voter Intimidation.
There are times I really miss the second one.
I guess cutting one restrucure wouldn’t hurt the deck. Will try it for sure.
