Resource (9)
3 Daily Casts
3 Kati Jones
3 Professional Contacts
Icebreaker (5)
3 Atman
1 Deus X
1 Femme Fatale •
Program (6)
3 Datasucker • • •
3 Self-modifying Code
Congratulations to Justin Kopinsky!
Btw, in his pre-tournament write-up about his Kate deck, Alex gets a mention for his Stimhack article on Professional Contacts for having turned him onto the card’s raw power!
Those lists look to be incredibly well-tuned. I can’t imagine throwing decks together looking like those lists without a vast amount of testing to see if they could actually work well.
I didn’t have the pressure of having to prepare for the tournament and fine tune my shaper deck, but let me just say (only because I’m jumping up and down in excitement at seeing this win) that I was onto the power of running Atman as your primary/only real breaker. I sent @szymkodf a bunch of messages when I early started proxy testing CnC about how insane solo Atman was.
However, what I should’ve listened to was when @szymkodf kept telling me that I should try Professional Contacts in the deck (which I initially thought was an awful card). Then later on, when @Alexfrog did his analysis, I started to be convinced when I saw the raw numbers.
In any case, I wonder if such decks will even continue to be as viable with the new deadly NBN agenda: Character Assassination.
Resource (9)[0]
3 Kati Jones
3 Daily Cast
3 Personal Workshop
Really fascinating for me to see the differences and compare what improvements Kopinsky opted for through testing (and his choice to opt for economic efficiency through Kate, versus I opted for CT for extra Parasite memory). Also gets me jittery excited imagining what I might’ve come up with had I the opportunity to attend a large tournament (and the pressure to fine tune that comes with it).
Having delusions of grandeur, when I had pm’d to @szymkodf the above deck list back at the end of July I raved about it as the greatest thing ever. In a similar excited manner, Kopinsky wrote a bit over a week ago, “I’ve playtested this deck a lot now, and I honestly have no idea what beats it”.
In any case, I was planning to keep this deck a secret until after worlds, but looks like there is no point continuing to hide it.
Resource (8)
3 Daily Casts
2 Kati Jones
3 Professional Contacts
Icebreaker (6)
3 Atman
1 Deus X
1 Femme Fatale
1 Yog.0
Program (12)
2 Datasucker
1 Imp
1 Magnum Opus
2 Parasite
3 Sahasrara
3 Self-modifying Code
I narrowed each side down to a “top three”. On the runner side, those were a Sahasrara Noise list, the above, and an Indexing-focused Andromeda list that I eventually took. I’m still of the opinion that my Andy list is better overall, but a lot of people were taken by surprise by the Atman–they hadn’t taken precautions during deckbuilding, so there were a lot of lists with only str 4/2 ICE.
I am amazed that Hosukai Grid is in the list. I was initially really high on the Hosukai Grid, but it never performed well for me. I prefer always-advance with MOAR RONIN.
i find hokusai solid especially in the same server with fetal. one of my favorite remote servers to try and set up with my jinteki deck is cheap ice -> tollbooth -> fetal/hokusai. a lot of times this just means this remote is never run again and i have to race the rnd lock but i guess thats acceptable.
i too love ronin. mainly because its proactive. you can pull off some wicked plays if you clock the runner discards carefully. whenever you see a copy of a great card go into the trash after the runner has drawn and is discarding down to the end the turn consider popping a ronin. i think its won me a few games i would have been blown out it in.
I also have found Hokusai very solid, especially late game in combination with Fetal. I rarely try to score Fetals early game, so I usually have at least one in my hand. Fetal in a server with Hokusai and protected by 2 Datamines is 6 net damage. With 3 Neural Emps in hand, you’re at 9 net damage. That basically means (baring some kind of jinteki hate) if you get to 5 points, you can drop a Fetal and double advance it, knowing that either the runner gets it and flatlines, or you win the game…
Sure, you can do that without Hokusai, but I find it works better with it…
ETA: Has anyone seen lists for the other top 16 decks? I heard rumors of an innovative J:RP deck I’d love to see the list for.
Identity:
Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core)
Total Cards: (49)
Agenda (11)
Accelerated Beta Test (Core #55) x3
Director Haas’ Pet Project (Creation and Control #4) x1
Efficiency Committee (Creation and Control #5) x3
Gila Hands Arcology (Creation and Control #23) x1
Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus #51) x3
Jimmy likes that Wyrm, and I wasn’t able to convince him of Sahasrara’s superiority :). He’s a strong, strong player. Makes almost no mistakes ever. Wyrm-accelerated Parasite death.