My meta is lousy with keyhole/eater and vamp. My PE deck had a hard enough time against criminal siphon, but now it seems that I have to retire PE until future cards revitalize it. Is there any viable strategy, or is PE not the deck to play at the moment?
PE isn’t in a good spot right now. Between the keyhole/siphon decks, every anarch playing IHW and the abysmal Kate matchup, it’s probably not the best time to try to kill the runner with Net Damage.
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That’s what I feared. Trying to squeeze in swordsman and crisium grid took me too far from my game plan, and IHW is brutal. As a jinteki player, I’m feeling quite distressed…as if RP glacier is the only way to go and still play red
It really depend on what you’re trying to do. If your plan is to win tournaments and play the game at the highest level, unfortunately, there’s not a lot of options out of Jinteki right now : just variation of RP glacier (grail, ashigaru, booth + elp, etc etc etc).
Gonna say that at a kitchen table level, every deck is viable as long as you have fun with it 
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Here’s what’s rattling about in my brain, though:
- Even if you don’t actively try to kill the runner, they still have to respect the ID or risk dying like a moron randomly
- Mega-digs into PE are always a tricky proposition, especially if you don’t know exactly what kind of list you’re up against
- Randomly sniping cards critical to the runner’s plan is a thing that’s real and actually happens
- IHW being used for net damage prevention means they’re not being used for draw acceleration (well, sorta - they still are, but the timing is trickier and the results are a bit more constrained)
With that in mind, I do have a couple lists I’m testing out of PE, and so far they’re not horrible. Would they be better as RP? Maybe, maybe not - further testing needed.
Archived memories is a big deal I feel at the moment. It supports Jackson recursion (to a degree) and helps with just spamming Neurals to pull out the IHW/Deja’s. I’m curious if there are any other decent little snipes in the game to include. Can’t think of any though.
“Randomly sniping IHWs with Neurals” is an activity with a significant resource investment, though (we’re talking all of card slots, clicks and credits). I wouldn’t go through that unless I was trying to be a dedicated kill deck - and on that front I agree with Calim, that’s a rather bad idea to attempt currently.
Yeah totally. I’m just brainstorming. Against Anarchs what I’ve been doing is firing Ronin’s and Neural’s even if I don’t have the kill yet, just to create windows and force them to run less. It has helped in some games, but pretty intensive like you say. Then you can archived them back and keep at it. Another I’ve found quite handy for this idea is housekeeping.
At the moment the best way to get a flatline in PE is to Mushin out multiple cards and have the runner run into a Cerebral trying to prevent the Ronin flatline. The trouble there is the Ronin flatline isn’t as dangerous as it used to be and central pressure is still the surest way to beat PE.
I think PE needs to stay on the shelf a bit. I was able to play it fairly well against the wave of MaxX Eater, but the toolbox Shaper is in ascendancy and Criminals are tanking net damage with Feedback Filter. Too many counter cards are being played routinely to make the archetype competitive. It’s a strongdeck, it’s just the wrong time.
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currently playing around with a list featuring archers and power shutdown. It’s goofy, and probably bad, but I think trying to focus on the “sniping key cards” aspect of PE is a possible way to go here. other cards to fiddle with include (but are not limited to) snoop and invasion of privacy, though traces sometimes seem tough to land in jinteki.
If you’re trying to play only top competition-level decks, there’s not reason to play anything other than RP (and honestly, that goes cross-faction… RP continues to be f-ing ridiculous). If you’re just trying to have fun and win some local games, there’s still play to be had in PE. (also, definitely make room for swordsman. imho it’s fantastic tech right now if your local meta is choked with eaters. throw inazuma or chum in front of it and you’ve got a stew going)
I’m not saying don’t play something you find fun. Most games of netrunner have been fun for me whether I’m doing well or not. But at this point, generally speaking, flatline PE isn’t in a good spot to win games. If you’re in a meta where people aren’t playing IHW, Feedback Filter, Account Siphon, or toolbox Shaper, then it might be a good call, but those things counter flatline PE pretty hard and they are pretty popular at the moment imo.
Again, this isn’t to say you can’t have fun with them. I play PE for fun. I’m saying there’s not much teching in a flatline PE that can make it work well right now, which is what the OP was asking, at least as I understood them. Maybe shutdown could work.
yeah, I started typing that post before yours went up, so I didn’t intend it to be argumentative or anything. You make some good points:
Toolbox shaper is super strong right now, but I think I’m the only one playing it in my meta right now. Orange is relying on IHW (which is more easily handled than I think people give it credit for - a lot of PE decks rely as much on attrition as on the actual flatline) and the criminals around here seem to be finding it harder and harder to splash for a silver bullet (FF) against an archetype that everyone seems to think is dead.
TLDR is that right now you have to size up your meta and either custom fit your PE decks to match (if it’s just Eater and IHW, there are ways to tech and play around them) or decide that your meta is too hostile to it right now (if every crim near you is still splashing FF, and shapers are running rampant, it might be time to fold it in).
You could try Snoop against IHW. I replaced it with Invasion of Privacy in my Argus deck because it combos with Scorch/Punitive better, but Snoop might work better in PE. Even if they’re not running IHW, the counter is still essentially another targeted net damage (that can’t actually flatline, but whatever), and you still get to see their hand every time
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Honestly, in the little bit of proxy playtesting I’ve done, the CP ID seems much better than PE. You lose the agenda ping, but the targeted sniping seems to make up for it. You can pull out their IHW with one-off Neural EMPs, weakening them for a potential flatline later. FF is still a pain to deal with though.
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Yeah, and you can actually play the Chronos ID on OCTGN now. Been able to for about a year actually (it was spoiled with Laramy and The Collective back in Spin).
It feels crazy powerful, but a feedback filter would practically neutralize it. I’m plotting a deck with 3 shutdowns, 2 Archived, and 3 Braintrust, 1 Philotic, and 3 HOK. Wanna install that FF? Better have a Faerie down too or away it goes. Or just watch me score naked 3/2s and HOKs while you get a shutdown proof rig up. We’ll see how it pans out.
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Even with FF, they have to prevent every bit of net you ever do, because the first time each turn they don’t, you snipe a card. Note the IDs use of the game term “suffer” as opposed to the use of “deal” like on Tori Hanzo.
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I’m not sure if that wording would make CP work differently than any of the other cards that trigger off of a turn’s first occurrence. Is there anything that specifies that “suffer” is precisely the resolution of unprevented damage? Otherwise I could see it being the first net damage in a turn, and whether it triggers is based on whether or not it’s prevented.
The runner might be able to self-net damage in later packs, triggering CP but not Tori, but that’s the only case I can think of
I think it’s too make distinct that it’s not the first time they would be dealt damage, it’s the first time they actually take it. The wording’s too different, otherwise, I feel like. If they wanted Feedback Filter to prevent the effect, they’d have written it more similarly. Not that we can confirm for a few months, really, but I’d be surprised if things work otherwise.
But self-harming net damage stuff seems not unlikely, given what cybernetics do with meat and brain damage.
More on topic: I really love PE, but it does seem dead right now. RP does better overall and even IG seems to have more luck with the kill (even if Eater kinda screwed it over some I have hopes that Crick’ll help bring it back).
Maaaybe with Cortex Lock PE can ride again, but Cambridge style seems tricky if the opponent knows what to do, and the reason it became so popular was because of how effective it used to be. Playing around Feedback Filter was more than doable, but Eater + Keyhole is a nightmare for it. A more traditional corp build then just seems stronger out of RP, which makes things awkward for poor Black Tree.
Might see a resurgence when Chronos Protocol hits, many of the tools for CP will benefit PE, even if the attention CP is liable to draw will not.
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Don’t underestimate the difficulty of mega-digs vs PE specifically, even if they’re not running insane amounts of Snares and Shocks.
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