[Personal Evolution] Post O&C

Calimsha · March 20, 2015, 2:22pm

It’s called shutdown PE and it predate the shell game version by 9 months

Calimsha · March 20, 2015, 2:25pm

Doesn’t help you at all against Levy deck. (which is more dangerous to PE than keyhole decks)

Zeromus · March 20, 2015, 2:41pm

I think a successful PE deck these day needs to contain at least one copy of Scorched Earth. Runners are very confident (I’ve Had Worse) and Account Siphon is super rampant. With two brain damage, IHW won’t save from the Scorch. If they end with 4 cards, EMP has a good shot of dodging the IHW, followed by a Scorch.

My 2013 Worlds deck had 2x SE and 1x SEA. This strategy is unexpected out of PE and quite effective.

moistloaf · March 20, 2015, 3:12pm

I don’t agree with SEA, but in this meta I might agree that 1 or 2 Scorched isn’t a bad call.

mendax · March 20, 2015, 3:32pm

I’ve still had reasonable success with Sutdown PE, especially vs MaxX if you can wait until after levy to start shutdowning their breakers from the board, taxing their recursion further.

kiv · March 20, 2015, 4:12pm

Let’s talk about Shutdown PE. IMO it’s a solid Tier 2 deck that could probably be tuned up, or at least get close.

For anyone not familiar with the deck:

The original idea was to beat Andysucker by Shutdown on Datasucker and Faerie so that large sentries could beat Mimic. Getting a single scoring window for Nisei MK II puts you far ahead.
Against Shaper you hope to exhaust their Sharpshooter recursion by killing Clone Chips and/or landing Chronos. This plan also involves praying that don’t have Atman.
Against Anarch you just play 3 Lotus Field, Caprice on HQ if you worry about Siphons, and drink their tears.

Example list:

###[Shutdown PE][1] (49 cards)

[Jinteki: Personal Evolution][2]

Agenda (11)

2 [Chronos Project][3]
2 [Clone Retirement][4]
1 [Fetal AI][5]
3 [Nisei MK II][6]
1 [Philotic Entanglement][7]
2 [The Future Perfect][8]

Asset (5)

3 [Jackson Howard][9] •••
2 [Shock!][10]

Upgrade (2)

2 [Caprice Nisei][11]

Operation (15)

2 [Archived Memories][12] ••••
3 [Celebrity Gift][13]
1 [Fast Track][14]
3 [Hedge Fund][15]
2 [Power Shutdown][16] ••••
3 [Restructure][17]
1 [Subliminal Messaging][18]

Barrier (3)

3 [Himitsu-Bako][19]

Code Gate (3)

3 [Lotus Field][20]

Sentry (10)

2 [Archer][21] ••••
2 [Grim][22]
2 [Neural Katana][23]
3 [Pup][24]
1 [Swordsman][25]

It seems that Stealth Andy is the new Andy and that build cares a lot less about Power Shutdown because their stealth sources are highly redundant.

Calimsha Kate is tough too with Astrolabe being expendable and how bad Lotus Field is against Cyber Cypher.

So let’s think about how we can tune the deck for these matchups, given that O&C gave next to nothing to Jinteki.

x3r0h0ur · March 20, 2015, 4:17pm

Will-o would be good in eater matchups and is okay in all other ones.

I’ve been looking into the old threads of goziks(?) shutdown jinteki the last few days actually, and it looks like its still fairly weak to good shaper play. Are there any good changes to be made since the last versions (from the latest packs)?

moistloaf · March 20, 2015, 4:36pm

Do you think Cortex Lock is a swap for Pup? I’m going to try that swap in my above list. Also been considering just porting the list to Tennin, the extra net damage isn’t too threatening against good players, it mostly just adds to the attrition game, and playing Tennin puts more pressure on Runner to check unadvanced remotes. Would probably want to add Shocks for Archives in Tennin, though.

steve_houston · March 20, 2015, 4:40pm

This version is far too slow for tourney play. I’ve played against it, and it’s strong, but games last far too long with Jinteki when you are sacrificing your agendas to Archer.

steve_houston · March 20, 2015, 4:41pm

Also guys, the Chronos Protocol Jinteki is coming out this cycle, I think that one will be pretty strong, until people start packing their Net Shields. The free information and surgical removal of cards seems potent.

moistloaf · March 20, 2015, 4:42pm

Also if you don’t see Power Shutdown in time you basically just lose, right?

kiv · March 20, 2015, 4:52pm

If they have Eater then they have 3 copies in deck and shouldn’t have much trouble finding another copy. Do you mean to put Keyhole on the bottom?

IMO, every deck is weak to good Shaper play. Possible changes I can think of:

Excalibur: 1x is ok with Caprice. Shaper needs Atman to break.
Ashigaru: probably too expensive for a gearcheck deck, but does tax Lady tokens.
The Twins: cute with extra Archers and Grims. Very situational.
Enigma: doesn’t immediately die to Parasite, can force a tutor use on Cyber Cypher.
Susannoo: also expensive but hard to interact with as it’s not Destroyer or AP.

Cortex Lock is a swap for Neural Katana. I would probably still play Pup. Having something cheap to cover Security Testing is so important.

In my experience the PE version is better. Tennin is very strong against weaker Runners that can’t efficiently make runs, but it loses a lot of power in the big leagues. Buildling a remote spreads your ICE thin and good Runners will just Security Testing or Prepaid + Dirty Laundry into your Archives whenever they need to.

PE will just lucksack people and there’s not much they can do about it.

No, in that case you’re just a worse RP deck. Caprice and TFP are still busted, and you’re playing normal good cards like Gift and Nisei.

hhooo · March 20, 2015, 4:59pm

This deck was always bad against Shaper. It was designed to beat Criminal. Now that Criminal has the redundancy of 8-9 cards that fuel Switchblade, and this deck only runs 2 power shutdown, and still has to beat Faerie on top of Switch, it’s not good against Andy either. It’s probably good against Leela, but it’s still a heavily draw dependent deck, and doesn’t really have much power when you don’t find your shutdowns.

Is it worth updating an Archetype that will only have one ID that it should even theoretically have a good matchup against? Maxx has the recursion and Ice destruction built it, Gimmick Val can keep Archer/Grim from ever getting rezzed to start with. I just don’t see how this concept could work nowadays unless you were playing all Leela, all day.

Tr33beard · March 20, 2015, 5:26pm

I feel like this deck could be good when Chronos Protocol shows up. Being able to snipe breakers and/or recursion from hand with certainty gives its disruption some serious teeth. That being said, we lose the net damage on score which provided some of that disruption. Not sure if it will be good, but I think it will definitely be something to revisit.

kiv · March 20, 2015, 5:30pm

It’s definitely not the winningest deck. I won’t be playing it at Regionals, but I do like to brew decks that play differently from others, which this one does.

I do think that it’s the least bad PE right now in a meta where both Andy + Feedback Filter and Calimsha Kate are extremely favoured against Cambridge PE.

I disagree that MaxX beats this deck. In my experience Chronos Project is pretty easy to score and can reliably deny their Levy and miscellaneous good stuff, which puts MaxX on a clock.

You can manage the insta-Parasite spam by either killing Clone Chips, or killing Datasuckers. Himitsu counters Knifed as well

willlt · March 20, 2015, 9:13pm

I think Shutdown is in a bad place right now. It can still hit standard criminal pretty hard but Silencers give Stealth Andy some resistance. It was never great against Shaper and PPVP with Astrolabe now make it impossible to target a program. Used to be amazing vs Anarch but there is so much recursion and Eater is a major problem.

moistloaf · March 20, 2015, 9:49pm

I have to agree, having played a fair share of Titanism with it. I feel against every faction now it’s rare you’ll get good value out of Shutdown. The hardware clause actually ended up making the card weaker, IMO

tvaduva · March 23, 2015, 4:44pm

Cortex Lock is probably the card I am most worried about. It’s definitely a strong card for Jinteki. And will make a PE deck strong, but I’m not sure if it’ll make it viable in itself.

Does PE Shutdown play Neural Katana? I haven’t see it on any list in a while. I think it’s a swap for most, if not all, Komainu. Save 3 credits, doesn’t tax Mimic, but you need 2 cards (Mimic + datasucker/parasite), to break with Mimic and that’s probably the best solution until the runner uses up all of their MU. Has a similar downside to Komainu, because the runner can control how much damage they take, but CL works in PE Shell Game’s favor where they want the runner to install programs, while they gain credits, set up traps and score some points. Also synergizes with Housekeeping.

bayushi_david · March 23, 2015, 5:11pm

Until Net-Ready Eyes comes out at least.

bahram · April 10, 2015, 4:33pm

Net Ready Eyes is gonna be so good.