My wife refuses to give up playing Power Shutdown PE, and her resilience seems to be working out with The Valley legal now. She finished 3rd in a tournament on Tuesday, netting two flatlines with Cortex Lock itself.
We wonder if Clot may in fact make Power Shutdown a little better. She noticed players spending their tutors/recursion to retrieve Clot against her, which made them more vulnerable to having their breakers be Shutdown and not having a method of getting them back quickly.
I have no clue, surprised me as well. I’m assuming whichever opponent of hers that was doing it was concerned with Clone Retirements (seems a waste of Clot in that case) or 2/2 Medical Breakthroughs (okay, that’s fair) sneaking past him.
Not so certain, actually - if you’re dealing with an attrition PE list, having all your runs be free is a huge boon: your Daily Casts and Sure Gambles become extra hitpoints
Have been testing lots on old-school shell game PE and I’m finding that with less MaxX about, 2 Crisium and 2 Archived Mems, this deck is working just fine again. Maybe not as strong as it was, but its still got a lot of game.
I’m just starting to play around with shell game PE a little and was wondering what people thought about using contract killer as an influence spend instead of scorched earth? Because it only requires 2 advancement tokens before you can fire it there is the potential to catch a runner unaware.
3 advanced and 2 advanced card on your side can all of a sudden do 5 damage without the runner having to run.
A double ronin would take a turn longer, and if you are sitting on 4 advance + 3 advance the runner is more likely to take evasive action.
also with less crim = less account siphon = less tags to get a scorched off.
although snare -> false lead -> scorch is always nice.
sample list:
Jinteki: Personal Evolution
Agenda (12)
1x Chronos Project
3x False Lead
3x Fetal AI
2x House of Knives
1x Philotic Entanglement
2x The Future Perfect
Asset (14)
2x Cerebral Overwriter ••••
2x Contract Killer ••••• •••
3x Jackson Howard •••
2x Psychic Field
2x Ronin
3x Snare!
Operation (12)
3x Hedge Fund
3x Medical Research Fundraiser
3x Mushin No Shin
3x Neural EMP
Code Gate (6)
2x Lockdown
2x Quandary
2x Yagura
Sentry (5)
3x Cortex Lock
2x Komainu
15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway
Assuming Mushin shell game is not the best way to play PE – and maybe it is – what are the mindsets you need to play PE well?
I have this hunch that you need to leverage net damage as a tax on the runner. You don’t expect to kill the runner, although you will given an opening, but to slow their game enough to open up windows to score.
Or am I wrong and the point of PE is just to shuffle three cards together and install all three without looking at them?
There are different ways to play PE. I use a kill deck that leverages high threat face down remotes to create no-win choices for the runner. Mushin is key in terms of click compression and economy. I have developed my deck over years, so I would be happy to elaborate on my style of PE.
Taxing PE is a thing, too. This tactic drains the runner deck of resources and strains recursion, hopefully running out of tools quicker than they can find or use them.
PE is not really about random installs, but three face down naked installs can be an intimidating tactic.
PE is primarily a kill deck. You should try to score aggressively because it puts pressure on the runner; an advanced remote is much scarier when you’re on 4 points and threatening to win. That said, the kill is a better win condition in my experience. It’s like the flip side of Supermodernism where the threat of killing the runner allowed you to score out; the threat of scoring out allows you to kill the runner.
You probably can’t kill a good runner by shuffling three cards & installing. The proactive never advance threats are Bioethics (which now takes up influence), Philotic, & House of Knives. I suppose Dedication Ceremony - Ronin, too. But in general, your never advanced cards aren’t too dangerous and are more an opportunity for runners to make mistakes than for you to set up a kill combo. Sometimes, my late game PE plan changes from a single kill stroke to milling the runner out of cards & then NA is stronger.
So NA aside, there’s Mushin PE, which I do think is the best version. And the other major kill enabler is 24/7 Philotic. In the latter deck, you run like 20 agendas and sometimes a Biotic Labor to ensure the Philotic score. While you can score the Philotic early to keep it safe, it’s a remarkably inconsistent deck. Building your entire deck around a one-of is generally not a good idea.