Aikis & Chiyashis imo.
Aiki for sure, because it’s a 1c feeder, and Chiyashi because it’s the only wall to hit the stack (with an “if” : may be a bad card then -edit- no it is a very bad idea. Runner will overwrite their Ai with any program they have.).
The thing is even there, you have no clear “finish him” cards in your plan. You create a “good” environment for your plan, but there is no predator living in it.
Opening all possibilities of your opponent deck can be very dangerous if there is no clear road to victory after your environment is set (early Fisk syndrome).
You need to find cards that transform the situation you created in a clear road to victory ie making the runner think “if only I had less cards in my hand, I would have won”.
Such cards doesn’t really exist imo, and may never be, because of the easy advantage you can have with all the common damage mecanisms.
I think the big thing for this deck is you have to have a plan to win:
Psychic field doesn’t win you the game, and your own deck mitigates the downside of it.
Drip econ is great, but if you are similarly fueling the runner’s econ, that’s not a win condition on its own.
Komainu has some potential though. It’s going to be very taxing, and while taxing ice is not a win condition on its own, if you can rake the runner through taxing ice enough times eventually you will open up scoring windows. If you still wanted to work on the deck, I suppose the thing to do would be to focus on how you can run the runner through your Komainus as much as possible. Maybe NGOs would help? Maybe just the threat of Nisei MK II scores? Not sure!
I don’t know if this archetype can be elevated from never working to great, but it might be able to go from never working to maybe worked that one time.
Speaking of unreliable, but definite, win cons, you could also turn to Komainu’s meaner mirror Brainstorm. Maybe just play a bunch of tricks like Batty, Helheim Servers, Navi Mumbai City grid to make it more likely that when the runner runs into Brainstorm, they have more than 5 cards in hand and cannot break.
It won’t work all the time, but I can tell you from personal experience that it will work occasionally!
It doesn’t have to be must break if the ice has no subroutines. I once made made a Biotech-Brewery deck with a bunch of no-sub ice. In this deck you actually wanted ice like Salvage and Ireress, which I imported along with Gyri Labyrinth. Used Whirlpool, so they have to get to the bottom. It actually won once (out of 5 times I’ve played it). Too bad all that no-sub ices are gone, because now Jinja is out.
So I made a Jinja Grid into Valley Grid deck over the weekend. It just had all cheap hard etr ICE. It won more games than it lost mainly because of the power of Jinja - it turned it into a rush deck which was effective but nothing to do with Valley Grid. I got the combo up once but at that stage they were just ignoring my remote fortress and concentrated on central (not even bothering to run the remote once).
One other combo I found out kind of by accident was Hasty Relocation with Jinja. It allows you to draw three cards, obviously, but all the ICE you drew before finding your Jinja, you put back on your deck, re-draw it and automatically install it.
I currently have a Valley Grid deck out of Cybernetics Division. Black Level Clearance makes for some tough running decisions, and Enforced Curfew helps bring down the threshold for a kill. Cerebral Overwriter does work, and all ice are a mix of ETR or brain damage.
I have only given it a couple of runs, and I got a Neural kill when the runner went to zero hand size one turn. Time will tell if it consistently pressures hand size for scoring or making a kill. Most likely it will be a candidate for this thread.
On the runner side I always wanted Oracle May / Motivation (Maytivation!) to work. Eureaka! and expensive breakers were thrown in, too (because why not?) While the engine was fun when it got going, it was slow to set up and didn’t of itself win games.
i heard a rumour that her original ability was something along the lines of ‘the first time you break all subroutines on a piece of ice each [turn/run], draw 1 card’ (i can’t remember if it was per run or turn, but even at per run, i don’t see how it’s that broken of an ability tbh)
my theory as to what happened:
Aaron Marron was so much card draw and Temujin Contract was so much money that that’s why her ability was considered too strong and all the birbs got nerfed into oblivion (Saker being the only decent one), costing so much to install and use.
if we had gotten decent numbers on Aaron and Temujin, maybe Khan and the birbs would have been better, and we would have 2 fewer cards on the banned list.
but yeah. i tried to make her work so many times. the thing that stood out to me the most was, after about 5 games, i used her ability exactly once
also, my biggest jank card that i really loved but could never ever get to work… ChiLo City Grid. i tried Bernice Mai, Manhunt, Gutenberg… you name it, i tried it. ChiLo was just bad though. which is so sad, cos it’s a really fun ability imo
Chief Slee is probably my favorite asset in the whole game. The delight of doing 5 meat damage and bring able to punish facechecks in ways Weyland hasn’t been able to is an awesome effect paired with, in my opinion, some of the best character art in the game.
The thing is, she never seems to work like she should. Usually she simply gets “stuck” with 3 counters on her and the runner goes to trash her. I’ve tried everything from Helium-3 Deposit to Data Ward shenanigans, and it almost never works.
That being said, when she, works, its one of the best feelings in the game. And that’s good enough for me.
