Enter Subroutine - Evaluations

This week, I’ll talk in more detail about the set of cards that truly spiked my interest and the ones that didn’t. You can complement these evaluations with those I wrote on the review.

The honorable elite

Identity: Tennin Institute
So for starters it’s a standard (which means the most common) 45 minimum card, 15 maximum influence Identity. Making it pretty simple to build as you’re already used to work on 45-49 cards with 15 influence. But what makes me like this card the most is the ability of course.
If the Runner fails at any run, or doesn’t run at you at all, you get a 1 money 1 click worth of in the form of an Advancement token. So, this is ability is money. Other money ID’s that have been good almost always: Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future; Weyland: Building a Better World; NBN: Making News. These identities all provide you with money when you perform certain actions and have a build done to optimize those abilities and the amount of times you can trigger them. Haas-Bioroid rewards you for installing, so you normally build a deck with a high density of ICE and/or Assets; Weyland gives you a credit for every transaction operation, so you normally have a deck with a good amount of transactions which then allow you to do the rest; NBN doesn’t give you money directly, but you can take as something like “the first time you do a trace, gain 2 credits, return any unspent credits to the token bank at the end of the turn”, so, naturally you’ll want a deck with a lot of traces. Tennin follows the same pattern as it gives you 1 money to perform one action – stop the runner dead in their tracks.
But Tennin does something more. It doesn’t give you the money directly, it gives you an advancement token. It doesn’t give you raw material, only finished product. But the action you have to perform is much harder to trigger compared to the above mentioned, as it doesn’t always depends on you and when it does your margin to trigger it is very slim: whether you make the run unsuccessful (through rezzing an ICE, for example) or you don’t (and you don’t get the ability to trigger).
Jinteki doesn’t have a lot of hard ETR ICE: (pure ETR only on Wall of Thorns and Himitsu Bako, conditional ETR on Tsurugi, Shinobi, Snowflake), so a Tennin Institute does have to import several pieces to be able to have its ability to work. But that’s something Jinteki can work with, as their in-faction Operations, Assets and Upgrade are very good already. This makes Tennin an attractive choice for any Jinteki player and I think it’s on par with Replicating Perfection. That’s how good I believe it is. It allows for Jinteki to play in a Fast Advance kind of game, which they were never allowed to up until now and that’s very scary. There’s no Jinteki more dangerous than a Jinteki at match point.

Agenda: House of Knives
Having played against this Agenda I reinforce the idea I had about it. It is a beast! A real powerhouse. The amount of pressure the Corp has once this is scored is simply astonishing. Paired with Jinteki usual suspects you can threaten a flatline in any server you build. But, not only that, it serves Jinteki well in a taxing build. As with other corporations you tax them in credits, in Jinteki you tax them with cards. The little combo House of Knives + Tori Hanzo is a personal favorite of mine: 5 (possibly 2) credits and an agenda counter for a brain damage with 100% accuracy is nothing to scoff at. It’s a 3/1, so it’s pretty easy to score. In the hands of a good player it’ll feel like forever before it empties out on counters (and then, they score another one!). It’s just an all-around good agenda, which really embodies the feel of Jinteki. I’m glad they printed out this agenda, it’s a masterpiece.

Asset: Health Mental Clinic
This asset is good. It’s a 0-rez cost economy asset. Which others asset do you have in the game that rez for 0 and give you money without costing you any clicks or additional costs? That’s right, none! And just for that this card is very good. The “drawback” is granting the Runner an extra hand size for the duration of time you get to become rich. PAD campaign is awesome, but this is even better as it starts to gain you credits right away. This doesn’t have to be in Jinteki, it can go into any deck that wants economy Assets and, even in Jinteki, you can play it to great advantage in a “damageless” build. There’s also other tools recently released (Komainu), that straight negate Health Mental Clinic “drawback” turning it into a Runner’s “drawback”. So? Where are you seeing any bad points to this? The trash cost is 3, so it’s cheaper than PAD campaign, and easier to go for it for the Runner. And sometimes, I’ll admit, sometimes that sixth card may be a nuisance. But those will be rare, as you’ll play to whether don’t get into much hassle giving them the extra card, or turning the drawback into an upside. Either way it’s a very good Asset. But its nature will make Corps a little bit wary to use it.

Operation: Mushin no Shin
This is so good! The fact that you get a last click to go with it is very, very important. The last action you take after playing Mushin no Shin may be even more important than the operation in itself. You pose questions with any branch you do. For example (disclaimer: at the end of any following combinations add “maybe that’s an agenda”, because the Runner is always famished for agendas):
Mushin no Shin + draw – It must be a trap, or some economy asset. He did drew a card, so he may be looking for an agenda or other card he didn’t have, and that just serves as a distraction, or a tempo play.
Mushin no Shin + credit – It’s a trap! The credit he got is to pay for it. Even if he had enough.
Mushin no Shin + ICE in front of it – must be an important economy-advanceable asset, or an important card that the Corp needs to protect.
This branches out to a stupid amount of combinations and these three presented may even not be accurate at all depending on the game state by the time Mushin no Shin is played. The point is, it’s a card that demands reaction from the Runner, which is rare from the Corp side since you’re the passive part of the game. It is worth to mention it’s also a 7 click worth in a card (1 to install, 3 for credits, 3 to advance), or 4 (if you prefer to just count the advancing + install), in a 0 cost double-operation. That’s a huge tempo swing and you don’t get many cards that do that. I can envision Mushin no Shin working great in a deck that only runs 5/3 agendas and a couple more traps and assets that can be disguised as 5/3. The fact that you get to play that little “last click game” makes for a very interesting card with a lot of interesting plays.

ICE: Pup
What can I say about this ICE? It’s as good as Pop-up Window, but, instead of gaining you one credit you tax the Runner for one more. In very rare situations this will deal 1-2 net damage, but that’s the beauty of it: while the Runner is deciding the best course of action for him, you’re really fine either way. It’s an adorable ICE that does adorable nasty things to the Runner. In decks that don’t have more sources of damage makes Pup lose a little bit of mileage, as the Runner may pass him, dumping dead cards in the hand without any penalty, but then again, that’s taxing as well. Anyway, it’s not as easy to import him to other factions as is Pop-up Window since you need more damaging threats to get Pup to really tax the Runner, but that won’t stop many Runners to be barked at! Yip yip! It’s such a great piece of ICE.

Upgrade: Tori Hanzo
Tori Hanzo makes me want to review the Perfection Evolution archetype: a taxing deck, (taxing with damage). Making it all the more lethal, as for 5 credits you turn one net damage into a permanent scar. Do that a couple of times and the Runner starts to get really limited in options. Coped in a shell with Snare!, Shock!, Neural EMP, Tsurugi, Fetal AI, the ID doing 1 net damage for every agenda stolen or scored, House of Knives, the list goes on and on. And the idea is pretty simple: everything in your deck has to do damage! This seems to have some potential to become a real contender. Although it may be a little earlier to have a top-tier consistent build on Jinteki: PE.
But maybe we can see a resurgence of this Identity, now that’s feasible again to bring it to tournaments, in the new format. And for that Tori Hanzo gets my favourite pick on the Upgrades.

Dishonorable mentions

Nisei Division
It’s just an underwhelming ability, is it not? 1 credit for every psi game. And there are only 6 cards that have the psi game ability within them (Snowflake, Bullfrog, Caprice Nisei, The Future Perfect, Psychic Field, Cerebral Cast), of which 2 are not real cards (Cerebral Cast, The Future Perfect) 1 is a power house (Caprice Nisei) and the other two are gimmicky, although I personally like Snowflake.
Even so, do you really want to build a deck that has 3 copies of each of the above mentioned cards? To net, what, 3-4 credits, per game? No! Just no. This Identity has still a lot to go until it begins to get considered as the Identity to build your deck with.

The Future Perfect
This agenda is horrendous. I know people are playing it. I know people are being well contented with it being prevented of being stolen, sometimes. But have you ever paused and analyzed it as a Runner? I went against a lot of Jinteki lately and I’ll tell you: do you know how much I spend every time I’m doing a psi game for this Agenda? 0. None. Not a dollar, or euro, or real, or golden piece. Thus I’ll force the Corp to pay 1-2 credits just to keep the Agenda, otherwise I’ll just steal it like always, with a little ceremony (psi game) before. If you keep it in your hand, I’ll wait until the Corp installs it, or just wager 0 upon access, you know why? Because, once installed, it loses the ability and it’s just a vanilla 5/3 that you have to defend with only your ICE and upgrades to prevent a 3 point loss and when it’s not installed it’s costing you credits to keep it one turn longer in your hand, or the top of the deck, or in the Archives. Eventually you’ll make the Corp care for the Agenda taxing them just to avoid that huge chunk of 3 points going your way and, by that time, the Corp may forfeit to play the tax for the Agenda and you’ll just steal it then. Wow! Such a “nice” card! I hope everyone runs this. An auto-taxing agenda is certainly fun, for the Runner. I happen to had a game, where one of those went into the Archives early, I went to the Archives every turn draining the Corp at least one credit. The Corp franticly searched for a Shock! and ICEd the server just to stop me going to Archives! At the end I made the Corp poor, went there and stole it. That agenda got me 3 points and a butload of credits.

Cerebral Cast
One thing I don’t understand is: how people evaluate this card under the perception that they’ve already won the psi game? Just to be clear, you still have to win it for this card to do its effect, otherwise this does nothing! Nothing! You have to spend 1 card, 1 credit, 1 click, to wager on a 33% chance to give your opponent a choice between a brain damage (which seems good enough, but if you really want to stick that kind of damage go for Tori Hanzo and the purple droids instead), a damage the Runner seldom will take, or a tag, a tag that the Runner can dispatch for 2 credits and a click, unless you kill them in that precise moment you stuck the tag in them. If you fail, what do you get in return? Nothing. If this text does not discourage you from playing that card I think you’re not trying to win games the easy way.
For the Brain Damage to really start screwing up the Runner it has to be more than 1 and you have to have a deck that wants to deal a ton of damage to the Runner to capitalize on that brain damage. Otherwise a handsize loss of 1 is more of a nuisance than anything else.
If your plan is B-Damage: go for Cerebral Overwriter, Edge of World, Fenris, Viktor, Janus, Tori Hanzo, which are all better ways of delivering a migraine.
If your plan is tagging them. You have to do something to punish them by having a tag. Like kill them. To kill them you need something like Scorched Earth, so why don’t you just play a reliable way of giving them tags? SEA Source anyone?
I can’t imagine a situation where this card is any good.

Profitable ways of doing Crime:

Identity: Silhouette
I’m so happy to see Silhouette builds being successful! She’s the most interesting of the Criminal new identities. The constant expose effect demands a good level of play from the Corp, and from the Runner. As Corp, what information are you willing to have exposed? As Runner what are you going to do with the information? You don’t need Blackguard to make Silhouette good, and the fact that she’s a 40/15 is very refreshing to see. She goes straight to the point. To deny her ability as a Corporation you treat her like you would treat Gabriel Santiago, but maybe you don’t have anything to hide from Silhouette. As a Runner, you have to be wary that information isn’t free and the Corp may manipulate what you can get exposed (example: installing Jackson Howard, doesn’t really reveal that much information, said “information” will soon be in your hand and/or deck). A good Runner can deduce fairly accurately what lies in front of him and Silhouette, makes them have a more educated play, which then forces the Corporation the double duty to try to deny this advantage. As Corporation, in worst case scenario, you focus on protecting HQ. But Silhouette will be ready to hammer through. She’s very interesting for the level of play she brings to the table and that’s way she’s my favorite.

Operation: Planned Assault
I love search effects. Test Run, Self-Modifying Code, Special Order, Djinn, Hostage. The game already has a bunch of those. But more are always welcome! This one, not only searches for it but also puts the event in action right away, being exactly like Self-Modifying Code, in the sense that both search for 2 credits and the searched card is put directly in the frontlines. Cards like these make decks more interesting and consistent, which reduces the luck factor and enhances the skill level, even during deck building. If you’re putting this card, you can have specific one-of’s for certain metas and situations. Its inclusion is not for free! And I’m very glad it’s a double event which makes it very well balanced. If you search for a double event you get a virtual “free” click, so there’s that. But that happens with SMC as well (you get the install click for free). Its growth potential (as more run events will come out), will make top tier decks run this card for a long time.

Hardware: Unregistered S&W ‘35
This card is very fairly balanced regarding power level. You spend a whole turn to murder someone (run at HQ, install, murder!). But it can bail you out of sticky situations. Also, if you have it in your deck, or hand you can avoid having to spend credits to trash Ash, or Jackson H. as you can just run their hand and then point this at someone. I love that it costs only one. It also conveniently is good Power Shutdown fodder. I think this is a Shaper card in disguise, but the three influence is a tough one to swallow, specially since we still don’t have much in hardware searchers you can’t just jam three of these into any deck and running one will have you searching for it actively search, spending clicks for that. The flavor of this card is awesome! Once we get something that can search for it (Replicator doesn’t count!) I can see this card impact the metagame much more. Nevertheless, just having this effect in the game is very good.
The fact that the targets it can get are all human or humanoid makes this card very, very cool!

Program: Overmind
At first I looked at this and frowned. I didn’t believe its power. What? 4 credits to use an Icebreaker in 2, 3 runs only? But then I kept looking at the card. And things like, Akamatsu Mem Chip, Chaos Theory, etc. Yeah, you get an Icebreaker, which breaks everything (!) requiring you to only match the strength! Oh! How was I wrong in that first impression! This is very efficient! If you exhaust the power counters you can Scavenge for something else, actually benefiting from the discount. You can recur this just fine and keep the Corp on its toes, breaking subroutine, after subroutine for almost nothing.
Overmind allows for some rush strategies. I’m dying to try an Overmind Faerie recursion rush deck. And we’re already seeing a lot of decks going for Overmind. It’s brings an interesting debate to the game. When you’re deck building: do you want Crypsis or Overmind? At first glance you’ll say that you want Crypsis for more controlling slower builds and Overmind for faster ones. Which is a good point. But in a slower Shaper deck, with recursion and MU enhancing cards Overmind seems to fit better, as in one fast Criminal deck, with Datasucker attacks, Crypsis looks better as it can break more subroutine for less trouble and cards. These two are toe to toe and Overmind is a great addition to the card pool.

Resource: Donut Taganes
I love denial cards! That’s why I love “Kit” (she denies you the ability of having anything more than Code Gates). Donut Taganes is a pure denial card. Capable of imposing horrific tempo losses even crippling out Corporations where the economy runs tight, while you, as Runner, can emerge unscathed with your resource heavy economy. This is a very potent card, but it’s hard to handle and it’s not free to include him in any deck. That’s why I suspect it’s going to be a while until we start seeing Donut Taganes in any list. Within every resource that came out in Honor and Profit, Donut was the one that stopped me, got me to read it a second time and instantly start fiddling with my notes as I built an all resource with almost no operations deck. I suspect once we truly understand its capabilities and good synergies he’ll start to pop up more frequently. Just think: 4 credit Celebrity Gift, a 6 credit Hedge Fund, a 2 credit Green Level Clearance. Ugh, just makes me cringe. Brilliant!

Unprofitable ways of doing Crime:

Window
What’s this all about? You draw a card from the bottom? What’s that for? Will O’ the Wisp? C’mon! If you really want to counter Will O’ the Wisp you go for a search effect, not for a niche card that only works half the time. Not even half the time. Its saving grace is that it’s still card draw… but, it’s the same drawing from the top or bottom if you don’t know what you’re drawing. And why, oh, why would you put this in your deck? What card are you replacing this for? It’s just not feasible to have this running in your rig. You pay 2 credits for a hardware that you have to run in your deck, being a dead card multiple times, just to do what you can do by simply spending one click? It's 2 clicks and 2 credits to draw that misterious bottom card. Man, it really has to be a winning card!
Best case scenario is if you've drawn 75% to 90% of your top deck and can deduce what you might draw from the bottom in search of a card. But, man, it has to be some beast of a card to make you do that (assuming you didn't already found it while drawing your entire deck). In the future, if you have plentiful of effects that put cards on bottom, as say, additional costs, then maybe, just maybe, this will pull its weight. As for now, search effects will always best this, if you get something sent to the bottom.

Bug
Where to begin? This eats up one of your MU, requires you to successfully run at HQ first, only to reveal cards for 2 credits each time the Corp wants to draw? No one wants to do that! Pay two credits to take a peak? What if it is an Operation that gets immediately played? And Corporations do play a good amount of those. Or an Agenda that promptly gets scored out of hand? Cards have to help you win and this one simply doesn’t. It helps you lose! I’ll be bugged if I see this making any competitive list. It's just not worth the cost. In best case scenario you have it lying around, take a peak or two, to see what they draw. Why not, then, just go for an R&D lock? Or Indexing? I don't think this cards has the mileage needed to substitute other tools currently in use.


That’s it for my pick for the best and the worst? What are yours?