Context-oriented double-sided Corp ID: how cool is that?

Aside from the surprise factor, which in itself is pretty cool, you can adapt to your opponent. When playing with friends, you already know (to some extent) how their decks work and what identity helps you the most against these. You face a milling deck? The Tank. You face a pretty slow, late game-oriented deck? The Greenhouse. You face a reckless, running-oriented deck that is vulnerable to surprise attacks? The Brewery.

The fact that the Corp may have selected any of the three "sub-identities" should force the Runner to play certain ways: the assumption will always have to be made that the Runner is one miscalculation away from a Brewery flatline.

There are a few things that i don't understand about this ID.

First, why would someone want to swap this Identity before taking his first turn?

And second, do you have to choose which copy of Jinteki Biotech you will be using before you start the game, or can you decide which one you want to use any time??...

1. It allows you to adapt to your opponent. If he plays Noise, for example, you should switch to The Tank. At least i would suggest that.

2. You have to choose with which of the other two IDs you want to swap. The other ones are then removed from the game and can't be utilized anymore, because you may only swap it once before taking your first turn.

There are a few things that i don't understand about this ID.

 

First, why would someone want to swap this Identity before taking his first turn?

And second, do you have to choose which copy of Jinteki Biotech you will be using before you start the game, or can you decide which one you want to use any time??...

It says on the card face "BEFORE TAKING YOUR FIRST TURN", so it seems pretty clear that you decide at the start of the game.

As to why someone would want to pick from among the options in a particular match, it allows you to adapt to your opponent's identity to improve your chances of winning.

The Tank gives you some protection vs milling such as Noise or decks using Keyhole, but secondarily it also allows you to adapt to a long game such as some big rig runner decks favor.

The Brewery will help you land a flatline victory, and might be good against very aggressive early runners such as Express and Kit assuming you are packing other net damage inflictors such as Komainu, Pup, various traps such as Junebug, Ronin, etc. The runner gets too aggressive, takes some unexpected net damage, draw back up to one at the end of their turn, and you flatline them before they can correct for it. This sub-ID seems the weakest and least likely to work to me; 3 clicks for 2 net damage isn't that great of a trade and is very situational. I suppose if you think the runner is trying to put together a combo in their hand you could disrupt it, but good decks are resilient to that sort of thing so kind of a weak angle of play IMO; you only get the one shot at it, have to predict before the game starts that you'll need it, have to use it at the right time, and lose a turn to use it.

The Greenhouse allows you to fast advance a 4 point agenda. There are also some tricky trappy things you might do with it, but given it takes the full turn to flip the identity if you gamble on a trap and the runner doesn't bite on it, you wasted your big shot. However, like many Jinteki trap scenarios, if you are already on game point the runner's plays become forced and you can present them with a horned dilemma where they either run on it even though it may be a trap or accept that you'll win the game on the next turn. All in all, I would consider this to be the default sub-ID to use in most games.

One of the interesting things about this identity is that as Netrunner does not use a sideboard, this id offers you a way to tailor your strategy to a given opponent in a match while they benefit from no such option.

I like it and look forward to playing it -- it's not my favorite of Jinteki's ID:s but Jinteki has many really fun ID:s.

I built my deck to take advantage of Brewery and Greenhouse and to ignore Tank; but it's still good to have it available.