The Institute for Unorthodox Archery

PeekaySK 8148

Remember that archetypal Fast-Advance Tennin deck you've probably played against lately? This ain't it. If you want to make a proper server like a real man, read on!

The game plan is pretty straightforward: seal up centrals with a mix of gear-check and destroyers (Grim is particularly good on Archives). This creates scoring windows, both immediate (he can't get in, score now!) and delayed (too risky, just save the Tennin token for using Trick of Light later).

If you played any Supermodernism variant, this tends to play similarly - you need to rush out agendas behind 2 pieces of ICE, or at least install them so that they can get the Tennin token. Most of the time, the correct play is to install, but not advance. If you don't get a Tennin token, leave the card alone - your opponent won't know whether it's an agenda, a Caprice, or something else (this works even better in a variant of this deck that runs 2 less pieces of ICE in favor of two Snares). If you do get one, you can do a lot of crazy things - especially if that agenda was Unorthodox Predictions. You can easily chain UP into a once-advanced Nisei Mk.II, which means you can keep chaining them next turn as well. Hell, you can even go UP -> Future Perfect, for a 4-point grab just with one Trick of Light. Play around with this agenda setup, you'll find it has a lot of flexibility in terms of how your scoring outs look.

The question that tends to get asked often is:

Why not RP?

And my answer to that is, because Tennin enables more interesting plays with regards to scoring agendas.

It lends itself particularly well to a Never-Advance style of play: if you already have an agenda down when you get a Tennin token, it's like getting handed a Biotic Labor and 5 credits. This is not to be underestimated, and unlocks plays (over multiple turns, even) that aren't available (or practical) in other Jinteki identities.

Other than that, the rest should be pretty self-explanatory. Oh, one more comment: if you're looking at the Successful Demonstrations and thinking about changing them into Jackson Howard, don't. Demos kickstart your gameplan really well, if you draw them early the runner is quite often just done.

Huge shoutout to @ryakh for being instrumental in tweaking this to its current form! The Tollbooths definitely helped with the consistency problem :)

25 comments
26 Jun 2014 x3r0h0ur

Building this right away and play testing it locally next week. Looks bananas.

26 Jun 2014 x3r0h0ur

What about corp troubleshooter?

26 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

What about corp troubleshooter?

Used to be in there, until it turned out he's too corner-case. The Archers aren't here primarily to connect (though it's nice if you can make that happen), they're there because they're too taxing to be run on a regular basis. And, despite how much money you make, actually in play you don't often sit on a big bank - you get much stronger position by converting all that cash into rezzed ICE, which enables your identity, which boosts your plan A.

27 Jun 2014 AsteriskCGY

How about Precog?

27 Jun 2014 Diegofsv

This deck is just too awesome to not be tried.

27 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

@Diegofsv thanks!

@AsteriskCGY What are we hoping to achieve by playing Precognition, in the ideal case? Why do we need it over the cards we'd be dropping? Based on the answers, we could meditate on what to drop for them, but personally, I don't see any cards that would have synergy with Precog here.

27 Jun 2014 sebn83

Tried this last night and won 7-0 against a strong opponent. Very strong deck that matches up well against a lot of archetypes. It just has so much stopping power once you get ICE rezzed on centrals. I was maybe considering dropping 1 Grim for maybe a Guard or another barrier but that's it.

27 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

@sebn83 Thanks!

Guard isn't worth it - too expensive for how easily it gets broken for everything but a Ninja, and you don't need to rush out agendas behind 1 piece of ICE so the anti-Inside Job doesn't really matter.

I'm running three Grims because:

  • you really want to see one early, that's when they're the most difficult for the runner to handle
  • if you can get the first one rezzed before you score your first Clone Retirement, it essentially becomes a 5 str 5 rez piece of ICE without a drawback - awesome!
  • This deck just flat out fails if you don't draw any of your large destroyers, so you really want to run 3 of each, to stop that from happening

If you swap the third Grim for a barrier, make sure it's not one that becomes too inconsequential if you can't get to their fracter (think Shaper with Sharpshooter and Clone Chips).

27 Jun 2014 Dydra

With so much porgram destruction why not splash some Power Shutdown to zone out early Corroder and stuff? =)

27 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

@Dydra Because it's a glacier, not a Shutdown deck.

Running Shutdowns means also running Jackson, which would eat up a huge chunk of influence (and slots). Those would have to come at the expense of nasty, taxing ICE.That's a large opportunity cost and a big enough change that the deck plays completely differently (I've played PS Jinteki a bunch).

Also, who gives a crap about early Corroders? Rez a Grim! :p

27 Jun 2014 ryakh

@Dydra for the following reasons:

  1. This deck's main goal is not to shut down runner's rig (you simply do not have enough $$$ for this)
  2. This deck does not splash Jacksons and if you trash the pieces you need (and you need every single card in this deck to win) you will be pretty much screwed :-)
  3. There is not enough influence for PS in this deck (ice wall is a must, archer is a must as well, tollbooth's are there to solve your possible middle/late game problems and are worth much more than a PS, ditch 2 Successful demo's for a single PS is just meh).
  4. Splashing in Jacksons for PS will eat pretty much all of your IP and it will be meh. Otherwise Jackson is pretty useless in this deck since you never want to let runner score a successful run in first place and finally you just need 2-3 cards to get you going and you do not want to click Jackson for extra 2-4 cards each turn and go into overdraw.

I've played a slightly different version of this deck in Vienna and got 4-1 with it; later I've made some changes and now this deck looks like this:

  • minus Grim
  • minus Chum
  • minus Wall of Static
  • minus Quandary
  • plus Himitsu-Bako
  • plus 2x Tsurugi
  • plus Medical Fundraiser

But it's up to every single player to tune up this deck the way she likes. @PeekaySK for example is not a huge fan of Fundraiser although I keep telling him that is not a card that you play for 8 credits yet the card you play to give runner those extra 3 credits and make him feel safe enough to run and face-check tollbooth/archer/grim ;-)

27 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

Just to clarify, that's what his version currently looks like, mine is this list.

27 Jun 2014 jeibel

Why Enigma and wall of static over Rainbow ?

27 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

Because Rainbow being taxing is a myth, and those two actually do some gear-checking duty, unlike Rainbow. If my goal is to stop you from getting through, I'm not going to play a piece of ICE that can be broken by any of your icebreakers.

This is especially true when facing Yog/sucker setups, which will have some tokens in the early game from running my archives to stop my ability from triggering.

27 Jun 2014 jeibel

Crystal-clear, going to build and test :)

27 Jun 2014 jeibel

After 4 plays the deck is fun and solid, i'll try it at a store tournament, bt it seems to suffer a bit against Atman = 5 .

28 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

it seems to suffer a bit against Atman = 5

A well-played Atman is problematic for any deck, really... mitigating its impact comes down to how you build your servers. Stuff like not stacking Inazuma -> Grim, for instance. It's just something you have to be aware of, and calculate the cost of running your servers as if your opponent had an Atman at the best strength for him.

(Grim + Tollbooth is actually fine, because that's still 5 credits for an Atman, and it's 2 pieces of ICE you ideally want to be Femming)

If you really wanted to reduce this particular weakness, you could run more Chum and less Inazuma- but the problem with that is that there are situations where the runner can get away with ignoring Chum (especially at match point), whereas Inazuma can not really be ignored (barring a Parasite or a Femme Fataleon the follow-up ICE(

28 Jun 2014 Cancer Ace

I think I'd rather run it -1 Clone Retirement +1 Unorthodox Predictions. Predictions Combos very well in this deck and I find myself wishing I had a third in the deck fairly often.

28 Jun 2014 PeekaySK

@Cancer Ace By dropping a Clone Retirement, you'll weaken the synergy between it, Archer and Grim, making it much harder to actually start scoring the Predictions.

If you really want 3xUP, try dropping a Future Perfect for the third copy and a 2-pointer (probably Philotic Entanglement or a Fetal AI). That's what my agenda package looked like in the early versions of the deck, and I didn't like it all that much, but the ICE has changed since then, so it might be worth re-visiting. You are increasing the chances of getting agenda-flooded though, and that can be super-tough to recover from in this deck, especially if the few pieces of ICE you do get are of the wrong kind.

28 Jun 2014 jeibel

my little tweak Fast Track for Subliminal. tihs deck CAN be R&D locked against certain kinds of runners, Fast Track is to be saved for those worst case. Perhaps it's my inexperience.

28 Jun 2014 AsteriskCGY

Without Jackson to power draw and reset, yea I can see that problem.

29 Jun 2014 jeibel

ok we can build a version of this for Weyland and make it work. Why ?!? BECAUSE WE BUILT IT

3 Aug 2014 jakechance

I really like playing this deck. I was surprised it only uses three pieces of Jinkteki ICE! When I used it I loved seeing Subliminal. You don't really need more than one in hand but it'd be better to have more in the deck to see it more often. Also Chum'ing a Grim ensures they have to break it if they have no programs and can't Femme it.

I can confirm Atman makes you cry though.

I'd consider dropping Bastion for another Chum and a Quandary for an Enigma. I've hardly been low on money with this and making a runner lose a click early on with an Enigma can help net an earlier Tennin token.

22 Aug 2014 PaxCecilia

Played this deck for a while and it was frigging awesome. Won a bunch of games very convincingly, and when I did lose it was usually very close. Unfortunately I had to retire it after 4 games in a row where I was either severely agenda flooded or had no economy at all... longest game was probably 8 turns. I think I need to work on my shuffling.

With the resurgence of Noise with Cache, unfortunately I really need Jackson Howard in my meta :(

14 Oct 2014 CptSheridan

what to take out for two Snare!?