How do you Solve a Problem Like Jinteki?

16/12/13

Dave 'Chimpster' Paterson

The Jinteki nuns are miserable. The cause of their misery is clear, no-one seems to win with them in competitive settings. Now I know that statement is bound to illicit responses along the lines of 'but I won my tournament with Jinteki!' or 'my Jinteki deck is undefeated!' I think for arguments sake, it's best if we leave individual metas alone for the time being. The fact is that the recent national/worldwide tournament statistics paint an alarming picture.

Jinteki accounted for a single win during the plugged in tour and was statistically, the least played faction across the entire tournament. It seems to struggle with consistency and though many people are fans of the style of play, most corp players prefer the more reliable options of a tag and bag deck or a fast advance deck of some kind. Unsuprisingly, when Dave H recently looked at the Corp meta, his analysis left Jinteki alone, simply because it hasn't been that successful compared to the aforementioned archetypes.

So has anything changed in the mean time? Recent datapacks have been kind to Jinteki (and obviously everyone got Jackson Howard!) and we're starting to see a real solid, operation based economy emerging for them. Key cards have included;