YIN - Punitive and Personal

This is the top placing PE deck at the 2015 World Tournament

At worlds I finished 24th with 22 prestige: 11 Wins - 4 Losses - 1 Tech Loss (an unfortunate extra HQ access in a runner game)

It went 6-2 on the day as well as 4-1 at King of Servers, our team got 6th.

The only two people to beat it in Words Swiss were Spags and Lucas Li in a pair of intense and brutal matches.

Yin is a vicious and heavy variation of PE that relies on being rich, hard advancing big agendas, and attacking when and where your opponent least expects it. It can kill with net, meat, and brain damage, but most terrifyingly it is reasonable to score out with.

The raw threat this deck wields cannot be understated. One play in-particular has made me notorious in my local meta. I regularly construct multiple 5 advanced remotes, then, simply sit on them, and watch my opponent look for a way out that doesn't exist.

Strategies and Card Choices

Building the Flatline - The deck very rarely kills with only one tool or one type of damage, normally you will find yourself chunking and killing with a mix of angles.

That being said, Punitive Counterstike is the absolute cornerstone of the deck. It is a savage and upsetting card that demands respect from both the user and the target. You should use it any chance you get.

-Two copies cost as much Influence as Scorched Earth

-No Tags required

-It rewards you for running heavier agendas, freeing up vital deckslots

-It crushes unsuspecting players of any caliber (Style points if you [C1-C2] Celebrity Gift reveal the punitive as the last card and then kill them [C3])

-Even when it is seen or expected all of your advanced remotes become explicit threats.

In order to support the counterstrike the deck employs a fairly standard PE trap suite with special mention to the inclusion of Chairman Hiro, and the exclusion of Psychic Field (not enough drive by in the current meta and you want heavy advancable traps).

Money at Any Cost - This deck needs money and is willing to do normally painful things to get it, trading information, runner credits, and even bad pub to balance the books. It is a freight train of event econ running 2 celebrity gift, 2 medical research, 2 hedge and 1 targeted marketing. But the biggest and flashiest play is scoring Profiteering, 15 credits for 3 bad pub is a trade this deck is willing to make over and over again. Bad Pub is useless for combating your shell game and more importantly unusable in beating a Punitive Trace. The pub will only help your opponent run centrals or trash Chairman Hiro, and thanks to a neat rule, the runner isn't allowed to do either of those things if they are dead.

Tech and Counter Tech The main counter threats at Worlds were clear going in, Plascrete, FilmCritic, and Account Siphon. Deus Ex and Feedback Filter were literally non-existent on the floor and I've Had Worse was rare and surprisingly inconsequential.

Plascrete Carapace - This is easy enough to play around with a single shattered remains and the constant threat of brain damage. It is also unnerving how many players will not drop it, as if a red ID must mean only Net Damage.

Film Critic - a thorn in the side, and enough of a counter threat to justify profiteering into snatch and grab in some board states. But you don't need Punitive to kill and there is a bad habit thinking she makes it safe run. On the positive side her presence lets you play currents to better effect.

Account Siphon - This deck is hard to bankrupt, the event econ and raw efficiency is strong enough, but an early profiteering throws it further over the top. But to ensure Siphon defence I chose targeted marketing over Cirisum Grid. Why? Its cheaper, it nets you money every time, you don't care about the runner gaining money, and most importantly it forces them to hard score agendas to turn off.

Keeping the Mind Game Alive

I believe, Yomi (reading/bluffing) play-styles are underrated in the current scene. This deck proves that a well honed mind games can still match the performance of hyper-mathed Glaciers. To pilot this deck well you need to focus your energy on understanding and empathizing with every person who sits down across from you.

Every game I lost I lost because I either misjudged my opponents aggression level or took a turn too long to get a hard lock on their state of mind.

Spags was particularly shocking/impressive, after beating him in the first game, he got very quiet... only to begin rushing my board like a berserk highlander. I couldn't over bluff or build a strong enough trap before he ripped 7 points out of my deck.

While Lucas was in a constant state of pivoting between passive and aggressive action, he called one of my hard bluffs 1-2 turns sooner than I was expecting, and took 5 points off of me. I struck back with a punitive for 5 meat damage and gave him a heart attack right before drawing a card and letting him know I had no way to kill him at 0 health. He then proceeded to Levy > Indexing me to score out before he had time to worry about about my traps.

Looking to the Future

PE isn't going anywhere anytime soon, But with DLR-aggedon looming for now, I think I'll have some fun experimenting with Biotech or maybe even something in Teal.