I seem to have no luck when using the usual Corp traps so I decided to put this together without them just to see if I could make a functional deck without them.

Identity:

Jinteki - Replicating Perfection

Total Cards - 48

Total Influence - 14

Agendas:

Braintrust x 2

Nisei MK II x 2

Corporate War x 2

Gila Hands Arcology x 2

Priority Requisitions x 2

Assets:

Melange Mining Corp. x 2

PAD Campaign x 2

ICE:

Wall of Thorns x 3

Neural Katana x 3

Cell Portal x 2

Sensei x 3

Snowflake x 3

Chum x 2

Woodcutter x 2 (3 influence each for total of 6)

Tyrant x 2 (2 influence each for total of 4)

Enigma x 2

Upgrades:

Amazon Industrial Zone x 2 (1 influence each for total of 2)

Hokusai Grid x 2

Operations:

Trick of Light x 2

Sunset x 2

Anonymous Tip x 2 (1 influence each for total of 2)

Hedge Fund x 2

Strategy:

The general idea is that I really only need to defend my 3 central servers to the point that it becomes a solid slog of ICE for the runner. Remote servers can be defended much more lightly with single pieces of ICE and the two advancable pieces of ICE work to bog down the runner and provide extra fuel for Trick of Light.

As I stated at the beginning of the post I have horrid luck with traps. Snare, Project Junebug, Aggressive Secretary, they have all failed me repeatedly. Maybe I have some glaring tells and if so its best I stay away from the poker table until I get rid of them.

I have considered putting Bullfrog in, but I am uncertain of the usefulness.

Any advice and critique would be appreciated.

In general:

Without traps to give the deck some teeth, the runner just runs and takes your stuff. No threat = no reason not to.

Depending on Jinteki: RP to drain the runner's credits by making the central runs too expensive does not protect your remotes. All they have to do is jack out after the first piece of ICE to satisfy the identity if all they want to do is go take your PriReq.

If traps like Junebug et al are not working for you, then lean harder on Fetal AI, Snare and Thomas Haas. These require less investment and investments in FA and TH can be recouped even if the runner does not fall into them.

Your ICE mix needs to be reviewed. Too much of it is situational, and most of it is too expensive for what it does. Tie the runner up in ICE that you can afford to rez and that costs him cards, credits or clicks to get past, only to find red herrings (figurative or literal) once he does. Then score agendas while he recovers.

IMO if you dislike the traps idea you'd be better off with NBN, at least you can wall up an Agenda and overscore it (Project Beale) and use the advance token from another 3/2 agenda they have. And you get to use Tollbooth/Flare for free. You can throw in a couple of wall of thorns and vipers, they are cheap from influence perspective and you have the ability to use them with 2 more creds each turn, still leaving you enough influence for some other trick or economy (Adonis or some secretary/juneburg). You can still use some tricks with tracing/tags if you want to.

Don't forget that the runner only has to initiate a run on a central server. Meaning they can run through the first piece of ICE and then jack out, hitting your remotes at will. If your plan was to put massively advanced ICE in front of your centrals in order to swindle all their credits, they would need to be in the first encounter position, otherwise they won't be of much use.

This whole tactic might not hold up so well against any event heavy criminal decks, and boy are those ever popular right now! Making the switch to NBN and going on the offensive might be the right move if you can't seem to poker your way into trap winning at all. But don't get discouraged, there are plenty of amazing overall deck archetypes that require not a single bluff. You're probably too honest a person for a bluff to work.

I think this deck idea will become more viable with the cards coming in the next few expansions, Caprice and the new Jinteki ICE will give your deck more teeth without gigantic Influence investments.

As Replicating Perfection I enjoyed playing Woodpecker, but it was never really an MVP for me. Tyrant ultimately proved to be a complete waste of space (just bounce off ETR and run elsewhere or de-Rez/destroy). I found that not only did the runner need to encounter Woodpecker as outermost to be effective, once they saw the advance-able ICE they knew I likely didn't have influence for anything else to surprise them with (assuming I had played a copy for each central). Jinteki kind of focuses on mind-games and traps, so you may want to consider trying a different Corp and splashing in what you enjoy playing from Jinteki (which looks to be Net Damage ICE and Hokusai) if you don't enjoy the trap bluffing.

My suggestion for you is to try out Weyland Tag & Bag. If they let you score Agenda, cool, either you have points or a Posted Bounty and you squish the Runner. If they don't, Midseason Replacements (and soon Punitive Counterstrike) and squish. No real bluff, often, just a dilemma over how best to weather a building landing on your head. This also gives you that advanceable ICE you've been splashing without influence cost. The only bluffing really is whether you have both Tag and Bag ready to go in your hand.

Yep, I've tried a "Building a Better Woodcutter" deck using Jinteki PE, seeking to compensate for the initial weakness of Woodcutter's lack of subroutines by getting a Sensei down in front of it. While that may work, and you can then set about advancing it to make it hard for killers to get through (possibly leading up to Trick of Light trickeries), the issue with the deck is that Woodcutter is just too weak (low strength) and your costly click/credits investment in building it up dies badly to Parasite / Datasucker combinations. This combo is just too prevalent (out of Anarch & Shaper) for me to justify trying to continue with the tuning of the deck.

Were Woodcutter four or five strength, it might be viable. I might even consider paying up to seven credits to be able to rez such a critter, but honestly I think that even five for a (hypothetical) five strength sentry like this is too much.

My gut feel ATM is that the rezzed-only advance ice is a failed experiment, or there is a critical piece of the puzzle missing, and I'm damned sure that Shipment from San San isn't it either.