So, I am building a deck based around Brain Trust/Whirlpool/Cell Portal for some fun, and I come across an interesting question. When does the bonus from Chum wear off?

Does it wear off immediately after the runner passes the effected piece of ice? Or does it wear off after the run?

This is obviously only relevant in very few situations, but I will label the one that triggered the thought.

A server is stacked, from outer to inner, with Whirlpool, then Chum, then Popup Window, then Cellportal. I have scored two Brain Trusts, one with three tokens, one with two. Runner blindly stumbles in to the ultimate in saturday morning cartoon villain traps, and cannot break the Whirlpool. He doesn't break Chum, breaks the routine on Popup Window, then runs in to Cell Portal, and cannot break it. He returns to the Chum, can't break it, hits the Popup Window again, etc. Does the window retain the strength bonus? Does it retain the net damage? Does it get new instances of one, the other or both?

I admit that this is an out there one, but I am curious to know, and it is, to me, an interesting quandary. Perhaps it has already been answered though, in which case, apologies for the wasted bits. Thanks!

This is answered somewhere else on the forum, but to save you digging it out: Chum only affects the next piece of ICE encountered, and only lasts for the encounter.

There was some debate as to why this should be; I personally believe it's because once you encounter it, even if you encounter it again, it's no longer the 'next' piece of ICE encountered.

That said, assuming the runner still doesn't/can't break Chum, then Pop-up will receive the Chum effect a second time (so will be Str 2 with the net damage conditional again). Eventually you could run this loop enough times to flatline the runner.

Okay. I found some stuff in the FAQ but it did not specify for that encounter, so thank you!

The combo still functions fine, and is, in essence a guaranteed kill even without the scaling, but it would have been a little more amusing with it. Cheers!

So, I am building a deck based around Brain Trust/Whirlpool/Cell Portal for some fun, and I come across an interesting question. When does the bonus from Chum wear off?

Does it wear off immediately after the runner passes the effected piece of ice? Or does it wear off after the run?

This is obviously only relevant in very few situations, but I will label the one that triggered the thought.

A server is stacked, from outer to inner, with Whirlpool, then Chum, then Popup Window, then Cellportal. I have scored two Brain Trusts, one with three tokens, one with two. Runner blindly stumbles in to the ultimate in saturday morning cartoon villain traps, and cannot break the Whirlpool. He doesn't break Chum, breaks the routine on Popup Window, then runs in to Cell Portal, and cannot break it. He returns to the Chum, can't break it, hits the Popup Window again, etc. Does the window retain the strength bonus? Does it retain the net damage? Does it get new instances of one, the other or both?

I admit that this is an out there one, but I am curious to know, and it is, to me, an interesting quandary. Perhaps it has already been answered though, in which case, apologies for the wasted bits. Thanks!

now, are you referring to actually using an icebreaker to break Pop-up Window, or paying the 1 credit to get past it?

I only ask, because it's not the same thing (though it's not rare for someone to have a code gate breaker out for this)

Presumably they would want to break it, otherwise they take the Chum damage, and that will end their career quite quickly in this example.

This circuit will eventually kill them anyway, unless the breaker in question is Yog.0, due to running out of money. Although now you mention it, the runner could elect not to pay at popup, take a single hit from Chum and end run (not the same as jacking out).

Good catch, perhaps not the best example, but it got the job done. I may try to build this deck, likely only ever works once, but it will be hilarious that once.

I had it set up once and the Runner flatlined on Fetal & Snare from R&D. Never been so disappointed with a win. :-/

This circuit will eventually kill them anyway, unless the breaker in question is Yog.0, due to running out of money. Although now you mention it, the runner could elect not to pay at popup, take a single hit from Chum and end run (not the same as jacking out).

in the OP's situation, though, they've got a Cell Portal at the innermost spot. "ending the run" is not an option as long as Cell Portal is continuously rezzed and not broken each loop.

in the OP's situation, though, they've got a Cell Portal at the innermost spot. "ending the run" is not an option as long as Cell Portal is continuously rezzed and not broken each loop.

You cannot "jack out", but you can always let the subroutine of Pop-up Window resolve to end the run.

in the OP's situation, though, they've got a Cell Portal at the innermost spot. "ending the run" is not an option as long as Cell Portal is continuously rezzed and not broken each loop.

You cannot "jack out", but you can always let the subroutine of Pop-up Window resolve to end the run.

true. forgot about that.

Okay. I found some stuff in the FAQ but it did not specify for that encounter, so thank you!

The combo still functions fine, and is, in essence a guaranteed kill even without the scaling, but it would have been a little more amusing with it. Cheers!

In essence a guaranteed kill that requires six cards, four of them in a specific order, two of them being agendas overscored with 9 advancement tokens and 7 advancement tokens. And they can't have a Code Gate breaker at all.

So, yeah, even if it works...good luck with that.

In reality, though, your best case is:

Whirlpool {trash}

-->Chum

---->Pop Up {3 damage}

------>Cell Portal

-->Chum

---->Pop-Up {3 damage}

{ETR}

So, forget the agendas, since you're only going to be rezzing Cell Portal once. It's still nasty, if you can put it together; they'll only survive if they overstuffed their hand or they have Net Shield or Deus X. Net damage protection is probably going to increase with all the nasty Jinteki stuff in the pipeline, and janky combos are often sub-optimal.

In general, good decks contain only good cards.

Whirlpool is not a good card: it doesn't do anything on its own but situations where you could get some use out of it aren't improbable--but the combos where you'd get really awesome use out of it multiply the improbabilities.

Chum is a good card--all on its own, it has a virtual ETR subroutine as often as not. It has a restriction to be the 2nd piece of ice, but that's not improbable and in such a position increases the cost and risk to the runner. Unlike Whirlpool, it pairs well with just about anything.

Cell Portal is a card that's actually bad : like Whirlpool and Chum, it's location dependent, it shares Whirlpool's drawback of doing nothing on its own, it doesn't pair well with as many things as Chum, and on top of that it repeatedly costs you money, unless you go with your original plan to overscore your Braintrusts; but personally, to me that's terribly high risk, and I can think of lots more I could do with ten clicks and ten credits worth of work that will get me closer to winning the game.

Now, all that said, when Tenma Line hits, maybe some of this gets more viable because Chums and Whirlpools and Cell Portals won't be dead draws if you get them at the wrong time--they're only *mostly* dead, if you will. I still think it will be a deckbuilding trap that people will fall into by trying to assemble combos that are scary but improbable.

I think this is a big problem with Jinteki.

No that's unfair - it's not Jinteki that's the problem, it's people falling into this deckbuilding traps (somewhat appropriately, considering).

Cell Portal can be useful, but as you say, highly situational. I'd not want to gop through Heimdall twice, (or really any Biroroid that you clicked through the first time). The problem is that it costs you a LOT as the corp, and the runner can choose to jack out rather than hit the first ICE again.

Cell portal is a true Johnny card. No competitive deck would ever consider playing it but if you like playing for awesome combos then sure cell portal is awesome.

Whirlpool on the other hand has some (albeit fringe) applications in an aggressive trap deck. If you know there are runners who will run on anything that you advance but only if it's protected by ice and then they get scared off if you don't rez that ice trying to get them to access the ambush then whirlpool is the best way to get them to hit that trap but like I said that's a very very specific case. In most other cases you're either better off not playing any ice or playing something that will actually be useful.

If you know there are runners who will run on anything that you advance but only if it's protected by ice and then they get scared off if you don't rez that ice trying to get them to access the ambush then whirlpool is the best way to get them to hit that trap but like I said that's a very very specific case.

Holy run on sentence Batman!

It's really hard to play those kinds of Vizzini-gambit mind games, I've found. Predicting behavior is nearly impossible, and I've found in my Jinteki builds that there are three possibilities:

If I don't protect it, it's clearly a trap and they won't go near it.

If I protect it with one Ice, they could still get in because I'm mounting a token defense that dies to Inside Job, so it's clearly a trap and they won't go near it.

If I protect it with two Ice, there's no way I'd put that much effort into protecting something unless I was bluffing, so it's clearly a trap and they won't go near it.

Advanceable cards:

If I advance a card and they could potentially access it, it's a trap and they won't go near it.

If I advance a card and they can't access it, either I score it--yay, or I don't score it, and it sits there like a lump with three counters and nobody to come play with it.

End result: no trap damage, in any case.

Then they run my hand and R&D, get to match point, then the bluff collapses because at that point they'll face-check a trap, fist back up, and keep running until they win.

While i couldn't agree with you more on the difficulty of getting runners to hit traps and the mind games required unfortunately if you want to win consistently as Jinteki you pretty much have to do it. Of course there are benefits to runners not running unprotected advanced cards but the case mentioned above (run-on not withstanding) I think is the only reasonable possible use of Whirlpool that I can imagine.

It'll get easier once I figure out how to make Sundew and Celebrity Gift pay out, to have more money on hand, so I can take advantage of the magic hour when they aren't taking chances. Keeping enough money on hand to rez ice and stay over the $4 Snare line doesn't leave a lot for rapid advancing.

Speaking of Fast Advance, I wonder what they'd think if I rezzed a SanSan out of Jinteki...that would provoke a run!