Next Ice, v. 2

I was starting to get happy with my Next Ice deck after the first set of tweaks, but I needed to prepare it for the tournament. I’d initially experimented with not having any traps, but I figured I should add some in; program destruction had been key to its success, so I went with two copies of Aggressive Secretary. And I’d been doing well with money (in particular, I’d frequently been able to ride Melange to a good amount of money), so I got rid of an Adonis and a Peak Efficiency; I also swapped a Hedge Fund with a Restructure.

After that, I noticed the Pop-Up Windows weren’t really paying off well, so I got rid of both of them; I used the influence on a Wormhole, and I added that third Hedge Fund back in to bring the money up a bit.

Here’s the result:

Next Ice, v. 2

NEXT Design: Guarding the Net

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Corporate War
• 3x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (11)

• 2x Adonis Campaign
• 2x Aggressive Secretary
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 1x Sundew •••

Operation (8)

• 2x Enhanced Login Protocol
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 2x Peak Efficiency
• 1x Restructure

Barrier (7)

• 3x Eli 1.0
• 1x Heimdall 1.0
• 3x NEXT Silver

Code Gate (5)

• 1x Lotus Field •
• 3x NEXT Bronze
• 1x Wormhole ••

Sentry (7)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 2x Architect
• 3x NEXT Gold

Other (1)

• 1x Mother Goddess

12 influence spent (max 12)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

It had done well at work: not great against a Noise deck, and it’s a little more vulnerable against ice destruction than I would like, but I feel like I know how to play it, when to go for money, when to go for agendas, when to blow up my opponent’s programs. (Answer: whenever you can, I’ve never regretted rezzing an Archer.)

Unfortunately, it went 1-4. Part of that was bad luck: in one game I fired an Accelerated Beta Test and had three agendas appear, and a couple of others could have gone either way. Still, it’s clearly not as reliable as I thought.

I’m going to keep it assembled, though: I think it’s a good enough representative of a glaciery archetype to be useful for my coworkers to test against. I’m not particularly planning to tweak it, but if I were, I’d consider getting rid of Sundew (it scares opponents, but I don’t have the ice to defend it), Heimdall 1.0 (it’s not having enough of an effect for me in this deck to justify the rez cost), and one or both Architects (people always seem to have an answer to it, so it’s really only a blip). And maybe even swap a Project Vitruvius for a Corporate War: three-for-two agendas are nice, but I don’t ever use the ability, while the extra money for Corporate War is really useful. (Hmm, actually: maybe I should instead start overadvancing Project Vitruvius…)

On to GRNDL for my next deck; I’m hoping I can use my experience from this deck when building that one.