NEXT King of England v5

This is the latest iteration of my NEXT King of England deck designed to take on the post-O&C meta.

Agendas

Eden Fragment - A money making engine for the deck. As soon as it is scored it can help you build your glaciers.

Executive Retreat - I'm always surprised with how useful this agenda has been. Emptying your hand gives you turn after turn of clicking up your IT department or can help you escape an R&D lock.

NAPD Contract - One that I've been going back and forth on now that Valencia control has become a thing. However, more often than not I am happy to see this than other 2 point agendas.

Hades Fragment - Helps to slow down Noise (albeit not by much) but any and every bit of recursion is always welcome.

Utopia Fragment - The single best agenda in the deck. If you're able to rush this out by turn 3 it will all but guarantee you the win. With this scored every single run becomes a massive tax on the runner that I have found few decks can overcome easily. Because of this it can create several scoring windows as runners spend a few turn gathering credits to attempt stealing your next agenda.

Why no ABT? I've tried it. I want to love ABT in this deck. But I've tracked 40 games with ABT in the deck and tracked the results. 18 times I dumped 3 or more agenda points into archives, 10 times I whiffed, and the other 12 I was able to get 2+ ice out. I am forced to conclude that probability hates me and went back to an agenda suite that introduces less variance. If you want to attempt this deck with ABT make the following changes:

-2 Executive Retreat -1 IT Department +3 ABT

Economy

Adonis Campaign - Drip economy is always powerful and with ways to recur your three campaigns there will be very few turns where you aren't getting value from these.

Melange Mining Corp. - One or two activations of this card solves any and all economy problems previous versions of this deck had.

Peak Efficiency - This card was formerly Successful Demonstration. Eater has made that nearly impossible to rely on for economy now. Peak Efficiency can be used farm more often than SD because of the lack of the annoying unsuccessful run clause.

Hedge Fund is Hedge Fund and I probably don't need to explain why it's good.

Upgrades

Ash 2X3ZB9CY - Protects your IT Departments and your scoring remote. In a pinch it can also protect R&D if Crisium Grid hasn't shown up yet.

Crisium Grid - Pure gold. With the prevalence of Eater Keyhole decks protecting R&D is vital. Against Noise and retrieval runs I like putting one on archives. Criminals and specifically Desperado using decks one goes on HQ.

Cyberdeck Virus Suite - Specifically added to help counter Noise, datasucker, and Imps.

Assets

IT Department - The reason I created this deck. If you can power it up early enough it will win you the game. It can completely lock the runner out, but it can also lead to long grinding games. This can protect your ice from fixed strength breakers, drain counters from suckers, d4v1d, and the dogs, and force Eater Keyhole runs to bankrupt the runner with enough counters.

Jackson was reduced from 3 to 2 because I would often have them sit in my hand more than I would need to play them.

Ice

Lots of ice is the primary reason I play NEXT instead of Foundry.

Grail Suite - The namesake ice. Galahad, Merlin, and Lancelot are a powerful trio. The triple merlin is always a threat that the runner needs to respect. Lancelot is a good way to destroy rigs. Galahad is cheap, early ETR ice that when combined with the others is a great way to slow down the runner.

NEXT Suite - More synergistic ice that presents a substantial tax to the runner.

Mother Goddess, Guard - Even as singletons these two come up very often. Mother Goddess helps to boost NEXT ice and provide early scoring windows to score a quick Eden or Utopia. Guard stops bypasses such as Inside Job.

Architect, Rototurret, Quandry - The rest of the ice package. Architect is pure money if allowed a few chances to fire. It is one of my primary targets for ITD. Rotos help to take out early utility programs such as datasucker, and quandry is cheap ETR.

How to play

You want to either score an early Eden/Utopia Fragment or power up an ITD. Otherwise, play it as a slow, controlling, glacier deck. Take your time to stockpile your resources until you can leverage your advantage against the runner. Often you will find you can score 10 credits a turn with adonis drip and melange activation. No melange? Gain power counters. There are 3 key forts you should build - R&D, Scoring Remote, ITD Remote. Eden and Architect makes getting these to 4+ ice a fairly trivial task. With so few agendas they won't be sitting in your hand for long which makes hand assaults or control less useful against you. 2 Ice on HQ is often enough to protect your hand.

It's good to be the king.