NEXT to Nothing: Beta Testing Defence

This deck isn't quite perfect, yet, but it's been a lot of fun for me to play. I've been winning between 2/3 and 3/4 of the games I've played it in, including against decks being taken to store championships by friends who do well there... but not yet AT any. Yet.

AGENDAS

The idea behind this deck is just to get both NEXT Design and Accelerated Beta Test to go off reliably. I've seen people say that 24 Ice is enough to get you a 80% chance of 3 Ice in hand with a mulligan for NEXT Design -- but that ignores a number of things. ABT is one -- you want that to be as safe as possible to score, so that you can layer up more and more Ice on servers and save money in a manner an ETF deck probably can't manage. There's no safety net beyond Vitruvius, so if you fall, you can fall pretty hard... but I've yet to score an ABT without getting ANY Ice, and have been treated fairly well by it on several occasions.

Mandatory Upgrades is present for obvious reasons: if you score it, you've all but won. Non-MU Agendas all score from hand, so you then have to Ice up fewer servers, and you can use Melange AND install a piece of Ice every turn. It's not easy to score, but the benefit is well worth it -- and actually is about the same as scoring a 5/2 or 5/3 except for cost (and without the risk of the runner obtaining more points). After all, once you score MU, you get the click that same turn! I've had a game go from obvious, slow, painful loss to stomp in my favour largely because of scoring one MU.

ICE

The deck is effectively a Glacier deck with Rush components. You want enough cheap things that you can rez most or all of them at the beginning, with enough big things to scare the runner off, slow them down, and also luck out with ABT and save big. The average cost is reasonably low, at around 3.4 (approximately).

The Sentries are the lifeblood of the deck in many respects, as they tend to do a lot of econ lifting. Caduceus (and the one Shadow) provide a lot of advantage if rezzed early, and the Rototurrets and Ichis sap away at their rig, denying them the ability to run elsewhere safely. It's usually good to get Sentries in at the roots, and to leave something like Ichi unrezzed until you need to hurt them, hopefully when they've already clicked through Eli and can't avoid the trashing so well. (I have been surprised at how well Rototurret has done for me, in all honesty.)

Barriers are what HB does best, and I pack a bunch of 'em. Paper Wall is the obvious early gear-check, with Eli and WoS to actually tax them (the latter being less taxing and more solid). Heimdall and Wotan are mostly here to scare the runner off, and eat up their resources. Unless you can rez one in front of another, they're not actually going to keep a runner out much -- play them over a central server, though, and suddenly the tax of running starts being painful. (Also, a Wotan with unrezzed Ice behind it, especially if it also has something IN FRONT of it, is pretty solid -- make them unable to click through Viktor or Ichi and lose things they didn't expect to.) It's worth remembering that both Heimdall and Wotan are INTENSELY permeable for such big Ice, though -- so I can't emphasize enough how much they need to be either supported or over centrals. Runners are afraid of Wotan, but it doesn't keep them away from an Agenda until they've run through it a few times already and gotten brain damage and program trashes to add up.

Code Gates kind of fill the other roles, myriad as they are. Quandry is there to make them fetch Yog or Gordian Blade, and basically nothing else. Pop-Up Window helps with the economy ever so slightly -- if you can land one in front of an Ice with Trace subroutines it's especially useful -- but it's never going to keep a runner out on its own. Tollbooth taxes them hard on encounter and also is hard to break easily because of it. Viktor ends the run if they don't click through -- but they CAN click through everything. However, it's not Yog-able, and the Brain Damage trace can hurt 'em a little if it goes off when they don't expect it to. Combined with other Bioroids, it can be rather effective -- in so far as Bioroids can be.

ECONOMY

It might seem like this deck has no hope in hell of rezzing all this Ice, but that's not my usual experience at all. The Operations-heavy economy keeps things flowing on turns when you want to be installing Ice and Agendas, and Melange covers most other turns. A turn spent drawing an Ice from R&D and using Melange is actually a turn well spent, often enough -- especially if done in succession. Clicking for cash three times isn't ideal, but if your Melanges aren't showing up and you don't have Gila, it can be worth doing. If you can score a Gila, it will almost always help -- winning without ever getting a Gila or a Melange isn't impossible, but I've found games tend to start turning around as soon as either shows up. (Using Gila and installing a fourth piece of Ice on a server is a neutral cost, and also just a fun way to irritate the runner.)

It's also easier to defend this deck, because you want, at MOST, five servers -- your Centrals, a Melange server, and a Scoring server. I often turn one of the latter into the other to save on costs, placing Melange where I've scored Agendas until I've Iced things up more, then trashing it and scoring out more heavily.

Without Imp, Demo Run, or similar, only 28.5% of the deck is composed of cards the Runner can interact with in HQ and R&D -- even discarding cheap Ice you don't need and letting your hand of five Ice sit unplayed, as necessary. (Alternating a turn or two of Melange with a turn of installing Ice in front of all your important Servers is fun, too!) Melange is the same value, each use, as playing a Hedge Fund AND using Gila Hands -- do not underestimate how quickly it can boost your ability to rez boatloads of Ice with impunity. (Knowing when to STOP using it is important, though, and knowing when to install over it, likewise.)

Drawing is much riskier here than in other decks, I find -- unless you know what you need and the runner is outpacing your economy, I generally find relying on the Mandatory Draw and XYZ Level Clearances does more than enough.

WHAT IS NOT HERE

"Action Jackson," I hear you say, "Is an OBVIOUS INCLUSION. He'll smooth out your draws, help you get what you need faster, and make your ABTs safer. Where is he?"

Well, my friends... I've had good luck with this. ABT rarely backfires, I can often afford to take things slow (Shapers with Opus have been my most consistent source of defeat admittedly), and I don't usually want to be drawing more cards than I have, I want to have more money to play those cards. I might try out a Jackson at some point in the future, but... the 28 Ice is essential for the NEXT/ABT to function consistently, and the Econ Ice (which eats up the influence I AM using) helps patch up where I might otherwise be weak.

If you need him, I'd try swapping one Melange and one Pop-Up Window for Jackson and... well, whatever Ice you'd like, I guess.

The other thing not here that most NEXT Design decks seem to run is NEXT Bronze. This is silly -- it's a Yog-able Code Gate that can never NOT be such and costs more than Quandry. It's harder to parasite and costs more for non-Yog breakers than Quandry, but... the money you save there is often worth it early on when it matters, and doesn't help much later, I've found. When NEXT Silver is out I'll almost certainly revise this opinion.

WHERE THIS IS GOING

I'm still tinkering with this pretty heavily. There're lots of things I want to try doing differently to see if they help out, hence why this deck is a Prototype.

NEXT Bronze -- for all that I JUST said it's not worth it, I'm wondering if the potential added cost for Gordian Blades might be worth it. Signs point to no, and even in my Parasite-heavy meta Quandry does just fine, but... I might give that another shot.

Caduceus and Shadow -- both help the economy a fair bit, with other benefits and drawbacks. Shadow is advance-able (to out of Mimic ranges), doesn't have a trace they can use to deny you the encounter money, and costs one influence less. Caduceus taxes them more heavily, gives more money when it pays off, and can actually END THE RUN. I can't see myself swapping more than one Caduceus for another Shadow, and that seems like a poor choice, but that'd be a way to free up an influence for something else.

Another Tollbooth -- what I'd most like to do with that free influence -- maybe replacing a Pop-Up window? It's not unbreakable, but it sure seems to hurt.

Flare -- I'll never have enough influence for this, and that makes me a little sad, because it's beautiful.

Archer -- I don't have enough cheap, sacrificial Agendas. I want to have that Gila Hands! Having something to be there just for ABT rezzing seems obviously dumb -- but Archer's also super good. I just need to sort out if the costs (Influence and Agenda) are actually worthwhile. Signs point to no, as they do with most of these changes (for me, so far).

Viper -- might be worth it as a taxing Code Gate that's cheap without being Yog-able and has potential to cost clicks, but I don't know that I like it more than other things, and Traces to end the run seem risky, especially when not paired with something inherently frightening (after all, if they let the Caduceus trace go through, the second is all the harder to overcome). Of course, it has a higher ETR trace than Cad...

Rototurret -- It's been pulling a surprising amount of weight for me, but as an easy Sentry to have dealt with (and one of the key reasons for sentry breakers for safety in face-checking) I don't know that having three is better than, say, another of the Ichis -- except that it ALSO ends the run. I don't regret swapping one for a third Melange, but I might be tempted to shift things around to pick up another.

Janus 1.0 -- I feel like it's this OR Wotan, and I THINK Wotan's the right choice, being non-AP, bigger, and not PURELY click-through-able. At the same time, catching a Janus when low on clicks, combined with the other (miniscule) sources of Brain Damage might add another supplemental win condition... but that honestly feels TOO out there, for me.

There might be things I've missed, but a lot of other things always seem kind of limited -- Sherlock's useful but not useful ENOUGH, Wraparound's too much influence for too little benefit here, I don't have enough Bioroids to make Hourglass even PRETEND worth-it (as it can never actually hurt the runner in ANY capacity by itself, except making them run last click on a deck that doesn't run Snare anyway), and so on.

IN CONCLUSION

This deck is kind of ridiculous (as is my long-winded explanation). It's basically a concerted attempt to go and visit Magical Christmas Land via Mandatory Upgrades and reliable NEXT/ABT pulls. It doesn't always go there -- but I've found myself in Paranatural Easter Town often enough to think the attempts are worthwhile.