The new and... Wait, what is the opposite of improved?... Er, let's just say it is updated. Of course for the July 2016 Update of the MWL. Got to bring my favorite deck into this new age, you know?

Credit, like last time, must be given to gumOnShoe and TheBigBoy as well as Stimhack for providing the building blocks of this deck. Several ideas here were taken from those sources.

This is my take on Sol, post Most Wanted List 2.0.

Breakdown

The idea of the deck remains the same as it always was: Fast Advance when you can, Rush when you think is prudent, or Glacier up when you're flush on econ or need to hard score due to Clot.

Same as the previous ones, it ain't the best at any of those. Especially with the loss of AstroScript, it has lost some of the FA oomph that it used to have. That kind of sucks, but you roll with the punches, right?

So, the question is "Why play Sol?"

My answer is: News Hound. This little guy is amazing, and allows you to switch up your game mode in a way that no other deck can. It is cheap, taxing, and has an easy requirement to turn on its maximum potential.

Now, you could take it into another NBN or even another faction, but then you lose the consistent "Always On" nature of the ETR subroutine that Sol provides.

More than ever, since all NBN was nerfed equally, it is necessary to have a solid scoring plan as a backup to any FA shenanigans that you could run, and consistent News Hound is a good way to do that.

Agendas

This agenda suite is not as majestic and magical as it once was, but we had to make a few changes with the AstroScript restriction. I went over the concept of the suite in my original post so I won't rehash here.

To replace our fallen friends, so the 3rd Beale comes in to keep our 3/2 density up; original deck ran 2x. We'll add in a NAPD for the second slot because it helps create a credit discrepancy.

A case could be made for Merger instead of NAPD as a 6th 3/2, but I really dislike the down side. I may test to see if Fast Track mitigates this, but I doubt it.

Explode-a-palooza is another possible choice due to NAPD's weakness to Film Critic and anything generating Bad Pub, but I like the tax when it works because of the synergy with Tollbooth and Predictive Algorithm.

Assets

No changes.

Praise be to Our Lord and Savior Jackson Howard!

Upgrades

SanSan City Grid doesn't help as much as it once did, but we keep it at 3x so we see it consistently. Plus, it lets you bluff the Food as NAPD with an Install-Advance play.

Will-o'-the-Wisp goes away. I liked it as a tech card versus Anarch because of their lack of search, but we're headed to a Shaper meta. It is just dead weight and too expensive in that world.

Cyberdex comes in for obvious reasons.

Caprice Nisei was added to help scoring, and because we had some Influence freed up due to the Astro nerf. I removed Ash because he wasn't pulling his weight with Runners starting to pack higher Link. I figured it was the most high-impact was to spend the extra.

Operations

I think everyone knows the basics of this version of Sol now, so I won't rehash those either. Let's just review some key points:

Interns has flopped between 2x and 1x for me a lot. We're back up to 2x because it is important to have the SanSan up and to recur trashed Caprice.

Fast Track has also gone up and down for me, from 3x to 1x to 2x. Were on 3x again because scoring 3/2s as fast as you can is mostly how you win. Not always, but frequently, if they steal them early and you're left with just Food, you lose.

ICE

No changes.

There are possibly some tweaks to me made here, but the ICE suite didn't get hit by the new MWL and I've found it to be pretty solid for the gameplan.

Did I mention News Hound is baller?