Ads and Ice

Miller4h9 13

It started with a simple idea: Use some Ads. Use some Ice. See what happens. Use the Foundry to abuse Next Ice and Grail Ice.

The thing is, it works.

Here's how you play.

Ice everything. (Edit: Okay, if they feel like running your Advertisements, ice them and get more ice to play. If they don't, don't waste your time and/or ice.) Play out tons of Advertisements. When they run into your ice, get more ice. Put out Sandburg when you have tons of moneys for laughs. Once you have your standard HB epic server, start scoring out your 3/2s. Use ABT to make you servers even better. Use Director Haas to make a fun new server. Use Eden Fragment to make your server building a cinch. But don't use Project Vitruvius. But then again, who does?

Design Decisions:

Agendas: Aside from Project Vitruvius, every Agenda works directly towards building up your servers. ABT gets you more ice and is relatively risk-free with The Foundry. Director Haas lets you maybe put back one of your Advertsiements and protect it with some ice. If you need, you can even make another scoring server. Eden Fragment keeps you from paying all those pesky "install costs." Priority Requisition lets you rez those expensive Next Golds and Merlins. And Project Virtuvius is a 3/2.

Assets: As you may see, aside from Jackson Howard and Sandburg, every Asset is an Advertisement. With Advertisements, one of two things is going to happen: 1) You will be rich 2) Your opponent will be poor. Booth of these work in your favor. But you know that already.

Ah yes, Sandburg! Well, originally he wasn't in the deck. But after my first game on Jinteki, my opponent said, "Yeah, you could really use Sandburg." And I agreed. And it works great. It makes all of your Next Ice really, really strong. And your Grail Ice, for that matter. You are generally very rich; even when your opponent is being mean with your Advertisements, you can usually still make a tidy profit from other cards in your deck. Which reminds me!

Operations: Yup, they're all about getting money.

Ice: Almost every ice is Grail or Next. And that makes sense. Next Ice are stronger in numbers. Grail Ice gets stronger if you can pull more to hand. And with The Foundry, that triple Merlin dream is even easier!

Wait, why do you have Pop-up Window?

Uh.................

Rational answer: Any economy you can get is good, and that 1 credit a pop is quite nice.

Actual answer: It's an Advertisement.

Strengths:

Economy is pretty strong. You can float at 10-20 pretty safely, and sometimes you'll even find yourself in the 20-30 range.

The Next Ice and Grail Ice work VERY well with the Foundry. As well as you could hope. And the best part is, there is still pretty good kill potential. A late game Next Gold can be devestating, and holding just 1 Merlin in hand when you rez Merlin can still do a death-dealing 6 net damage.

Sandburg is a boss. Sandburg and Next Ice is nothing new. But hopefully Sandburg and GRAIL Ice is.

Weaknesses: It takes a while to build up, so early aggression can be a pain, as can a runner who works his way up to 20 or 30 credits to bust down your servers.

Ice bypassing makes you sad.

If you get poor later on, things can also become sad. After all, you have a LOT of ice to rez.

Well, from the first play this deck worked better than I've expected. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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