True NEXT

With NEXT Silver finally out, alongside the incredibly cool Mother Goddess, I wanted to revamp an older Guarding The Net deck of mine to see if the long wait for more NEXT Ice was worth it.

Turns out, it's pretty strong so far.

ICE:

The ICE is meant to be cheap and taxing and keep them out early. The beauty is, as the game goes on, your cheap ICE stay relevant and become stronger. Let's say you get lucky during a lengthy game against a non-ICE-destruction deck and get all of your NEXT ICE out plus Mother Goddess. That's +7 Strength for each NEXT Bronze and +7 End The Run subroutines for each NEXT Silver. Yuck.

Mother Goddess is amazing for an early hand; if she's the sole ICE on the field, her Myth type will keep any non-AI breaker from busting past her. And late game, she continues to pump up your other NEXT Ice and stays taxing (4 strength ICE is still annoying and expensive in the long-run).

With 22 ICE in the deck, you have a very good chance of getting the most out of your opening ability. I'd say 9/10 times I've been able to get 2 or 3 ICE already installed before my first turn. Ideally, you'll put some taxing ICE over R&D (Eli 1.0), something to wall off HQ, and something nasty or cheap to put over a remote to protect your Asset Economy.

ASSETS:

Adonis, Eve, and Melange. Protect them early on with your opening hand and milk them until the runner is brave enough to run through. Even if they get through to trash, they probably paid a hefty amount, and by that time you already benefited. Encryption Protocols make trashing Assets extremely annoying. I leave them unprotected; if the runner really wants to spend a Click and 3+ bucks to trash it, fine by me.

But overall, Asset economy, like any HB deck, will be the bread and butter; Guarding The Net is awesome for getting that early protection. A particularly horrid opening was Mother Goddess protecting Melange after turn 1. Delicious.

Overall, the early start helps you (a) Set up "scoring windows" and squeak out a turn 2 or 3 Agenda while the runner is still getting their stuff together and (b) Turtle up with a Melange or use other means of getting a nice cash start.

OTHER TIDBITS:

I threw a Jackson in there (because he's Jackson). I only used 3 Influence (not much I really wanted to spend it on, but I'm sure I'll dabble in some different, influence heavy ICE) so I figured a Jackson never hurts, though to be honest, with all the ICE that gets placed over Archives, I haven't really needed Jackson.

Some Successful Demonstrations are great early on (when the runner is face checking your ETR ICE), but you can get unlucky if you get them later on and they sit in your hand since the Runner probably won't make an unsuccessful run ever again. Not sure if these are keepers or not.

Anyways, that's the gist. So far the deck has worked pretty well.