Kagami (9th/31 Uncle's Games Bellevue SC)

First off, the name: Kagami literally means "mirror" in Japanese, and it just so happens to be the name of a certain light-purple-haired twin in an anime I like, so the name kinda stuck. Some people give their cars or guitars people's names. I do the same with Netrunner decks, apparently.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I've been iterating on this deck for a little bit and I've come to a point where I'm mostly happy with it. This deck went 3/5 and took 9th/31 along with Leela at the Uncle's Games Bellevue Store Championship, missing the cut by 3 SOS after 5 rounds. Two wins were by flatline, one by points (Eden + Hades + Chronos). The losses were to a Leela where I got hit with an early siphon and got agenda flooded, and a Reina that basically just siphoned me to zero and I couldn't stabilize.

I took a standard The Foundry: Refining the Process Grail + NEXT shell and added a bit of a twist to it. The Twins can make the Foundry even more scary, since when you rez, you can find a copy of whatever ice you're looking for and then sacrifice it to the Twins to make them hit it again. Janus is the obvious great target, but the non-Galahad grails are great, too, since they keep their subroutines until the end of the run and you can just add more to them. Even better, if you have Vitruvius counters, you can keep bringing the ice back to your hand to make them hit it again with the twins. Making them hit Janus 3 or more times can be a thing (though I haven't actually had it happen yet, they usually die on the second one).

The deck plays a lot like a Redcoats style deck, except without the bioroids. You have a decent taxing ice suite with grail and NEXT that the runner is scared to facecheck, and you have a solid economy to back it up. The added bonus is with a few extra cards, you have a surprise kill in there, too.

Some card choice explanations:

The agendas have changed a bit since the first iteration. I originally wasn't running NEXT ice, and ran a fairly standard fast advance agenda suite, since ABT can be good in Foundry. I ended up cutting them and 3x NAPD along with Eli for 5/3s and NEXT ice. Eden Fragment has worked out really well for me, since you can keep defending your servers even further and Foundry will keep finding you ice. Hades Fragment is alright, Utopia Fragment is good with 5/3s. Chronos Project is there for shaper and Maxx hate. In one game I fast advanced one out with Biotic when Maxx's deck was completely empty and it completely destroyed her since her only decoder was in there and my Merlins were unbreakable. Priority Requisition is there because there was no other 5/3 I wanted and I needed the room. You can use it for Janus, but that reduces the surprise factor, so I don't like doing it. Still, 15 creds is 15 creds.

The economy is basically Redcoats (minus the ETF credits and an Eve). If left unchecked you can make a lot of money very quickly, plus you have fewer and cheaper ice than standard Redcoats, so hopefully you can get the money rolling in.

1 Biotic is there to win the game when you need it, to deal with agenda floods, and to score Chronos Project out of hand to obliterate the heap. Everything else can happen out of a remote, preferably behind Ash (who can also help masquerade as Twins and vice versa).

I was debating at the last minute to replace the NEXT suite with 3x Eli 1.0, 2-3x IQ and if 2 IQ, the third Eve, but I didn't want to do it without playtesting. This makes it more resilient to Parasite, but can up the average rez cost of your ice, especially since Foundry keeps filling your hand. I'll mess with it.

Someone suggested that I try to fit in Executive Boot Camp even if influence is tight. I'm gonna try testing with -1 Jackson -1 Twins +2 Boot Camp and see how it goes. You don't need Twins early, so you can probably get away with it, and it lets your NEXT ice keep getting rezzed and powered up, and you can still search for Jackson if you need to with it. I'll give it a shot. Daily Business Show was also brought up, since you can put the 5/3s away if you don't want them.

Anyway, this deck was a lot of fun to play and I'm glad I took it over NEH, even if it didn't quite make the cut. I lived the dream and got a Twins Janus flatline twice during the tournament against some pretty good players, so I'm happy with it.