The NEXT Foundry v3.0 - A primer

v3.0 - Major overhaul

My take on The Foundry: Refining the Process is a Red Coats style deck featuring the NEXT ice.

The Foundry concept notes:

1) The Foundry's ability increases agenda density because it removes extra ice from R&D therefore defending R&D is important.

2) The core ice should be pairs or triplets.

3) This identity naturally protects HQ because it puts extra ice in hand.

4) Our identity wants to rez ice on the corps turn as well as the runners.

Economy:

HQ will be constantly filled with agendas, extra ice, and time sensitive operations (Punitive Counterstrike or Archived Memories). It is inefficient to click for credits without discarding valuable cards. The most efficient economy is operations and characteristic HB advertisments (Adonis Campaign and Eve Campaign).

Experimentation notes:

1) Big bioroid ice with Bioroid Efficiency Research is very clunky and awkward. It is not very effective.

2) The grail suite is not as effective as it seems. The best tools for each subtype are commonly played. Corroder meets Galahad's strengh, mimic meets Lancelot's strength, and gordian blade is near Merlin's but it costs $6 to rez. Agendas, punitive counterstrikes, and extra ice on top of grail pieces clutter HQ really fast.

3) Weyland's Amazon Industrial Zone or Executive Boot Camp are excellent tools for The Foundry: Refining the Process. Both allow The Foundry ability on the Corp's turn. Currently, Executive Boot Camp has more utility, because you can rez ice on other servers and it protects itself. The runner usually has to let it sit there, otherwise you search for another or another economy asset.

4) I have almost equal Punitive Counterstrike kills and scoring wins. People do not expect meat damage out of Weyland and runners usually trash their plascretes, unless they see a punitive. If so, they waste time looking for it, creating a scoring window for the corp.

5) The Accelerated Beta Test interaction is very powerful. You pick one piece of ice in the top 3, install it, trigger The Foundry's ability and shuffle the other two back in. One piece of ice installed and rezzed for free and the non-ice cards are still useful later. Or you can choose to install two or three ice if its advantageous. With Jackson Howard in the deck, there is much less downside to using this ability.

CURRENT VERSION NOTES:

v3.0

Playing Near-Earth Hub: Broadcast Center with Architect showed me the power of that card and this deck has lots of assets to be reused. It also is a huge deterrent for if the runner doesn't have a killer.

Naturally, when runners are flush with cash is a huge problem. They can break through servers and afford to fight Ash 2X3ZB9CY traces and Punitive Counterstrike traces. Reversed Accounts provides a solution to this problem. If the threat is known, the runner has to deal with it or go broke, opening favorable scoring windows for agendas and punitive. If they deal with it, they spend money getting there and $3 to trash which is still favorable.

While the interaction with Accelerated Beta Test is really strong, this Punitive Counterstrike build really needs all 3 point agendas for it to be effective. It has reverted back to 21 points worth of 3 pointers and 2 Domestic Sleepers.