Near Earth Grail, or, "Wait, Glacier NBN?!"

DrunkenGineer 854

Since TWIY Grail never really seemed to take off, and since NEH FA seems to have been killed by Clot, I'm thinking it might be worth a shot to merge the former into the latter and see what happens.

Playstyle

There's the standard NEH asset suite of DBS, Jackson, and Pad, to get the most out of your ID ability. Hedge and Sweeps are also standard. Midway replaces SanSan because the two don't play nice with each other - note that this is a Glacier deck, not a Fast Advance one. You can still score Breaking News out of hand and chain Astros, but what you really want to do is play never-advance in an incredibly taxing remote to get that first Astro out.

Midway Station Grid

You've got the Grail ice, Eli, and Archer all with multiple subroutines, maximizing the impact of Midway Station Grid. Wraparound provides a little AI hate, Tollbooth is still the best taxing ice in the game, and Pop-Up makes a DBS server really annoying for the runner.

Blacklist

One card you might be interested in is Blacklist. It puts recursion-heavy runners in a really bad position, especially if you rez it at the same time as an Archer when their Sharpshooter is in the heap, if you play it the turn before they plan to Levy, or if you rez it as you plan on scoring an Astro to counter Clone Chipped Clot. I'm not sure if 1 is the right number, though.

Flex Slots

There's one Ash here as well, but it's the slot I'm least sure about. It could help you lock your remote down in the late game, but the influence might serve you better as an Ichi 1.0. You could also play -1 Ash -1 Archer +1 Biotic Labor +1 Tollbooth.

A Helpful Hint

One play you should expect to make is install-advancing a Project Beale with an Astro counter on the table. On top of bluffing the NAPD, this lets you score a 3-point Beale and win before the runner thinks you can. Switching out for a Biotic could also make this happen.

2 comments
5 May 2015 gumonshoe

I've done this and its decent, but a money-d up runner or econ denial deck can be very hard to deal with. My latest version had restructures and corp. trouble shooters to be able to consistently pop those ice up to where they could destroy something. Also 3x blacklist, 3x lotus (because blacklist behind this shuts off MaxX) and no Midway/Ash. People don't break archer typically using regular breakers, though that's not always true of the grael.

Like the 1 of ash; but if you can really seal up the destroyer plan, you won't need it.

5 May 2015 DrunkenGineer

Ah, shame that it's not as good as I had hoped, but at least people are trying something that isn't just fastrobiotics.