Ice Engineering 2.0

I've been having reasonably good success with this deck lately. I made it without any outside inspiration, so I hope its unique enough to be interesting.

I don't have that many data packs, especially the newer releases, so there are certainly improvements that could be made with a full set of cards. Feel free to edit and improve on it with the "derived-from" option!

In early game, NEXT ice and/or large ice rezzed with Bioroid Efficiency Research or Oversight AI should allow you to get off to a fast start, either scoring a Priority Requisition and rezzing a piece of big ice, scoring an Accelerated Beta Test and searching for additional ice, or scoring a Project Vitruvius with multiple counters for use later in the game. Bioroid Efficiency Research and Oversight AI are primarily for early game protection, although they do occasionally come in handy later in the game (see discussion of Mutate, below).

You generally want to ice up R&D and HQ extensively with your big ice, and use a minimal amount of ice to protect remote servers--just enough to allow for an agenda score in the first few turns. This ice can be repurporsed for protection of assets in late game. Thus, late in the game, you will ideally have formidable walls of ice protecting your central servers, allowing you to stockpile Biotic Labor and score Project Vitruvius or Accelerated Beta Test from your hand. If your economy is really humming, you can even score a Priority Requisition from your hand by using Project Vitruvius to play Biotic Labor multiple times. This is another reason its valuable to score Project Vitruvius with multiple counters in the early going.

The deck runs an asset-based economy, with PAD Campaign, Adonis Campaign, and Eve Campaign. You gain a credit for installing, so assets should be installed early and often. Of course, Eve Campaign should always be protected with ice, and Adonis Campaign also protected whenever possible, to disincentivize the runner from trashing. Protecting your central servers with Heimdall 2.0, Wotan, and Janus 1.0, which all require a massive investment to penetrate, while simultaneously filling your remote servers with economy assets, can break the back of almost any runner economy.

Using most of the deck's influence on 3x Mutate may seem questionable, but this is a key card. Because 8 out of your 13 ice cost 10+ credits, your odds of landing a big piece of ice are quite good. Mutate also pairs perfectly with Next Bronze, which is the only Code Gate in the deck, so you can use it early game to score an agenda or to provide basic protection on a central server, force the runner to dig for a code gate breaker, then play Mutate to switch it to a different ice. This can provide a huge momentum swing.

If you suspect that the runner is preparing to break through and de-rez a piece ice that was rezzed with Bioroid Efficiency Research or Oversight AI, Mutate can also be used to swap the vulnerable ice for something permanent.

If you're desperate for protection and you get bad luck with Mutate, pulling a NEXT ice, you can use Project Vitruvius to return Mutate to HQ and try again. Although this is very resource-intensive and thus should only be done in desperation, it has saved my bacon more than once.

Project Vitruvius and Jackson Howard allow you to use Accelerated Beta Test without fear of trashing agendas to archives, where they can be easily scored by the runner. This greatly improves the value of Accelerated Beta Test.

Another interesting use of Project Vitruvius is to protect an agenda while waiting to score with Biotic Labor. For example, say you have 5 agenda points scored and a Biotic Labor in hand, so you use all 3 clicks to draw cards. You pull the desired 2-point agenda, but of course cannot score it this turn. You can then discard the agenda into Archives at the end of the turn. It is unlikely that the runner will choose to run on Archives, but if they do, you can immediately bounce the agenda back to your hand with Project Vitruvius to prevent them from accessing it. Otherwise you can return it to your hand at the start of your turn. This trick can allow you to dig for agendas and score from your hand with Biotic Labor even if HQ is unprotected.

Final note--I include 2x Cerebral Overwriter because I tend to play repeated friendly matches rather than tourneys, meaning my opponent generally knows the makeup of my deck. Thus, the inclusion of a trap asset helps to keep the runner honest. If playing in a tournament (where you can always threaten a trap even if there are none in a deck), Cerebral Overwriter is probably unnecessary and both could be removed. You could add a couple Archived Memories instead, or a 3rd Hedge Fund and 3rd Eve Campaign.