Classic NEXT is in full bloom

NEXT has always been suited for a rush strategy due to its speedy set-up. It had a problem in that it usually ran out of money and you ended up being better off playing ETF. Its main problem was also that you had to run a lot of ice in order to capitalize on your power. Ice that you cannot all rez and that doesn't end up defending the last one or two agendas you need to score.

Enter Bloom. Bloom is a very narrow Jinteki card with similarities to architect. It crucially allows for free installs of ice. It is more limited than architect in that it only installs ice, and only from HQ even. This means this card really only shines in heavy ice decks, which are all next decks. This deck usually has a couple of ice in hand to install.

Enter Seidr Adaptive Barrier. A barrier that acts as the big pay-off for building those servers that are 5-6 ice deep. It is fine early and really strong late, and ends the run. This is an outstanding barrier and will surpass Eli 1.0 late in the game.

The deck is very straightforward. You immediately start with 2-3 ice out of the gate and rush your first agenda in the second or third turn of the game. The agenda suite is tailored to give you a steady resource flow that you can ride to your next agenda that you are pushing out. You plan to score 2-3 agendas before the runner has completely set himself up to run. the last point can be scored with a combination of bait cards like melange mining corp or surplus agendas and the defence provided by corporate troubleshooter.

The trick of this deck is that it is blisteringly fast to score points. The ice installers must be respected, lest the runner gets to deal with servers that are 5-6 ice deep. Even the best rigs struggle breaking servers that deep multiple turns in a row. Adding to this is that your ice scales through the game. Both Seidr and next ice will just become more and more taxing as the game continues.

On top of this, it is also good in the meta. It runs 5 trashable cards, so Whizzard is almost blank. Corporate troubleshooter works well against Sifr. The nature of NEXT makes temujin contract hard to pull off since you can ice all starting servers if need be with ease. Accelerated beta test is the plan against Dyper, and dyper takes quite a while to set up. Blackmail I haven't played against yet, and it will come down to how fast they can find their second blackmail recursion effect I imagine. Stealth again needs some time before it can begin running. Getting a really deep server might keep them out or run them low on fuel if you are able to threaten a score a couple of turns in a row.

Some card choices explained:

Blue Level Clearance: Preferred over Hedge fund, because NEXT needs the card draw more than the money. You also don't need an absurd amount of money at the ready. Just enough to rez your next piece of ice.

Melange Mining Corp.: This deck tends to run low on money because it is rushing its agendas early on. This card works from a low budget and can be pulled with the one-off Psychokinesis. And ticking this twice means you have plenty of money to win the game with.

Psychokinesis: Looking at your deck is nice with the ABT in there, and it can pull a card in case that you are getting R&D locked.

The agenda suite: Bifrost Array has ABT and Corporate Sales Team as targets. Advanced Concept Hopper is in there because I often end up overscoring vitruvius and realized that I did not need to do that. What I needed was money and cards. It is one of the few reliable options to get this without dipping in 3/5 territory. As for ABT: How could you not play this in a deck with 24 ice?

Subliminal Messaging: Fire it twice and you have the same benefit that a hedge fund provides. Acts as a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" with the advanced concept hoppers. Because this deck only has 4 servers, I think this will be better over the course of the game. It is also a great card to toss in your archives off an ABT.

Ice suite: I think the NEXT ice, the Seidr, pop-up window and the six installers are crucial to the deck. The fairchildren are in there because it is fun to run all of them, and they are all pretty taxing. I could see this mixed up to have one fewer code gate so you could include a second NEXT gold. Fairchild 2.0 might be better off as another NEXT gold, though that is not yet entirely clear.

Where is Jackson Howard? There is no need for Jackson in this deck. We can defend against Noise by just icing archives a couple deep, and he will be too slow for this deck anyway if he tries to mill and hades us out. The deck also doesn't need Jackson to stop agenda overflow. Rushing agendas mitigates that problem sufficiently.