The Fisher King v1.4

I've been tweaking this Next+Grail The Foundry deck lately, and it has given me some satisfactions. It's quite solid, but it's not a fast deck, and it goes for a long game, usually.

First things first, the Agenda selection:

• Accelerated Beta Test in a Foundry deck is a given, after the ruling about it in the last FAQ.
• Project Vitruvius is just another 3/2, which makes her easier to score, given there's 11 between Assets and Upgrades, the runner might think it's not worth running, especially against an expensive server. Or an unknown one, since each Grail can be very dangerous.
• Gila Hands Arcology proves itself much more useful than Bifrost Array, since one gives a fundamental economic boost, and the other just some possible lucky outcome by cloning ABT.
• Hades Fragment is a very good Agenda to score against Noise, since it almost makes you immune to loss by empty deck. It can be obviously useful against anyone else, especially to recycle those nice Will-o'-the-Wisps... but it might need Jackson Howard to reshuffle otherwise it'll take a long time to draw something back.
• Utopia Fragment is possibly the strongest 5/3 Agenda ever created by FFG. It simply makes any Agenda into a NAPD, you just have to install and advance twice. Now the runner knows he'll need 4 more credits to steal it... if it's an Agenda that card you installed.

As I mentioned, the deck works better in the long run, since Bronze and Silver get stronger towards mid or late game, and Grail-type ice usually has 3 subroutines, which makes for expensive breaking even with its low strength. So you should wear the runner out, score a few points, and slowly advance towards victory.

To help with that, there are 4 traps and the nasty Will-o'-the-Wisp, which you should always install together with each Agenda you want to score. That way, even if it's stolen, you get something in return: a time window in which to score another Agenda.

The two traps serve two different purposes:

• Reversed Accounts is there to show the runner you can actively damage him even if he doesn't run.
• Aggressive Secretary comes next, after he find out that you can make him lose his precious money. He still doesn't know you can also disarm him.

Economy is provided by Green Level Clearance and Hedge Fund plus Eve Campaign, which I chose due to the higher trash cost. The runner won't trash it so often as it would an Adonis, not with all that ice with 3 subroutines to break.

Besides NEXTs and Grails (and their momma) there are two more important pieces of ice:

• Ichi 2.0 is intended as a one-time surprise for the runner: it's fairly expensive to break and can be devastating if he's not prepared (also, the Trace 3 is possibly the best Trace there is:Tag & Brain Damage).
• Lotus Field because I preferred to add this one to counter the natural fraily of NEXT Bronze against Yog, rather than having the third copy of Reversed Accounts. It saved me plenty of times already.

One last suggestion: do not install Merlin, it's expensive and most of the times you can't afford to rez it without consequences. Just keep it in your HQ and use it to boost the other, less expensive Grail.

Following the same line of reasoning, always keep one Lancelot in HQ as well. The trash menace is a powerful weapon (he could literally steal away the fiancé of your enemy)!