Cyberdex+Power Shutdown NEH - 1st Place Firestorm Cardiff SC

I feel I should try to justify my choice in taking NEH to a tournament due to the amount of criticism the Identity gets.

I play Jinteki 90% of the time, dabbling with HB and NEH. My aim before the Store Championships in Cardiff was to build something which could deal with the new Anarch threats. Specifically Hivemind-Progenitor and Maxx-Eater antics. I was testing a custom biotics build leading up to the tournaments and realised that what I was trying to do was ultimately better in NEH. The ID is just so strong it felt stupid to take something else just because I felt a bit, well, dirty, playing NEH.

Personally, as much as it is soul-crushing to lose to NEH when it steamrolls all over you, I feel that having such an incredibly powerful ID is good for the runner game. It forces us to make our decks better, even if it does stretch us thin when it comes to teching for other archetypes like RP or Glacier in general.

Anyway, having said that, I will just touch upon my little tweeks to this well known, fast advance archetype:

Cyberdex virus suite did so well against my anarch match-ups, barring one which absolutely annihilated me! Being able to purge as a paid ability is incredibly strong when your facing Imps, medium, hivemind, chakana e.t.c I will be including this card in most of my Corp decks from now on.

Power shutdown was purely a meta call. I expected 'can of whupass' style decks and this card really does slow them down. Knocking out progenitors and their hosted programmes for 1 credit is pretty slick. The card has other uses of course, like taking our Corroders, but most runners will pack Shutdown protection. Its an odd include, but it worked for me and I didn't feel that it bogged down the deck too much.

Yes, there are no sentry ice! People will usually pop down a sentry breaker anyway, fearing Architect so you still get that bit of a tempo swing. Tollbooth x 2 was there to ensure the centrals were taxing to the runner.

Not much else to be said about this. NEH proved to be an exciting mistress, but I think Jinteki is my true love! I don't know if I will take NEH to future tourneys. It looks like fast advance is taking a hit soon too with upcoming card releases, so i'm glad I at least gave the thing a whirl.