[NEXT Design] Making It Work

Deck Archetypes
142

Some really interesting points on this thread made already but I feel I have something valuable to add. I’ve played ‘Guarding on the line’ more than any other corp in my time so far in Netrunner and here is what I’ve learnt:

  • 23 ice is definitely the sweet spot. The bulk of the games I play I can make full use of the ability, although you do need to mulligan for it quite regularly. More than this kills your economy, less makes the ability fail too often.
  • Within the first two turns, you must find and create an optimised, permanent income structure. This is why Gila Hands Arcology and Melange Mining Corp are probably the most important cards in the deck, and I would urge anybody playing NEXT to consider them auto-includes. There is no space in the deck list for an operation based economy. Adonis campaign is right behind these.
  • Cheap binary ETR is your friend. Paper Wall, Eli and Quandary come to mind.
  • The more diverse your ICE suite the better. Don’t ever allow yourself to be in a situation where 1 breaker is wrecking your game. Forcing the runner to find his entire breaker suite as quickly as you are playing is what creates the pressure in this deck list.
  • Your advance tactics must be permanent and in play within the first three turns. You don’t want to be drawing into Biotics ever, you want permanent solutions like Director Haas or Arcology AI. Never mind that Biotics is not cheap, and places a huge strain on your difficult to manage economy.
  • NEXT IS a high variance style, embrace that and play aggressively.

Hope that helps!

1 Like
143

Not sure about this ICE suite TBH. I found that having ‘3’ each of all my ice was a real problem in NEXT. Often you would draw into 2 or 3 of the same ice very quickly, and the runner just needed one breaker to create real problems in your defenses. Actually, a number of points lol. Let me rather make a full post.

144

Yeah, I found that too. I don’t have a problem running 3 ofs (and the NEXT Ice encourage it), but I have ended up rather sentry light, mostly because I just don’t like Guard very much, and that has made the deck more vulnrable than it should be.

I’d be interested to see your lists. I have never really tried out the Director Haas/Archology route (partly I suspect because I run a lot with Whizzard…) but can see it being an interesting option.

145

As requested: NEXT Design, Guarding on the line. Like I say, super high variance deck. Go as fast and aggressively as you can. Give it a whirl.

Agendas (12):
3x Accelerated Beta Test
1x Director Haas’ Pet Project
2x Efficiency Committee
3x Project Vitruvius
3x Gila Hands Arcology

Operations (3):
3x Hedge Fund

Upgrades (1):
1x Ash 2X3ZB9CY

Assets (10):
3x Adonis Campaign
2x Director Haas
1x Haas Arcology AI
2x Melange Mining Corp
2x Jackson Howard !!

Barrier (9)
3x Eli 1.0
1x Heimdall 1.0
3x Paper Wall
2x Wall of Static

Code Gate (8)
1x Enigma
2x Quandary
2x Pop-up Window !!
2x RSVP !!
1x Viktor 2.0

Sentry (6)
1x Grim
2x Caduceus !!
1x Ichi 1.0
2x Rototurret

146

Cool posted below. I’m more scared of Reina at the moment than anyone else TBH. Anything that places extra hurt on the economy hurts hardest.

147

I didn’t want to make a new topic but thought I would inform those who are interested about my experience with NEXT Design and how it did at worlds.

First off I love this identity and have played various versions of it including some posted here. I decided to take it to worlds because people are not used to it and I personally find great potential in the ID.

Transformer-Gridlock

(Start out rush-transition to glacier-finish by fast advance)

NEXT Design: Guarding the Net (Creation and Control)

Agenda (10)
3x Accelerated Beta Test (Core Set)
3x Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus)
1x Efficiency Committee (Creation and Control)
3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)

Asset (6)
1x Aggressive Secretary (Core Set)
3x Melange Mining Corp. (Core Set)
2x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) ••

Upgrade (2)
2x SanSan City Grid (Core Set) ••••• •

Operation (8)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
3x Green Level Clearance (A Study in Static)
2x Sweeps Week (True Colors) ••••

Barrier (7)
1x Wall of Static (Core Set)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof)
3x NEXT Silver (Upstalk)

Code Gate (6)
3x NEXT Bronze (Opening Moves)
3x IQ (First Contact)

Sentry (7)
2x Rototurret (Core Set)
2x Ichi 2.0 (Creation and Control)
3x Architect (Up and Over)

ICE (3)
2x Chimera (Cyber Exodus)
1x Mother Goddess (Upstalk)

12 influence spent (maximum 12)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Up and Over

So lets get started,

Game 1 vs Nasir
Surprisingly a difficult match up as your speed (lots of ice) enables his speed. I start the game with a three card drop just as planned. I’m able to set up an early melange and start accumulating some serious money. Yet I never want to waste an early start so I install advance a pro vit. Push it through with an extra counter. The game starts to get a little more hairy as he has a full big rig setup, as I try and bait him to run my taxing remote with melanges/jacksons or even squeeze by an occasional agenda he infiltrates me every time (a total of 5 times that game as he LARLA back his heap later). Im struggling hard as he can get into almost anywhere without much trouble. When thankfully I get my aggressive sec, and bait him in to blow up his torch. Allowing for my third agenda as I had found a scoring window earlier for a NAPD. He quickly recovers his torch putting me back in a tough spot 6-6 at this point when the wonderful SanSan shows up allowing me to fire one out of hand for the game. WIN 1-0

Game 2 vs Reina Roja
Game went by without a hiccup. He played credit denial but couldnt break into a turn one double iced melange remote. Leading to a rich game 8-0 finish WIN 2-0

Game 3 vs Kate
3 ice flop, Facing ppvp kate here, he saw some bad luck with a lot of econ at the bottom. Allowed for an already quick corp to seal up very early. I got a couple early agendas, capitalized on a scoring window with NAPD, and he ran through an architect click 4 to allow for a solid victory as I installed an agenda from rnd. WIN 3-0

Game 4 vs Andy
I dont remember to much about this one. 3 ice flop. Saw a turn one sweeps (it was a good feeling) Sealed up fairly quick got hit by some siphons but it didnt matter much as it was hard to keep me fully poor. He hit an architect to bring back a SanSan which sealed it. WIN 4-0

Game 5 Kate
To note this was the second game in our match which followed one of the longest RP games I’ve played… 2 ice flop. Facing a replicator stealth deck, which also proved tough as he could blast through my taxing servers for almost nothing. I decided early to stack same type ice so HQ was sentry RnD was code gate with an early barrier and my remote was mainly barriers. I got an early lead as it takes a second for stealth decks to get set up. I pressured his money with NAPD Jackson melange (ha!) and just having to run my remote which allowed me to get to 4-2 before it was all set. Time was running short at this point (just a few minutes at most) However 2 rnd interface 1 HQ quickly got him to 4-6 time running short I score on my final turn while creating in almost impenetrable rnd server the turn before (next B/Next S/next B/IQ/next B) with 6 total next ice one of them Mother G. I put the next B out of range of his refractor which would have been 7! Stealth credits to break. Overall super great game which I wish we could have finished as I would have top decked a proj Vit to FA it out on a rezzed SanSan for the win :/.
TIE 4-0-1

Game 6 Andy
3 ice flop. Very quick game as the deck did its job, sealed up quick made money and scored out 8-0 Survived multiple emergency shutdowns early rezzing IQ 3 times. WIN 5-0-1

Game 7 Andy
I felt confident going in (so far undefeated) as well as having never lost to Andy during testing/various tournaments. I mistakenly traded my 2 ice (chimera/roto) 2 hedge fund and a NAPD. For a chimera, Jackson, melange, ABT and NAPD…worst start of the day. With a chimera on the remote ice on HQ/RnD (after refill/draw) and melange in remote I gambled saying maybe just maybe I can salvage it. Sure enough after a couple of cards inside job comes out and he trashes my melange (expected) I try and be cheeky and install my ABT trying to sneak it through with one inside job down and hiding behind a chimera. Click 1 he draws 2 he runs I rez saying code gate 3 installs zu… 4 runs. Sad Sad day. He spends the mid game siphoning (planned attack/SOT) since I never got any econ. Which I guess was good for me because he didnt run rnd as I went on to draw agenda after agenda. Some how! I make it back scoring 2 agendas finding a scoring window. Continuing to stay in it creating taxing servers. With 3 agendas in hand I rez my SanSan scoring my sixth point ready to win on my next turn. He some how scrounged up enough money to make a fourth click legwork pulling the last agenda on his third card… super close game but ultimately losing to Andy S. (Ranked 9th for Swiss) I was knocked out of the top 16. LOSS 5-1-1

I had a lot of fun especially with NEXT Design. I felt like it was strong in the meta and it held it’s ground. People were not only excited to see it but were not completely sure what to do against it. They were very unsure what my influence was :slight_smile: except scorch they all knew I was not packing that.

Hopefully others can get some enjoyment out of it. Let me know if you have any questions.

EDIT: Ha I didnt mean to necro this, just looked at the decklist again and fixed a typo

8 Likes
148

Is NEXT Design something people are giving a go right now? I picked it up on a whim and two other people at the local store had apparently been giving it a try, making me figure it’s either some kind of zeitgeist or there’s a build that’s impressing. Mine is a pretty standard rush style (with 3x Sweeps Week and Ash) but one thing I’m running into is that HB doesn’t actually have agendas that pack a punch. The only one I can think of a runner hating me score with the ice suite I have it the fragment that lets you install for free. Even ABT isn’t really rough if the ICE is cheap enough, which rush wants.

In NBN or Weyland, you can leverage the rush by rushing out an early agenda that the corp really doesn’t want you to have like Astroscript or Atlas/Posted Bounty. This thread talks about using Mandatory Upgrades that way, but it takes several turns to rush that out and I’m not sure that’s feasible against PPVP shaper or Crim with Inside Job and Special Order. Do you just make the game fast enough (maybe with DBS) to make the rush the whole game? Or is there some agenda score that you leverage to make the rush valuable?

149

I just try to rush points through as quickly as possible, with paper wall, quandary, next ice, pop-up, and maybe do an accelerated beta test to get sentries out. You have enough money to advance and score the agendas from green level clearance and shipment from sans an, which also works to combo with the only 4-cost agenda, efficiency committee.

I’ve done pretty well with it and only have trouble if I get agenda flooded, but that happens less frequently than you would expect.

150

Do you run Jackson? The 12 inf is tight. Mine right now is 3x Sweeps, 2x Jackson, 2x DBS and 2x Lotus Field, since otherwise Yog really smashes through code gates early.

I’m also not really doing the FA package, so maybe Efficiency Committee with FA is the way to go in order to have an agenda that you really want to rush early. It just seems like influence would be really tight to pull that off.

151

I thought Vitruvius was the HB agenda that the runner “hated” to see scored. Isn’t part of what made Project Vitruvius kind of the “danger agenda” for HB was the fact that it could pull Biotic back after a FA score? But with Clot dropping, that agenda is bit neutered I guess.

152

they may have been inspired by the most recent The Winning Agenda where NEXT Rush was discussed. IMO it has the same weakness it has always had: it folds to Runners who get anything but terrible draws. Every faction has strong program tutoring right now (Anarch with MaxX/Clone Chip/Inject), so personally I don’t consider NEXT Rush very viable, and certainly nowhere near as strong as HBFA Rush.

Maybe I haven’t given it enough of a chance, though. In theory, it seems like NEXT could maybe play the Supermodernism style fairly well, the issue is you don’t have the flatline threat like Weyland does.

153

That’s been my feeling, but with this qualification: NEXT can almost certainly score an agenda off the table turn 2 in a way I’ve not seen from any other corp. When I’m running Ash, if I can keep ahead of the runner on economy (it’s hard to tutor and play your breakers -and- gain money) I can feel confident about getting out two agendas. It’s that third that seems so hard to nail down, which is why I was wondering about options for making one of those agendas do more work than just being points. PrioReq is not a great rush candidate because it wants to have a good target, and ABT is hit or miss in a way that doesn’t feel appealing (even with installing jackson, I’ve thrown burst econ into the trash with it. Given that it doesn’t save you much for cheap ICE, runners can sort or shrug off a good ABT and a bad one really hurts.

154

What ABT allows you to do is get all three ice subtypes protecting the remote server without needing to spend clicks or credits.

Also, if you can get a third agenda scored (which is definitely the hardest part), Domestic sleepers is great at finishing off the game.

155

I really really tried to make this ID work with limited success. At first it kinda seems like the corp version of andy take a whole turn before you take your first turn. And in theory even better than Andy if Andy is 4 free clicks before your first turn NEXT has the potential to be 6 free clicks. But it doesn’t end up playing out that way for a couple reasons. First you don’t start with 9 cards so you better hope you have at least two ICE in your opening hand. But the bigger issue is having that early ICE advantage is only useful if you can actually rez it all which means really cheap ICE. And cheap ice gets mowed down by parasite or eater/siphon. I would try to rush an agenda out by turn 3 preferably an EC and then just score from hand with EC + SfSS and 1 biotic labor. I liked that it could score an agenda before the runner even had a single breaker out and by the time they had a breaker suite I was just scoring from hand. It could also score from almost no credits pretty reliably. Inside job was never a big issue for me it was easy to get a cheap ETR barrier and code gate on the remote early on. But it was also the deck I lost the most games after leading 5-0 or 4-0 with. Late game you can’t keep the runner out of any servers and it’s susceptible to R&D lock, ICE destruction, and econ denial strategies. MVP’s for me were successful demonstration and closed accounts. Rototurret on the scoring remote is amazing too. I don’t count EC + SfSS because that’s basically the core of the whole strategy and the only reason it works at all. Here’s my list:

NEXT Design Guarding the Net

12 influence spent (max 12) ••••••••••••
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Up and Over

Agenda (11)

3x Accelerated Beta Test
3x Efficiency Committee
2x Gila Hands Arcology
3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (3)

3x Jackson Howard •••

Operation (14)

1x Archived Memories
1x Biotic Labor
1x Closed Accounts •
3x Hedge Fund
2x Peak Efficiency
1x Reclamation Order
3x Shipment from SanSan •••
2x Successful Demonstration

Barrier (6)

3x Eli 1.0
3x NEXT Silver

Code Gate (8)

3x NEXT Bronze
3x Pop-up Window •••
2x Quandary

Sentry (6)

1x Archer ••
2x Architect
1x Guard
2x Rototurret

Other (1)

1x Mother Goddess

156

Also once Clot comes out I think this goes from 2nd tier to just plain unplayable.

157

Yeah, a scored ABT that fires well is definitely cool and extends the midgame, but its downside can lose you a lot of tempo. Maybe it’s a better call in a 24 ICE deck than a 22 (the quantity I’m currently running)? I’ve been firing it a lot in play and never with disaster because I make sure to have a click to play Jackson after the fire, but my ice is pretty cheap so I don’t gain too much from it in terms of money. The clicks are definitely nice, but since I can lose clicks/money by trashing non-ICE, it feels like a wash.

That would fit better with a 2-pointers deck, but I think that’s where I’m ultimately going to head. Maybe ABT, Vitruvius, NAPD and DS, with Archer splashed? Archer is great at keeping the rush alive, and also a fun ABT target.

EDIT:

That’s why I’m experimenting with Ash instead of FA. Maybe rush the first 2 agendas, let Ash help me score the third and the final one would be domestic sleepers? Right now I’m doing 6 2 pointers and 3 3 pointers, but I think it might be better with more agendas so I see them quicker.

158

Oh, I need 1 more agenda there, too. Deckspace, deckspace, deckspace…

159

I’ve tried this ID very recently but without success. I was also trying a rush deck with cheap ice and burst economy, aiming to push out 4-5 points as quickly as possible and score out the last one from hand, but the deck felt very weak to me. Issues I ran into:

  1. The economy really seems to run out of steam midgame without the EtF boost. Green and blue levels seem like an obvious fit, but green level is fairly low impact if you’re trying to make money, and blue level is often awkward to use. I used some of the limited influence on economy cards like Sweeps and Celebrity gift, but still never seemed to have enough.

  2. Blackmail is a problem. Obviously it’s only Valencia, but I encountered a couple when testing this and there’s little you can do. Ash only keeps the runner out if you’re richer and they can’t recur the blackmail that turn, and running exec bootcamp seems unappealing for this deck.

  3. The ID ability rewards you for running a high number of ice, which goes against what you normally want in a rush deck. That might be part of the reason I was struggling economically - just not enough card slots put into money, and alot of dead ice draws later on.

The influence nerf is completely unecessary as well, but I guess understandable.

1 Like
160

but was it really? I would assert that this is a niche ability, and should have 17, whereas ETF is a strong all purpose at 15. I do not believe they will ever print a stronger HB ID than ETF, so please FFG, stop nerfing your niche IDs.

I really think NEXT Design should be 40/15.

I post so many design complaints like this and they are probably really annoying and meaningless.

7 Likes
161

I just think that type of ability is very unpredictable in how strong it will turn out, and I can understand wanting to be cautious with it. Can’t be bothered right now to check whether this came before or after Andromeda, but that would be the obvious comparison to make. Why is Andy so powerful and consistent while this ID is trash tier? I’ve given some possible reasons, but I can see why it wouldn’t be obvious in the design stage.