NEXT King of England v9

magikot 1992

Version 9 of my NEXT King of England deck and is going strong. I wanted to post this to show what I have been playing the last two months. The NAPD list has really cut into the deck and I'm trying out new deck ideas. Hope you enjoy the last couple of weeks this deck has in its current form. I've listed it with the MWL restrictions to highlight just how much room this deck has lost and how difficult fine tuning version 10 will be. Without further adieu, here's the rundown of the deck.

Agendas

First a note on the agenda density. If you've been following this deck you'll notice that this is the highest agenda density I've ever had. I've been enjoying the Foodcoats agenda spread in this deck immensely and hope you will too.

Accelerated Beta Test - This card is king. With 22 ice we're going to almost always hit something.

Global Food Initiative - Pretty standard two-of in HB now. A 5/3 that protects itself by being only worth 3 points to the runner? Ok!

Project Vitruvius - More often than not a blank 3/2, being able to over advance it to get back a Restructure or a piece of ice is always useful.

NAPD Contract - A massive tax on the runner. After running through our taxing gauntlet of ice, being presented with another 4 tax to steal points does a lot of work.

Economic Package

In addition to the economy agendas above, we have a very robust economy. This deck doesn't want for credits often. Melange Mining Corp. early will rocket us into 20, 30, 40+ credits very quickly. Hedge Fund and Restructure provide quick bursts of large amounts of credits. Adonis Campaign is a staple in any HB deck for the great drip it provides. Very rarely will you ever be clicking for a single credit.

Ice Package

NEXT Suite

The NEXT suite of ICE - NEXT Bronze, NEXT Silver, and NEXT Gold - are the cornerstone of our deck. Silver is very weak to parasite, but I regularly get it up to 6 or 7 subroutines against decks that don't focus on parasite recursion. Bronze can become beastly and Gold is very dangerous.

Grail Suite

We back our NEXT suite with the Grail ICE suite of Galahad, Merlin, and Lancelot. Galahad, like Silver, is weak to parasite, but a barrier that can deal damage or trash programs has a significant surprise factor and can open up scoring windows for us. Merlin has gotten me a fair number of turn 1 kills. Even when it hasn't, I find the runner really slows down when they see Grail ice because of the threats of Merlin and Excalibur (which we don't include). Lancelot rarely gets installed, but is always ready to present a tax and a threat.

Supplemental ICE

We supplement our two primary suites of ICE with powerful HB and Neutral ICE. Architect does massive work building our towers and keeping agendas safe. Turing usually goes entirely on the scoring remote to keep Faust away, but putting one on R&D will shut down the occasional Eater + Keyhole strategy. Mother Goddess boosts our NEXT pieces by another point, and if she's in your opening hand makes for a great remote piece of ice for early rushing of ABT or Hopper, or for protecting a Melange for quick clicking of credits.

The Rest

Jackson Howard and IT Department round out the deck. IT Department can push the strength of our weaker barriers to monstrous levels, ensure that we hit with NEXT Gold, Merlin or Architect, bankrupt the runner or deplete their hand with stronger code gates, and so much more. A single Turing as protection means that the runner either let's us continue to build counters on Turing or spends their entire turn clicking through it, giving us a scoring opportunity.

Jackson Howard is Jackson Howard and does what Jackson Howard does, now 100% creepier thanks to his alt art promo.

4 comments
19 Jan 2016 Guv_bubbs

Just got a little confused about your intro. As this deck stands, it is not MWL legal correct? Because of NAPD.

19 Jan 2016 magikot

Correct. It's still currently legal, but once the MWL goes into effect on Feb 1 it will no longer be legal. Due to the NAPD Contracts and Architects the deck currently sits at 18 influence post-MWL.

For some strange reason the MWL influence stars aren't appearing here, but they do appear when I look at the deck from my account page. Must be a weird bug.

20 Jan 2016 Guv_bubbs

Ahh I didn't even see the Architects.

What do you think you'll change to make it legal post MWL?

20 Jan 2016 magikot

I've been playing with Advanced Concept Hopper in place of NAPD. It's been a really good agenda so far. As for Architect, I don't know. I am sure I can find a way to keep 2 copies without affecting the rest of the deck. Dropping a Jackson and maybe a Galahad could free it up. Or cutting the GFIs and further playing with the agenda mix.