HB Next Design Efficiency

Looks like a pretty clean build. Have you played many games with it yet? What are some of its strengths and weaknesses so far?

I played "Next Design" a few games and I feel: 20 Ice is to little to take full opportunity of this ID. I ran 23 Ice. But that shifted the deck to a more glacier style than rushing. Also I prefere "Beanstalk Royalties" over "Successfull Demonstration".

I still firmly believe that if you're playing glacier that the core set identify is better. That ID continues to help every turn and offsets the cost to install vertically. This ID gets you a fast start, but gets worse than the core set with every passing turn.

So far, this deck has been good. I'm still experimenting with different build variations. I haven't encountered a bad match up. Quetzal with E3 feedback would probably wreck this, but I haven't played against her yet. E3 in general is bad for this deck (and HB in general), but it doesn't seem to be a popular card at the moment.

A Shaper deck that builds their rig up and can start breaking your big ICE has been the biggest threat. All the more reason to rush while you have the advantage. Against such a deck, you should plan on paying to rez a Heimdall on your scoring server at some point.

I personally don't like having more than 20 ICE in my deck. 20 puts you at 40%, which means on average you will have 2 of 5 in your starting hand. Any hand with 2 ICE is one I am likely to keep. A mulligan into a hand with no ICE is disastrous. This also means you might keep hands that are otherwise undesirable. In such a scenario you are partially counting on drawing cards after your setup that help.

The biggest weakness of this deck is probably simple luck. Your starting hand makes a huge difference. Getting a 3 point agenda in your hand when you have the advantage helps a lot. Since you're rushing, you want to score 3 agendas to win before the runner can counter. Having to score 4 2-point agendas is more difficult. There is the added benefit of scoring an early Priority Requisition letting you rez a big ICE without drawbacks.

2nd weakness is lack of surprise factor. You don't have many tricks to punish the runner for running. They generally know what they have to deal with before they run. I would like to use Ichi 1.0 for that surprise punishment, but most runners won't blind run without clicks left against HB.