Hello again everyone! I haven’t been writing lately due to work and various life events BUT hopefully that’ll change up! Just like for the most shiny and chrome of Cities, I’m going to go through and talk about the cards in this pack I find most interesting for various reasons.

Today’s soundtrack is this, which is the first thing that came up when I typed “latino hip hop” into Youtube. I tried La Senora de las Sombras, but that was mostly metal and Spanish dubs of 50 Shades of Grey. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Street Peddler

Let’s start with something amazing. Continuing with the Anarch theme of “strong effects with weird semi-drawbacks but not really, probably”, Street Peddler gives you access to instant-speed, hidden, discounted installs with free draw filtering and only a slight chance of it going wrong. Since you should probably be playing 3 Clone Chips in Anarch right now anyway, there’s a high possibility that there will be little to no downside to this at all! This has the potential for serious disruption – it’s extremely possible to pull a Parasite, breaker or Clot off this that the Corp simply cannot be prepared for. I see this going straight into all but the most event-heavy Anarch decks, and should be a massive boost for the new Whizzard hotness (what a sentence, eh?)

Faust

See the “drawbacks” of Peddler. Faust seems to find a home in Quetzal – E3 Feedback Implants decks mostly. I’d like it much more if it broke 2 subs rather than 1, but that could very well be too powerful. The majority of multi-subroutine ice is low strength and Parasite-able anyway, so this could very well see some play.

Armand “Geist” Walker

Gotta say, I don’t understand this at all. It might be strong? At the moment it seems to rely pretty heavily on the cloud breakers, which you need tons of to make good, which means lots of deck space/dead draws, which seems to make the ability less good…Dunno. I don’t really have time to figure this guy out but I’m sure someone will break this.

I mostly bring him up because it looks like he looks like a cross between Emo Spiderman and Immortan Joe. Seriously, can you imagine this guy hanging out with the Muertos?

Drive By

Gangsta as all hell, obviously. This potentially has a fair bit of use in the current asset-heavy metagame and can also (thank Christ) be used to deal with an unrezzed Caprice. I’m not convinced this will be that great against RP as pre-rezzing Ash, Caprice, Mental Health Clinic etc against Crim players isn’t much of an economic hit and upgrades will be in a secure remote anyway. It will likely be strong until people get used to playing around it. It’s best use will be against cards like SanSan City Grid or even PAD Campaign that the Corp definitely doesn’t want to rez until they’ll have an effect.

Also, take a moment to consider a car full of gangsters gunning down the ENTIRE ROOT.

Chameleon

Aka “Mimic for everything”. I really want this card to work, especially in combination with London Library! Could potentially work with lots of ice destruction so you have a good idea what you need. Also, yes, LLDS processor. This’ll probably be my OCTGN jank deck of the week until I remember that Netrunner is more fun when you don’t have to battle your deck as well as the opponent.

Allelelelelelelele Repression

This is sweet both as an in-faction Jackson-ish effect and as a way to get more use out of your Snares, Shocks and whatnot if you’re playing that kind of spiky Jinteki. Use during a Legwork for bonus points.

Marcus Batty

Oh boy. Doc Brown here is serious business. The instant speed means that he can be triggered DURING an ice encounter – meaning you could fire Rototurret’s program trash subroutine to hit Mimic, then (because they’re already encountering the ice and can’t jack out) trash their Corroder too. Combine with Blacklist for serious hurt.

That said, what we’re talking about there is a blowout case – one of those best case scenarios we talked about with Turntable last time. Realistically, the best use for Batster is as an emergency backup Caprice – you do have an end the run subroutine on your scoring remote, right? If you lose one psi game, fire away. I can definitely see this replacing Ash in RP builds to free up more influence – perhaps sir would like an Ichi 1.0 or another Tollbooth? It’s not quite as good as Ash against Vamp or a broke Runner – but you have more influence now, throw in Crisium Grid. Probably the strongest card of the set.

Pachinko

MOTHER OF GOD THAT ART IS AMAZING.

Pretty decent too. Throw it behind Gutenberg for a really damn annoying server. I’m not a massive fan of situational ice in general, but there’s enough Midseasons decks around that this could find a place. Doesn’t explode instantly to Parasite either. Speaking of Parasite…

Spiderweb





Much like Hive, this is a nice barrier that explodes if Parasite looks at it funny and therefore is great in Blue Sun and less great elsewhere. 3 subroutines is beautiful with Lady everywhere though.

HEY GUERO WHERE YOU GOIN’

Overall, I’d have to say this is a pretty strong set. Doc Batman and Street Peddler are very powerful in existing archetypes, and there’s enough weird design stuff being explored that new opportunities could come from anywhere.