Glut Cipher: This seems like a reasonable way to break up combos. The Corp will most likely add a bunch of econ cards back to hand, then you have around a 50-50 to hit some stuff that the Corp didn’t want to be trashed. That said, since the expected value is 2-3 new cards in the bin…why not just play Wanton Destruction?

Knobkierie: Hey, it’s mega-Grimoire, or something! Seems pretty solid for recharging cards like Imp. There’s potential for some kind of run-based virus deck here, I think. Aumakua gives you a lot of pressure, this could recharge Imp or Gravedigger and you have bin breakers as backup.

419: This dude is alright, even if a Criminal. Obviously has some value in the current NGO Front metagame where Corps now need to pay 1 credit more or less every time they IAA, making NGO less profitable and scoring harder. It seems like it’d be good against asset spam in theory, but realistically they’re rarely throwing out unprotected agendas and don’t particularly care if you know that they installed a PAD Campaign. Along with Corporate “Grant” you could start seeing those 1 credit losses add up fast. It’s definitely potent against guess right shell game type decks, but a) those are bad anyway and b) Psychic Field is good and easy to include tech.

I’ve thrown together a deck with Mining Accident that aims to keep the Corp poor as much as possible in the early game before building to a crushing lategame. Since there’s a few Crim cards this cycle that gives a benefit in exchange for a tag, we’ll put those in along with the Taps/Citadel package to try and keep tempo up. Also, I know that Zamba is 419’s console but it seems kind of dumb to do Taps without Nexus, so…yeah!

Grinderman

419: Amoral Scammer

Event (20)

3x Career Fair

3x Corporate “Grant”

2x Credit Kiting

2x Emergency Shutdown

2x Falsified Credentials

2x Legwork

3x Mining Accident ●●●●● ●

3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (2)

2x Security Nexus ●●●●● ●

Resource (18)

1x Caldera

2x Citadel Sanctuary

3x Daily Casts

3x Earthrise Hotel

2x Film Critic 🦄 ●●

3x Power Tap

3x Rogue Trading

1x The Turning Wheel ●

Icebreaker (5)

3x Aumakua

2x Femme Fatale

The gameplan: use 419’s ability to drain credits and charge up an Aumakua for early pressure. Mining Accident either slows them down or gets you bad publicity, which is extremely strong with Aumakua. Get the Citadel/Taps package down, use Rogue Trading for mega money and eventually use Nexus, Aumakua, Femme and bad pub to break everything super cheap.

Falsified Credentials: Again, has some amount of value in the NGO metagame. There seems a clear best play in naming Agenda every time you use this on an advanced card – either it’s NGO (or whatever) and you ignore it, or it’s an Agenda and you get paid for the run. Bonus points for Aumakua synergy.

Rogue Trading: Let’s look at this assuming you have no other way to remove the tags first. In that case, it’s a net gain of 12 credits over 10 clicks – absolute garbage, worse than Armitage Codebusting. By that logic, you would only play this in a Power Tap/Citadel Sanctuary deck. In that case it gets a little funky because you can only really use this once a turn, so it’s a net gain of somewhere around 7-9 a turn in the best case scenario. Which is very good! The biggest downside of this card is that before you draw the support cards it’s total garbage, which is not what you want from an econ card. For that reason, I’m not sure how much play it will actually see.

Because I Can: First of all, frontrunner for best art in the game. As a card…pretty unspectacular. It’s like Singularity, but instead of trashing the cards it turns them into a problem for future you. Neat way to beat a CTM upgrade + QPM server though, probably worth testing just for that.

Nyashia: FFG have clearly learned their lesson from Medium and R&D Interface. There’s a definite trend towards R&D multiaccess being in limited bursts to make the dreaded R&D lock harder to achieve. This card is essentially a 3-use RDI or a one use quad access – not bad! On a re read of Nyashia, it’s a triggered ability rather than a paid ability so can’t be used to access 3 extra cards in one hit. Being a program does hurt a bit. Definitely worth trying out.

Consume: It’s an Apex card alright. As usual, amazing flavor text. As also usual, this will not make Apex good. Not clear at this point whether it gains counters during an Apocalypse, which would change the maths on it somewhat. Decent-ish synergy with Friday Chip, in that you could get 8 credits in a click most turns from this which is very strong, although requires you to install 4 cards first.

Malia Z0l0K4: Well this is certainly rude. Does have some serious possible value in blanking Film Critic (in which case the agendas remain hosted, but cannot be removed). Hilarious plays include rezzing this right after they install Liberated Accounts. My biggest question here is…where do you put it? A trash cost of 3 isn’t that significant and in a glacier deck it will probably have to sit in your scoring remote. This will likely be worth experimenting with in IG and CTM to blank Film Critic and econ resources.

Kill Switch: More HB brain damage stuff. Hard pass.

Tempus: Cool effect. Functionally unlikely to be any good. Compare this to Forced Connection – taking two tags is generally more annoying than a brain damage.

Bio Vault: This is honestly really hard to evaluate. In the best case scenario, this is 3 more Nisei tokens that each cost you a turn and 2 credits. Note that the text says “End the run” and there’s no mention of “use only on a run during this server”. This means it can stop power events like Indexing or Legwork as well as helping you score. It also seems very powerful in Aginfusion for the click compression potential. However, this card has a massive downside in that it has no benefit to the Corp if used to bait a run. Making the Runner slam down your scoring remote with no result is a good thing, but if you’re doing that you want something that’s more beneficial to you. NGO Front is so good because you’ll get the benefit whether they run or don’t. The never advance game with Marilyn, Adonis and Eve Campaigns has been around forever, but those take you 1 click and no credits to install. On the other hand, a common tactic when the Runner senses a score is to go for something like Indexing to divert the Corp’s resources – Bio Vault is fantastic in that scenario. It’s probably going to end up as a one or two of in Jinteki glaciers, which are overall pretty well positioned.

Sadaka: A free Precognition effect and a possible resource trash. Interesting! Note that the “Trash Sadaka” effect fires whether you trash a resource or not. I don’t think this is fantastic but it is potential anti-Film Critic tech, so might be worth a shot! Solid against Indexing too.

Endless EULA: Oh man, this is some seriously taxing ICE. Obviously the major downside to this is that you don’t need a breaker to deal with it, but are you really going to pay 6 credits through this without a good reason to? That’s massive! Currently the best answer is probably Sunny’s breaker. However, Grappling Hook decks are currently pretty popular and dump all over this. Might be a bit of a meta call – if everyone is on Paperclip where you are this is great, on Hooks less so.

Sandman: Nahhhhh. Strong subroutines but the rez to break ratio is terrible. Particularly bad against Black Orchestra, which is extremely popular right now. Incredible art though, this pack is killing it.

Amani Senai: Obviously goes with the Azmari theme of bouncing cards back to hand. It’s a strong effect and will add on average a trace 3 to each score or steal…which probably isn’t worth it.

SSO Industries: It’s generally hard to evaluate IDs, but this seems…awful. Think of this as basically an econ ID in disguise. About 5 times a game, you save a click and a credit advancing ICE. This would be pretty good if advancing ICE was good, but it’s very rarely worthwhile. If you have multiple faceup agendas live it’s decent, but when is that ever going to happen? HOWEVER. If Weyland over the past cycle has taught me anything, it’s that making janky Red Planet Couriers decks is the key to weird IDs. So let’s go!

film critic is a myth

SSO Industries: Fueling Innovation

Agenda (8)

3x City Works Project

1x Government Takeover

3x Hostile Takeover

1x Oaktown Renovation

Asset (1)

1x Marilyn Campaign ●

Operation (25)

2x Biotic Labor ●●●●● ●●●

1x BOOM!

3x Casting Call ●●●●● ●

1x Fast Track

3x Hedge Fund

3x IPO

3x Mass Commercialization

2x Preemptive Action

2x Priority Construction

3x Punitive Counterstrike

2x Red Planet Couriers

Barrier (5)

2x Fire Wall

3x Ice Wall

Code Gate (7)

2x Hortum

3x Mausolus

2x Oduduwa

Sentry (3)

1x Archer

2x Colossus

The gameplan: Advance City Works Project until it’s fatal to steal, then use Red Planet Couriers to score a Government Takeover. Alternatively, install the Takeover on a Casting Call turn 1 and protect it behind ICE that keeps advancing itself. Punitive Counterstrike because I think it’s in the rulebook somewhere that you have to include it with Takeover. This is probably not good but maybe someone who knows how to build this kind of deck will make something decent.

City Works Project: Kind of a bad Obokata Protocol, with the upside that you still take damage on access and not just steal. Like the deck I posted above, I think the best case is advancing it to the point the Runner can’t steal it and doing funny things with Red Planet Couriers. Also disgusting with Casting Call for what that’s worth.

Oduduwa: This is a really solid way to get your ICE going! It’s definitely not the kind of thing you want to run through repeatedly. Its numbers are extremely crap on its own, but it’s going to boost all your other ICE up very quickly. The key is that advanceable ICE sucks when you have to actually advance it, but if the Runner’s doing it for you that’s another story. Definitely worth trying this guy out.

Rashida Jaheem: Another great little bluff card with an upside. In IG and CTM this seems like an absolute slam dunk. Could even get it into a Jinja City Grid or Moons style CI deck, this would be fantastic there. Definitely going to see play in more asset-y decks.

Thanks for joining us, let’s see how the meta plays out!