Welcome to my (very belated) first impressions aritcle for Up and Over. Let’s just say life got hectic. Moving houses, drama at work, busy helping friends and frankly just not that much time to participate in the corporate oligarchy or take on the fascist plutocrats. I think this is likely to continue so I’d like to ask regular readers for their feedback- what sort of things would you like me to focus on? These set reviews, Jank of the Week, more oddball and theoretical stuff like the Moist Von Lipwig article? I enjoy writing it all, so I’d like to fill what there is demand for. Please let me know on the Reddit thread or in the comments here.

As always, if you like the blog and the content, ship it around to your friends, reblog, facebewk, climb upon your roof (don’t actually) and shout unto the skies the glory of RWS (also don’t actually).

Without further ado: Up and Over

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Corps

Architect:

There are two sides to architect worth talking about: first is that this is one of the rare ICE that does a lot more for the corp than it does to punish the runner, similar to popup window. Part of what makes this kind of ice so strong is that the Corp is very heavily limited by their clicks and the runner has a good idea of what their capabilities are, so effects which grant them abilities on the runner turn to both speed up their game beyond what they are normally balanced to do and to confuse their opponent are extremely valuable.

The second side is that it is a strength 3 sentry. This is both an upside and downside- the upside is that it has the possibility of being an extremely frustrating piece of ice to play against. The downside is that it, in all llikelihood won’t. Runners will mostly be checking with the ability to deal with architect and it’s relatively easy to get through/around once shown. It’s certainly going to be a little annoying to deal with, but always manageable.

So where do you play this? I feel like it actually fits best in (sadly) Astrobiotics which is normally more than happy to show a few cards early game but to whom the subroutines are going to make a huge difference, accelerating the deck’s already ridiculous tempo. Architect’s ability also combines with NEH’s card draw effect to give you a bunch of delightfully janky ways of hiding agendas from the runner. A strong, synergistic sentry has definitely been lacking from NEH builds and I feel this guy will fit right in.

The fact that architect can’t be Parasited is also very relevant, as it can work extremely well with ICE like Wendigo and Inazuma. Wendigo in particular makes even Femme Fatale bypassing impossible, which given how popular the lady is right now seems pretty fantastic. All in all, this is an ICE with a huge amount of potential, play it in aggressive, tempo oriented decks to punish runners for running ‘early and often’ as the mantra goes. I feel like this is a great example of why it’s important to distinguish between the raw power of a card and its impact- I don’t think architect is insanely powerful, but given where the game is right now, with the strategies being played and tools being used, I think it will have a significant and immediate impact on the meta. Great to see this kind of thing, both the process by which it was designed and the design itself.

Power: 6/10

Impact: 7/10

X factor: 10/10

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Peak Efficiency:

I’m not surprised to see this effect pop up for HB, but it’s hard to say whether it’s going to be great. If it was a 0 cost card it would be pretty excellent, especially in specific contexts like recovering from Vamp or Account Siphon in glacier style decks. At 1 cost it’s still solid, but I think between this and successful demonstration in the secret ‘choose a niche economy operation to run a singleton of’ wars, Successful Demonstration wins pretty easily right now.

Where I think this card gets super good is in a deck playing a lot of cheap, porous taxing ice. I played this style with my ‘Farmville Extreme‘ Jank deck, and when you’re looking at 3-4 deep ICE on three or more servers the credits this provides quickly gets out of hand. One influence means you can splash this easily and I’m certainly going to keep my eye out for opportunities to use it in the near future- especially given the synergy it has with Architect, but right now economy deck slots are usually too tight to afford situational cards like this without it fitting the deck’s playstyle perfectly. It’s a strong card, a powerful build-around-me option, but it doesn’t fit the game being played right now. Look for more glacier/taxing action coming up with Order and Chaos- and look for this card to shine when that meta develops.

Power: 4/10

Impact: 2/10

X factor: 6/10

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Labyrinthine Servers:

This is a lovely card, albeit one that suffers from all the usual weaknesses of 5/3 agendas. Generally, by the time you score this you’re probably just going to have an easier time winning by scoring a last few points of agendas. The natural way of looking at this is as an enabler for the Jinteki Server of Death Strategy(tm), but really I think the ability to force the runner to commit to going through several obnoxious and taxing pieces of ice, draining their credits and opening a scoring opportunity rather than actually trying to guarantee a kill is where this agenda can really shine. It can also be used for bluffing and threatening kills that don’t actually exist, but I feel like this is only going to happen in Magical Christmas Land scenarios, not any kind of reliable strategy.

We’ve seen with The Future Perfect that defensive agendas are extremely valuable to Jinteki at the moment, so this kind of aggressive 5/3 feels a bit out of place. Nevertheless, Jinteki needed another 5/3. This is a cool one and I’m sure it’ll see play, at the very least replacing some Priority Requisitions or similar in Harmony Medtech decks that are running more taxing than walling setups.

Power: 4/10

Impact: 2/10

X factor: 7/10

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Ashigaru:

This is another interesting card, another expensive but very solid Jinteki barrier to provide Wall of Thorns with some competition. It’s really hard to say just how good this card is. On the hand, a strength 4 barrier with 4-5 subroutines is very solid at the moment, but 9 cost solid? Probably not. The natural place to stick this is Cerebral Imaging where it quickly becomes a nightmare for anyone who hasn’t brought their Parasites (which, of course, is only going to ensure that parasite strategies remain extremely dominant 😦 ). There it can join IQ and other big ICE with big economy and tools like Eliza’s Toybox to get some terrifying defenses up.

Elsewhere I think it’s a very meta dependent choice, I feel like it could go very well in a Jinteki glacier deck that isn’t trying anything tricky. Celebrity Gift gets a lot better when you can secure your servers well and cards like Ashigaru in faction really help that. You’re going to run into this and you’re going to hate your life for a little while, but you’re probably going to come back from it. What really lets this card down is the 3 influence to take it out of faction. People are hurting for reliable barriers right now and other factions, particularly Weyland of all things, would love to bring in ICE like this, but the influence cost is just prohibitive.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 4/10

X factor: 7/10

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Mamba:

Filling out the ‘trace snake’ ice for Jinteki, Mamba uses Jinteki’s faction specific trace replacement, the ‘Psi Game’ mechanic a touch I quite like. This is certainly a psi card worth looking at (come on Nisei Division onetime). It’s a testament to how well the designers are doing with making interesting choices of each card that I’ve felt conflicted about just about every card in this set so far- Mamba is just on the wrong side of fantastic. If it were strength 5 I feel it would be a stellar card. As it is, the ICE field is saturated with strength 4 ICE vulnerable to the classic Strength 4 Atman. This is obviously a very meta dependent thing, but strength 4 also has a lot of other weaknesses- you can instagib it with an end of turn Parasite into 3 Datasucker runs and a finisher, you can break it with a single pump of Alias or a Mimic and a single datasucker. All of these are things you will run up against fairly regularly.

Now having looked at the weaknesses, let’s look at the strengths. Mamba is solid and not gimmicky at all. The psi subroutine, assuming you simply bid zero is going to occasionally catch them out, and if you’re cash rich you can bid two each time and force them to match you or give you those terrifying ‘house of knives’ counters. It’s also only 2 influence and I feel like it’s a fantastic import into a lot of the other factions, particularly HB who really lack sentries that do what mamba does and discourage running until a real answer has been found. It’s another one of those cards like Komainu and Shinobi before it that the runner is going to be aware of and try and play around, so even just by existing it is a boon to Jinteki and, to a lesser extent, all corp players.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 4/10

X factor: 7/10

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Reversed Accounts:

Now this, this is a card. At one influence it is a threat from every faction. This is a trap that demands an answer right here and right now or the corp can hit an economic swing that can easily turn a game.

Not only does it demand an answer, but that answer is going to be expensive even if it’s there.

The easy comparison to make with this card is to Grndl Refinery, but it’s so, so not that simple. You can put this card out naked, not invest anything into it and if the runner does not both run it and spend 3 you can spend your next turn to make them lose 8. You can disrupt their planning and get them away from Sure Gamble money early game by simply installing advancing once and triggering it. Not an amazing trade but one well worth making in the right circumstances, where you just want to buy a turn for other things to get rolling. There is basically no circumstance where this card isn’t totally worth the click you spend playing it.

While it’s not quite as versatile, I see Reversed accounts as being in the same class as Jackson Howard. It punishes the Runner hard for misplay. It opens windows for the Corp. It is pretty much always a live and powerful draw and, if not, you’re probably winning already. You’re going to have to respect this in every faction, but it goes without saying it’s native in NBN. This makes a lot more sense now we know NBN isn’t getting the next big box and it’s good to see that this card doesn’t naturally synergise super well with Astrobiotic fast advance, more with taxing decks. That said, it is so strong that I’m sure you’ll see it in a lot of NBN decks near you soon…

Power: 9/10

Impact: 9/10

X factor: 6/10

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Universal Connectivity Fee

This is pretty cool. A Trap type ice that doesn’t trash is a major headache to deal with, it’s yet another threat that can force the runner to use their parasites if they really want to deal with it efficiently. You can slap this on RnD early to act as an erzatz Popup Window and put a Data Raven in front of it later to really demand some serious answers- often the Parasite that would otherwise have been used on your important Data Raven. This feels like a real upgrade for closed accounts in any deck that wants to play that card and is yet another card that can mess with the tag-floating Account Siphon playstyle.

This is the sort of punishment card that I really want to play, it’s unremarkable but reliable ice that works under any circumstances, but if you play your cards right it can also be a total blowout under the right circumstances. You’ll see this here and there in a variety of decks, of course you’ll see it in tagstorm styles most of all. I don’t see this card making a massive splash, but it adds to the diversity rather than the outright power of NBN in a good way and I’m excited to try it out

Power: 8/10

Impact: 7/10

X factor: 7/10

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Blue Sun

It’s finally here, Blue Sun has been probably the most talked about ID since it was spoiled a while back and I’m very excited to see it. It’s a combo/Janky player ID that has a hundred different, powerful interactions with Corp Cards. From cyclic Adonis Campaigns and The Roots to shenanigans with Oversight AI and massive ICE, Blue Sun offers a wealth of options for a creative and intelligent player. These capabilities are going to force runners to be more aggressive and seek information, which in turn will render them more vulnerable to traps which punish that kind of play, traps that are usually not particularly cost efficient like Rototurret, but which in Blue Sun quite literally pay for themselves.

Not only that, but Blue Sun provides inbuilt answers to both Femme Fatale and Parasite, forcing the latter to be used with a mass of Datasucker tokens or be blanked. This more than anything else I think is what is going to make Blue Sun such an impactful card coming up. So many runner decks are dependent on femme fatale or parasite to make things happen. Blue Sun is going to shake things up a bit.

Power: 8/10

Impact: 10/10

X factor: 9/10

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Changeling

Hot of the heels of Wendigo we get number two in the morph ICE cycle (with Lycan, the sentry-codegate due next pack). Changeling gives you a Strength 4 end the run sentry for six credits and an extra click, which is pretty unheard of so far. Sentry strength is disproportionately valuable, since sentry breakers typically cost a lot to pump (and are expensive to install), and this guy can switch to a respectable strength 4 barrier if you manage to snipe a Corroder or something.

That all said, this is another strength 4 ice with one subroutine. There are so many ways of dealing with it efficiently that you’re really, really going to have to think about whether it will do the job it needs to for 5/6 credits (or more, whether it’s from advancing it or rez/derez effects). It’s certainly an option, but it’s not a clear choice to throw in just about every Weyland deck.

Power: 4/10

Impact: 4/10

X factor: 7/10

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Reuse:

A very interesting but unfortunately very niche card. If this wasn’t a double it would be pretty playable as a one of in most decks, but presumably if it was there’d be some insane combo that I can’t see. Being a double makes it pretty awkward as you can’t turbo draw up with a Jackson Howard and filter your hand for a profit. It works pretty well in Cerebral Imaging as a way of dropping all your incidental/non key cards when you want to pull the trigger, or divesting your hand of a few agendas after putting out a Jackson Howard on click one.

This could be a decent clutch card if your HQ has opened up and archives is looking pretty secure, and it also may work very well with the upcoming Jinteki ID, which seems to increase the trash cost of installed cards for every face down card in archives. This lets you install, say, a Sansan City Grid, then dump three cards into archives along with itself, increasing the trash cost by 4 and giving you the 6 credits you need to rez it. Of course, then you need to top deck an agenda, so… yeah. Still waiting on Corp cards that are a bit better than research station that increase your hand size.

Power: 3/10

Impact: 2/10

X factor: 8/10

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Hades Fragment:

The second of the Fragment agendas, Hades is, appropriately (if you’re a Jinteki player anyway) the ‘archives’ themed one. It synergizes with The Foundry, which can trigger shuffles regularly to get the returned cards back into archives, or with any other tutoring effects. Unfortunately it suffers from the usual weaknesses of 5/3s, namely if you score this normally somehow you’re probably going to win that game with or without the ability, but the ability is not powerful enough that you can build your strategy all-in to score this at the expense of everything else.

While I’m going to keep a close eye on this card to see what comes up in future and there’s a strong possibility someone will find a cool use for this even with the cards around right now, I think at the moment it’s pretty much a blank 5/3.

Power: 2/10

Impact: 1/10

X factor: 7/10

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Docklands Crackdown:

I’m not sure what’s going on with this card. It feels like something you stick in a glacier scoring remote to mess with the runner’s economy, but there are so many preconditions that need to be met for this to work that I feel you need to build a deck around it and you get utterly blanked by very event heavy decks. If this were one click and there was a once per turn limit on it, I think it could have a definite place in horizontal decks, but two corp clicks is a massive investment, especially given the pretty lackluster trade this is with a raw cost of 2 to rez and 3 to trash. The economy just doesn’t add up to make this a card that can be looked at under normal circumstances

This is certainly a meta dependent card. If we start to see a backdown in tempo and more people playing strategies that force runners dedicate to setting up a rig and resources, this card can take advantage of the economic weak spot at the start of the game and force runs in decks like Replicating Perfection or the aforementioned upcoming Jinteki ID.

Power: 4/10

Impact: 3/10

X factor: 6/10

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Runners

Inject:

Man, it only took, what, two and a half cycles. This is a really solid card, I’ve seen people experimenting with it already in proxy form and it seems to just do wonders. The big thing to appreciate about this is that it costs only 1 credit, whereas Anarchs have historically had to rely on pretty clunky, high investment economy like Sure Gamble and Liberated Accounts, which can leave you very vulnerable to getting drained and having to slowly click back up. With an Inject you can keep the cards coming, almost always for neutral credits.

It’s also really cool in that it really does suit two distinct kinds of play. Mass program anarch really needs to draw to find a few key cards, and throwing programs in the trash is no big deal with Deja-Vu and Clone Chips in all likelihood on tap. The money is also very much appreciated in that kind of deck, that often has a few troubles hitting enough economy to get rolling. On the other hand, low program, high resource/event anarch (Data Leak Reversal decks spring to mind) can use this as a powerful, efficient and reliable draw tool to get all those little bits and pieces that let them put you into a nasty lockdown.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 9/10

X factor: 8/10

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Origami:

Super cute. It’s a shame this costs 2 influence, at 1 it would be a great tool for Andromeda or cloggy/synergistic shaper decks (the ones that want to modded things into play, or get their dinosaurus out before their femme etc.). In faction, Origami is a decent tradeoff card for use with Wyldside and Duggars, it sucks up plenty of your memory, but it also improves Anarch’s shaky card efficiency out of sight if you get a couple of them early.

That seems to be the key to using this card, which is going to be tricky for Anarch. Program tutoring has never been their strong suit, but I can envision a deck splashing a set of Test Runs, Scavenges and Same Old Things along with the above Inject, allowing you to find your Origami, power up a Duggars, fill your hand with cool stuff, dump what you like and then scavenge it back out using your Origami as the target. Not quite sure where I’d do this, but I’m eager to mess around and see if I can make it work.

Power: 6/10

Impact: 7/10

X factor: 9/10

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Fester:

Helloooooo there…Virus anarchs have been looking for this kind of effect for a while now and it’s a really, really sweet deal. At a mere 1 cost, 1 influence you add a pretty significant additional cost to virus purges. Plus, this baby isn’t unique so you can stack them, leading to a potential 6 credit tax to purge counters, which is utterly devastating.

This makes the utility viruses a lot more of a pain to get rid of – Imp, Lamprey etc. It makes Darwin a little more stable in that the corp is going to need a lot more of a credit lead to make plays off a purge. It doesn’t do a whole lot for Datasucker, but frankly it didn’t need a lot done for it…

With all of the amazing virus based stuff coming up in the next few packs and Order and Chaos, I am super, super excited to see where that kind of play goes. I’m honestly a little bit worried too. Viruses have always been pretty good and they are getting just so much support coming up

Power: 8/10

Impact: 8/10

X factor: 8/10

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Autoscripter:

Click-gain in runner like this is tricky to rate. Runner clicks are valuable, but certainly not as valuable as Corp clicks, and Autoscripter limits the click gain to very specific tasks- installing from grip. I certainly feel it has some potential with cards like Faerie, Grappling Hook and the upcoming Cerberus code gate breaker in criminal to let you play a tempo based, high efficiency aggressive deck, but in most circumstances this is just going to let you be a little more efficient and there are far better cards and, more importantly, cards that don’t cost 3 credits, already to pick from.

Out of faction autoscripter might be an interesting choice in Noise milling decks, but those decks are already extremely tight for influence and as hardware finding a 1 of in your deck is not really a great option. Shapers have just gained access to Trade In, which makes this a little more viable, but Shapers also tend to do a lot more installing programs from everywhere but their grip than the other factions. All in all it feels like attempting to use Autoscripter right now is trying to force something beyond what is reasonable, but I have no doubt that someone out there will use it and enjoy it. No doubt about it, if you somehow manage to get this thing to turn into a reliable extra click every turn or two, it’s a pretty solid card. It’s just getting that to happen and still being able to play netrunner that’s the problem.

Power: 5/10

Impact: 3/10

X factor: 8/10

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Switchblade:

Switchblade is pretty good. Yeah. Even without considering all the crazy shenanigans you can pull with ice-type alteration effects combined with this guy, Switchblade is the first really efficient, re-usable breaker we’ve seen for sentries when compared to other ice type breakers. Naturally, it comes with a catch- it’s totally dependent on stealth credits to make it work, and in the vast majority of circumstances is going to need multiple stealth credits to break a piece of ice.

Consequently, Switchblade feels like the keystone of a heavy stealth deck to me. It’s the most powerful and efficient stealth breaker and the one most demanding of stealth support. Dagger feels like the card you put in a stealth-lite deck, one which is probably going to be running Datasuckers to ease the demand for stealth credits and have backup plans for dealing with obnoxious ICE. I’m seriously considering a stealth andy deck as my next big project, to replace my current yog-kit deck, which by the way has gone like 9-1 so far… just saying you might want to try that sucker out…

All in all, this is the card that swings stealth from a niche and janky strategy to one that is very much asking for a tier 1 competitive deck to be built around it. The tools are there, the support is there. I think criminal is the best place for it, given switchblade really depends on silencer to operate as consistently as you’d want. Like refractor before it though, getting this working is not incredibly difficult and when it is working it utterly changes the game state against any corporation who is running sentries of any kind.

Power: 9/10

Impact: 9/10

X factor: 9/10

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Trade In:

More tutoring for shaper, and the first dedicated hardware tutor around (I’ve already been using Logos to go and find splashed R&D Interfaces for a while though…). The card design means it’s not quite as clear cut as one would hope for a tutor in that you already need hardware out to make it usable, meaning you can’t just have this in up your chances of hitting the one Desperado in your deck if you’re not willing to sacrifice a voicepad or a memchip for it. The upside is it works extremely well in an evolving gameplan where you want to upgrade from a low-commitment console to a more hefty and expensive one, for example, or if you want to play a couple of hardware silver bullets like E3 Feedback Implants and Window you can go and grab reliably if needed.

Unfortunately I don’t feel like there’s a lot of stuff in the game right now where you can really leverage this card to its full potential. The ideal situation is installing an expensive but powerful tool early game that lets you do a lot of economically valuable stuff, then trade it in for something more low profile late game when its used itself up and you’re switching to rely on other tools. The only good example of this I can think of is Blackguard (Monolith is in the corner somewhere crying softly to itself), which is great early when you’re probing and controlling the corp’s credits, but once the Corp has all their ice rezzed and their economy running it’s pretty much a dud. Sending it to the bin and going and finding a free R&D interface seems like a pretty good use of Trade In to me, but I don’t feel like that kind of combo will fit in any deck I can think of right now.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 7/10

X factor: 9/10

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Astrolabe:

We’ve been referring to this as the 4th Akumatsu Memchip, which I think is certainly the position it’s going to take in a lot of shaper decks. The card draw this provides is really good right at the moment with such a spread of Near Earth Hub and Replicating Perfection decks out there. Astrolable certainly helps you keep up with them and I have no doubt it will see play as soon as people get their hands on it. Whether it’s going to be fantastic in the long term if we end up with a meta that is split more evenly between fast advance, glacier and horizontal playstyles is debatable, but it will always be ‘the 4th memchip’ in decks that want that.

Astrolabe’s case is certainly helped by the fact that shapers have really gotten the raw end of the console deal. I feel like there’s still plenty of space for the guys in green to get some raw power into that slot that will relegate astrolabe to the empty spaces of the net it was so recently being used to explore and it will become as much of a niche card as Toolbox, Dinosaurus and (heh) Monolith have been before it.

Power: 5/10

Impact: 8/10

X factor: 6/10

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Angel arena:

This is a hard one to call. It has some wonderful synergies with Eureka and an okay one with Oracle May, no doubt it will get more as the game progresses, but paying a credit for this kind of effect just doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out that great. Runners are having serious money issues already in the current meta and burning a whole heap just to incidentally improve your card efficiency doesn’t seem like a sweet deal. If you just want to turn on Oracle May in a type-rich deck, Motivation seems like a way, way better way of doing it. On the other hand, the unbounded power this card offers asks to be exploited in a really serious way in the right place at the right time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point it becomes the linchpin of a deck.

To me it feels like the decks that most want to play this are the classic, old school high redundancy anarch decks in order to reduce the turns and turns they often spend just drawing useless cards. Anyone who has repeatedly experienced the sensation of frantically digging for your answer in Anarch will appreciate what this card has to offer. If this card gave you a little more for its cost it would be wonderful at supporting that, but as it is I feel like it solves one problem (letting you draw the card you need) and replaces it with another (no longer being able to afford that card)

Power: 3/10

Impact: 7/10

X factor: 8/10

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That’s all she wrote! Till next time 🙂