This week we’re going to have a look at the newly spoiled cards from upstalk! Hopefully I can bring a new voice to the review table, neither strictly competitive nor amusing, but more meditative on what these new cards mean for the game. I hope you find my thoughts interesting.

I’m going to rate each card on three axes

Power: This is the raw strength of the card, independent of meta concerns based simply on how much it brings to a deck against the entire field of opposition

This is the raw strength of the card, independent of meta concerns based simply on how much it brings to a deck against the entire field of opposition Impact: this is the level of effect I expect the card will have on the meta-game, regardless of its actual power.

this is the level of effect I expect the card will have on the meta-game, regardless of its actual power. X Factor: basically how cool & interesting I think the card is, its potential to create unique or interesting game states or decks and so on. Think of this as a measure of how much I’d like to get my hands on the card simply to play around with it.

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This is a fascinating little card and I’m eager to see what place it forms in the meta. The two places I feel it will work best are HB fast advance decks where it makes Archer a far easier decision and adds even more inevitability to the strategy, synergising with Fast Track to get you over that last agenda hump that the deck runs into often. Midseason Replacements based decks, be they using the diagnostic/shutdown combo or just custom biotics honeytrap style will also love this. HB needs relatively few key cards to function solidly and so have a reasonable amount of liberty as to their agenda count, so despite how tight deck slots are right now, I can see this card being played in place of an operation as it were, opening up a leaner, meaner HB fast advance style.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 6/10

Xfactor: 8/10

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There isn’t a huge amount to discuss here in terms of effect, but it’s important not to underestimate how much this pack is going to do to the HB ice layout. Silver/bronze are very playable together and that adds 6 more pieces of straight-up end the run ice to your deck, plus Mother Goddess (see below) if you’re running that as well. Not only this but the NEXT ice do something that hasn’t been done before- provide cheap, ETR gear checks that only get more powerful as the game goes on, scaling up in power so as not to become irrelevant once the runner’s rig is established

HB has traditionally lacked strong options for ETR ice, forced to spend influence on it or go with basics like wall of static. With this pack NEXT provides a very solid core of ETR basics to build on. By itself NEXT silver is nothing exciting, but it and mother goddess will be shaking up HB ice comps near you soon, so Morningstar is becoming even more attractive…

Power: 6/10

Impact: 9/10

Xfactor: 8/10

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There’s been a lot of discussion about Lotus Field and what it will do to the meta. I think that this is going to be one of those cards that actually doesn’t see a lot of play but needs to be respected anyway. I see its primary use is as a simple ETR in Jinteki and a versatile ETR code gate for Weyland players. I feel like Inazuma is far and away a stronger choice for HB players, while NBN has no end of annoying code gates to round out their ice. Unfortunately, I think people are just going to play around this, there are plenty of decent ways of dealing with a strength 4 ETR ice that aren’t Datasucker or Parasite based.

Power: 6/10

Impact: 8/10

Xfactor: 5/10

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Well, this card certainly wins the ‘build around me’ prize for the set. Naturally it synergises with Precognition and Shiro, but it could also act as a utility card in a mostly midrange-high cost ice deck that runs a few Yaguras and Pups to tide it over. It might also be an interesting tool to work into a HB recursion strategy where the ability to just repeatedly blind fire it until you hit something big might work well.

However, I feel that at the moment there just isn’t enough support or enough reason to play Mutate. As Jinteki gets more deck manipulation effects it will become stronger, just like NEXT Bronze has recently done with the addition of more NEXT ice, so bide your time, janksters, and prepare. It’s also worth noting that a counter-card for Mutate combos was printed in this set (Eden Shard)

Power: 5/10

Impact: 2/10

Xfactor: 8/10

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So, huh. This is really good. As any Tenma player can tell you, two influence is almost worth an ID ability by itself (the seven that custom biotics gets is offset by a really severe downside). I think it’s quite possible just to play this for incidental value and be fine, rather than sculpting a deck around maximizing the benefit from the ability. That said, this and Isabel McGuire… if they ever release more assets like Elizabeth Mills which do something on rez… I dunno… the Jank gods are calling me…

As to what this will do to the game, it doesn’t really provide much beyond encouraging the existing NBN decks to drop the few trace cards they were playing for the sake of the Making News ability and invest in a few extra pieces of asset economy instead. Pack your Imps and Paricias and have fun.

Power: 8/10

Impact: 7/10

Xfactor: 6/10

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This is a really interesting addition to the NBN toolkit. Since you can rez it immediately before tracing, the runner doesn’t really have the option they have with the campaigns, to wait for you to pay to rez it and then trash it before it fully pays off. So if they want to get rid of it, they’ll need to burn three credits to your none. To me, that in itself is an incentive to play this card, as anyone knows having to trash a Jackson Howard is incredibly annoying and this adds more choices like that to your deck.

I’d be interested to see how well this works in combination with Data Hound in a MN deck. People tend not to bother installing breakers when face checking against NBN, so a Data Hound fueled by both this guy and the MN identity credits could really ruin a runner’s early game. It’s a starting point I’d like to explore.

Power: 5/10

Impact: 3/10

Xfactor: 8/10

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Midway station grid is really interesting. Unfortunately it’s anti-synergistic with most NBN ice, where multiple subroutines are rare. The obvious ticket for multi subroutine ice- bioroids- aren’t a great option given you can click through them without an icebreaker, so getting this thing to do work will take some creativity, using cards like Hive or Next Silver.

One interesting thing about this the way it’s worded, icebreakers that break multiple subroutines with a single action like Morningstar and Breach will be significantly better against it (especially since we’re seeing a theme of more subroutines come from the recent barrier ice). From the spoilers we’ve received from draft cards, a cycle of Overmind-style power counter based breakers will be printed that break multiple subroutines of a specific ice type on each activation (the Cerberus trio). This kind of breaker will make Midway’s effect less potent, so I think those who wish to leverage this card should do so quickly, while single subroutine breakers remain the norm.

Power: 5/10

Impact: 4/10

Xfactor: 6/10

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I love this card. While it’s certainly not playable in every deck, decks that want to sacrifice a little bit of central security to make a secure remote will love this, not just because when installed it’s insanely efficient, but because a runner will feel like they have to trash it out of centrals on access. Assets like this- Sansan is another good example- are incredibly powerful in allowing the corp to dictate the flow of the game, and I look forward to seeing what The Root achieves.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 7/10

Xfactor: 6/10

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Taurus gives Weyland yet another high strength sentry. Unfortunately, given players are going to be on the lookout for Grim and Archer against Weyland decks already, the chance of surprising them with Taurus is pretty low and the card needs to be evaluated on its ‘brute’ power.

5 cost for a 5 strength sentry is pretty solid, but unlike Grim Taurus doesn’t really have the power to force the runner to break it if they want to run through more than once or twice.

As an aside, I think Taurus will be fantastic in NBN: Making News. NBN has more trouble than most with a few hardware items- Desperado and RnD Interface come to mind. Taurus provides an extremely good way of counteracting that vulnerability. In the future I think this is a card to come back and re-evaluate. With a few of the spoiled cards from later in the cycle, it’s looking like hardware based decks are going be given a lot of tools, so I’ll be keeping an eye on Taurus.

Power: 5/10

Impact: 6/10

Xfactor: 5/10

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A really, really good piece of ice. I think we’re going to see this ice in pretty much every deck as a one-of from here on out. It provides an exceptional early game defense that doesn’t really fade out that hard as the game progresses. I really like bastion as a good all purpose filler ice and this acts pretty much like a fourth copy.

The one weakness of this ice is it picks up the odd ice types like destroyer and AP that specialist breakers can smash through- be aware of this when there are Self Modifying Codes or Clone Chips on the table. Interestingly it also picks up both Bioroid and NEXT, for all you Stronger Together and NEXT janksters out there… Since I’m both, expect to see a little more on this lady in the future

Power: 9/10

Impact: 8/10

Xfactor: 9/10

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Grail ice are super interesting, but there’s not much to say for now. This ice will only become a solid choice later in the cycle and I’ll save deep analysis of it till then when I look at its friends. My ratings are based on it in isolation.

Power: 4/10

Impact: 2/10

Xfactor: 2/10

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A solid, universally applicable tool for decks that wish to include tagging as a strong threat, unfortunately what it has in raw power it pays for by being very situational and also quite expensive.

Knocking 2 MU off most runners at most stages of the game won’t do a great deal of permanent damage. You might kill off their weakest/least relevant breaker or a Datasucker. The fact the runner gets to choose which programs get trashed mean they have to play into a vulnerable situation for you to fully exploit the power of Bad Times, something good runners will very rarely do (think risky tag floating with account siphon in the scorched meta).

An ideal case is being able to play two of these in sequence, shutting out almost all of a runner’s memory and threatening their more critical programs, but at a cost of 8 and either having to have two copies in hand or a recursion enabler available. This is similar to the sea-scorched combo, only it’s more reliable but less final in most cases. Whether it will be something the average runner has to account for it in the future is hard to say, but my inclination where the game is now is to say using Bad Times as anything but a tool for punishing the incautious will not be that effective.

Power: 6/10

Impact: 7/10

Xfactor: 6/10

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An interesting tool that has drawn a lot of comparisons to Forged Activation Orders for good reasons, this removes the utility of trashing the unrezzed ice in a control strategy and replaces it with more pressure, so I see this card getting played if and when anarch gets access to a more streamlined aggressive build. As it stands, anarchs have to play the longer game. The question to be asked is, with an already strained economy and lack of tutoring demanding redundancy, where will this card fit in an anarch deck right now?

To really be threatening, you want to have something on the board that punishes open access, Imp for example, but if you have that down a simple run is probably going to achieve the same effect. Unless you’re terrified of facechecking, which anarchs usually aren’t, I can’t see Cyber Threat offering much that simply running doesn’t. If you got your click back if they rez it’d be a different story, but as it is we’ll have to wait and see what’s coming.

Power: 4/10

Impact: 3/10

Xfactor: 4/10

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A really interesting addition to the Anarch toolkit. With Ixodidae recently spoiled it seems like there’ll be a few of these micro-viruses using the ‘trash when purged’ mecehanic. I wish it had been ‘trash if there are no virus counters on it’ to make them synergise interestingly with Grimoire, but you can’t have everything I guess.

Like many anarch cards, lamprey is a card that is very weak under normal circumstances but can blindside a corp and utterly run away with the game if used at the right time. Just as the mantra against criminals seems to be secure HQ, block the siphons, the mantra against anarch seems to be becoming always have a backup, never push yourself to the point where you over-extend and open yourself up to a surprise medium, nerve agent or, now, lamprey. Being able to quickly patch holes in your defense before the anarch lock gets rolling is becoming more and more essential

Power: 7/10

Impact: 6/10

Xfactor: 8/10

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Is your meta comprised of tag hell decks? If so, perhaps include one of these. Otherwise, I think it’s pretty unplayable. Unless we see some weird runner card that lets you take an absurd number of tags for a powerful effect (kind of like Profiteering does with bad publicity for the corp), I don’t see this as a playable card given how difficult it already is to fit all the events you want into your decks. A card that only does anything at all once you have three or more tags (since you need to spend a click drawing this, clearing two tags with it works out about the same as doing it the normal way)

These are cards that need to exist, but rarely need to be played.

Power: 3/10

Impact: 2/10

Xfactor: 2/10

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I’d try and justify this card but I can’t. Once again, there’s a possibility that cards will be printed that let the runner control traces to an extent (a card with a downside that the corp gets to trace you for something for example) that might synergise with this. As it stands it has to trigger three times just to break even and most traces being run in the game these days are probably going to mess you the hell up in that time.

Like Paper Tripping, its very existence makes a meta where all trace ice all day isn’t going to happen, but outside of that It’s the sort of card you can use to deliberately hard counter another player’s deck you play with regularly to force them to adapt and that’s about it. I’m sure there are plenty of netrunners out there in this situation, but if you’re throwing your deck into the hurly burly of the wild, Power Tap is most certainly a Power Trap.

Power: 2/10

Impact: 4/10

Xfactor: 1/10

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Reviewing a runner identity in brief is tricky, so I might save full discussion of Nasier till I’ve had a chance to mess around with him and also see what others come up with.

Nasier has a lot of very obvious and powerful synergies- link to enable him to run through traces so he can freely use the credits he gains, recurring credits that don’t get drained from his pool when he hits ICE and so on. It seems shapers are the faction that get the abilities that really change how the game is played and how their decks work on a fundamental level with Kit, The Professor and now Nasir. I look forward to seeing perspective-altering abilities like this in the other factions.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 8/10

Xfactor: 9/10

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This has some interesting synergies with force rez effects like Forged Activation Orders, Cyber Threat and Blackguard, so I expect to see it mostly in those kind of ice-scouting and control criminal decks. I can also see this acting as another solid economy player in prepaid voicepad decks, since it has a play cost that voicepad can soak and becomes far, far more effective at that point.

As a wildcard in other decks it could be strong, but like all conditional cards it requires you set up a very consistent threat around it and in the tuning stage of deckbuilding it will probably be dropped for something slightly less powerful but far less situational.

Power: 7/10

Impact: 8/10

Xfactor: 9/10

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Now this is a card I can get behind. I used to play a lot of big program shaper and I love my magnum opus. Of course, the difficulty was always in finding enough memory and the big thing for me that leprechaun brings is consistency. Tutorable memory is not something we’ve seen before. Unfortunately, it comes with the inherent ordering weakness of all Daemons, you need to find this little guy first and your tools next.

For that reason I feel like leprechaun is better suited to setting up your late game strategy- for example transitioning from a pressure rig into a power rig with Morningstar and Paintbrush for example. In a tutor heavy shaper deck with SMC recursion and testrun/scavenge recursion this guy might just be one of the last needed pieces of the puzzle. I’ve played an Exile deck in that style before and it can devastate any but the fastest of corps with the economic power of an almost guaranteed first turn Magnum Opus.

I also really love the art and flavour text on this guy. Totally awesome.

Power: 6/10

Impact: 9/10

Xfactor: 7/10

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I feel like Eden Shard can do a lot of work to finish a game off. I’ve often been in a position where I’m sitting flush on money but I can’t force accesses fast enough and the corp just holds out and recovers because their deck isn’t giving up agendas. Eden shard at the least forces some game there. It also, coincidentally, messes with a lot of corp deck manipulation combos like precognition into accelerated beta test, accelerated diagnostics / power shutdown and so on. Have this guy on the table and you can stay safe.

I think it’s a pretty reasonable include as a final influence point if you have the spare. It opens up a lot of tricks and options and the corp constantly has to be aware of it when it’s on the table. As part of RnD pressure stategies it can add yet another bit of kick to the engine, but unfortunately as a one-of you can’t really plan around it that much.

Also makes me wonder if setting my foxfires on fire and dancing around them while offering blood to the blood god in return for playmats wasn’t too hasty…

Power: 6/10

Impact: 8/10

Xfactor: 5/10

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So there you have it, hope you found it interesting! I’ll see you all on the nets…