Good evening and welcome to our regular end-of-cycle awards, beamed straight into your eyeballs from the Near Earth Hub broadcast center! In the spirit of post-cycle bipartisanship, tonight’s events are brought to you live by Beth Kilrain-Chang! Because I suppose integrity doesn’t buy bandwidth.

THE “PACTUM” AWARD FOR MOST UNDERRATED CARD PRE RELEASE: Surely there can only be one real candidate here – the mighty Temujin Contract. For whatever reason a lot of commentators slept on the power level of this card when it was initially spoiled, seeing it as simply a good econ card. Nobody predicted a meta in which the Khantract quickly became a 3x in almost every deck in every faction as an incredibly efficient econ card that also puts strong pressure on the Corp to react.

THE “YOMI” AWARD FOR SICKEST MIND GAMES, YOU GUYS: Mind Game is literally called Mind Game and has some nonsense about jacking out. Also it has the single longest subroutine in the game, so if your opponent has a short attention span they might not even read it. Bonus!

Honorable mention to Fumiko Yamamori for that one combo where you use Marcus Batty on a Crick to keep winning psi games until the runner DIES.

Just you wait until I get my combo off!

THE “COMET” AWARD FOR CARD MOST LIKELY TO GET KNEE JERK REACTIONS BASED ON BEST-CASE SCENARIOS: Barney Brian Bryan Stinson. A card likely to fire turn 1 or not at all, although being an upgrade is pretty sweet.

THE “SEVENTH JAMMY DONUT” AWARD FOR THINGS YOU THOUGHT YOU WANTED BUT MAYBE WEREN’T SUCH A GOOD IDEA: The CTM tagstorm archetype! Remember back when everyone wanted forms of tag punishment other than death? And then we got it and everyone complained about it in every forum forever?

THE “MARCUS BATTY” AWARD FOR KILLING NETRUNNER, BUT NOT REALLY: After Worlds and months of NBN and Anarch dominance, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that in some circles people were losing their goddamn minds over Sandburg.

There were calls for this to be put on the MWL barely after it was released! Of course, it turns out that maintaining two remotes is pretty hard. Also, another pretty important card came out…

THE “NAH, FUCK IT” AWARD FOR MOST HEAVY HANDED DESIGN: Rumor Mill! Because Political Operative was too dang Criminal.

BEST ICE OF THE CYCLE: We actually have some super strong contenders this cycle, and in every faction! From the absurd numbers on Data Ward to the brutal sensation of taking a DNA Tracker to the face, this cycle saw ICE design pushed hard with significantly stronger numbers and effects for their costs. But there can only be only one winner, and in the end we can’t argue with Fairchild 3 for the most straight up powerful piece of ICE this cycle. The strength to cost ratio is absurd, the facecheck is brutal, and it even says End The Run. Good job, HB.

THE “PREPAID KATE” AWARD FOR DEADEST ARCHETYPE: Glacier! Mostly because Rumor Mill came out and stomped all over the good defensive upgrades. Since we also now live in the Sifr Age, where big ICE basically does nothing, glacier is looking deader than ever. Maybe you’ll be the one to bring it back though! Speaking of which…

THE “DDOS” AWARD FOR MOST UNNECESSARY BOOST TO AN ALREADY STRONG ARCHETYPE: Sifr! Also En Passant! Because ICE is a crutch.

THE “GUY ON THE CORNER TALKING ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD” AWARD FOR I TOLD YOU SO: I said the Astro errata was a mistake, and not just because I’m an imaginary NBN stooge. You know what’s too fast for ICE destruction and Dumblefork? FASTROBIOTICS. TOLD YOU.

THE “BUILDING A BETTER WORLD” AWARD FOR FORCING AN ARCHETYPE SUPER HARD: The 400 (ok, 9 ELEVEN, but still) Smoke cards. Null and his breakers come in close.

THE COVETED “DATA HOUND” AWARD FOR BEING A DOG: Watchdog.

We’ll be heading to our live coverage of the Mars Uprising any minute, so stay tuned!