Enter Subroutine - First Contact Review

FIRST CONTACT REVIEW

I'm sorry for such a huge delay. As of now, some people have played with this cards already, but I'll do a first impressions review anyway. So here goes:




4 out of 5
This card brought some new life to Cerebral Imaging archetype. It’s an incredible card early to mid game since you can manage its cost, by not going overboard with your hand size. Femme Fatale is a hard counter to this, but, if they’re Femme’ing this, the Runners are already in a bad spot. It’s a well balanced card.






3 out of 5
Its ratio is not that perfect: you pay 4 credits and a whole turn to rez, say, an Heimdall or a Janus. You have to protect it and whatever you rez, if it’s an Asset this doesn’t save you a ton of credits, if it’s an ICE you’re giving away precious hidden information to the runner. Either way you’ll have to prepare for the backlash this card can provoke.






2 out of 5
Forcing the Runner to access a card in your hand may catch them off guard, but it’ll seldom kill them. If you have forced them into not being able to jack out and effectively force them to see a Snare! or some other trap of some sort then this might steal a win. Nevertheless that sounds like too many moving parts to be effective. Although I’ll grant that this is a good way to make your Snare!'s appear where they’re not supposed to. For example, after showing a couple of Snare!’s on a Celebrity Gift, you’ll deter the Runner from going to HQ (most likely), you can then “move” your Snare!’s around the servers through this card. 1 copy should be fairly easy to place in some Jinteki builds.






3 out of 5
I haven’t seen this card doing anything. 5 trash cost is a fortune to pay, but this right now seems useless. I think this is the typical card that needs players to fiddle with it a few months until it finds it’s niche, or a place in the card binder.






4 out of 5
I actually like this card a lot. Currents are beginning to be prevalent in the meta game and this card gets better with more currents out. 3 influence is prohibitive to import, but if there’s such a thing as a very dominant Runner Current, or a deck that utilizes a lot of currents this card will take care of it. The trash cost is good. 4 is a very important number right now. Trashing this may mean, not being able to pay for the NAPD.





4 out of 5
Like I said in the datapack that introduced currents, the Corp side Currents are all passive, but stronger in effect. Manhunt is a beast. I think Weyland will still prefer the SEA Source, but this enables several other interesting concoctions. Keep in mind that you’ll guarantee at least 1 trace if the Runner goes and steals an Agenda immediately, which is fairly important and why this card is pretty good. Its staying power compensates for such a low base strength on the trace.





3 out of 5
Another interesting mechanic comes to us. I think this is some kind of introduction to what we can expect to come out of the Deluxe Box. As for the ICE per se, the cost/strengh ratio is good, but the subroutine is somewhat gimmicky. It may work sometimes, but to effectively stop the Runner you’ll always need something extra. Toying about with ICE subtypes can be very taxing for the Runner in the sense that you’ll force them to spend clicks to build the rig, search for it and in the end game tax them for the most (as you can adjust for the Runners most cost intensive breaker). Once Weyland decks start to show up, I suspect Wendigo will be present. Wendigo targgeting sentry breaker, into Archer… anyone?





5 out of 5
I don’t have to justify this card. As soon as it came out, it started to find its way into decks. We’ll see this card a lot as it’s an hard counter to a big portion of Runner cards. Most notoriously criminal HQ-dependent cards or run-dependent cards (Account Siphon, Emergency Shutdown, etc; Desperado, the not criminal, but very common Dirty Laundry), and all the Viruses that only gain counter through running.





4 out of 5
This agenda gives Jinteki: Perfecting Evolution decks a new relevant 3/1. Instead of Veteran’s Program, these decks can now take this Agenda and be even more threatning, since exhausting all the reccursion and then use Levy AR Lab Access is not a safe path anymore, as this Agenda may eat half of a Runners deck. It’s a good counter to much of the Shaper reccursion and Same Old Thing decks, which are not very fun to play against. It’s indeed a shame that Exile is hurt by this, but he’s nowhere a dominant part of the meta, so you can still bring him to a tournament and be fairly successful with it. This agenda won’t be in every deck either.

A short rambling paragraph (feel free to skip ahead):
I’m a fan of running a toolbox agenda suite. It makes your game very flexible and makes you able to pull some scoring windows, or close out the victory. That said, agendas like NAPD Contract are not welcome to this. It’s a very solid agenda, but, because it’s so good, it’s obtuse. It makes deckbuilding look dumber. For example in NBN you could get the Runner with a Character Assassination bombing a Kati Jones, or Professional Contacts, in HB, trash their whole rig with an over-advanced Project Ares, and these choices affected your deck as a whole, now you just ram 3 NADP Contract and be done with it. It’s very unfortunate that NAPD is a thing.





3 out of 5
It’s becoming more evident that Hardwares are going to play an important role in the near-future. Shapers will be even given a search effect for Hardwares. The presence of this card will make Hardware heavy decks be wary of running something with advancement counters. Weyland might sneak a copy or two to clear out the Carapaces.





3 out of 5
The second of the Grail suite. 4 cost for 2 strength is not brilliant, much less being a sentry, which the Runner will certainly run with a sentry breaker. If the Runner’s rig is not build this does nothing. Only really stopping them if you have a Galahad in hand. Late game it can be somewhat taxing, just because sentries are a pain to break, but it’s unimpressive otherwise.





5 out of 5
I’m all in favor of new Identities, they shake up the meta and keep the game fresh and healthy. Quetzal has a very good ability. It’ll be very important with the upcoming barriers of Weyland, but even now is a good answer to the format: Eli 1.0, Ice Wall and Wraparound are still everywhere, and Quetzal breaks them all pretty handily. E3 Feedback Implants also feel like a natural fit. Tinkering or Paintbrush might be a quirky way of getting more mileage out of Quetzal, but the influence of these cards is really hard to justify. Quetzal has the standard ratio, which makes her builds easier to accomplish.







4 out of 5
Just the plain stats of Black Cat are already pretty amazing. Breaking Wall of Static, Himitsu Bako, Wraparound, Ice Wall (unadvanced), for 1 credit. It’s a shame Eli 1.0 is just one short, but hey, that’s when Datasucker comes in. With Stealth credits it takes cares of NEXT Silver, Heimdall and whatnots really quickly.Upping its strength, is not brilliant, but not bad 2 for 2, as long as you have a recurring stealth credit. If you have a surplus you can overkill breaking the subroutines and sometimes that'll be relevant, however, the majority of the time feeding the stealth credits to raise its strength will be a better proposal.





2 out of 5
I really don’t know what to think about Duggar’s. I guess if you want to search for a card, go deep in the search. I actually almost had an epiphany when I saw this card spoiled for the first time, as I thought we were finally going to see a cool build of Exile, drawing all the library and then doing Shaper things to cheat out programs as needed, but then a friend asked me if I had looked at the influence cost. And that's when I came down to face reality. On the upside, my fellow Anarchs are always complaining of their lack of draw power. Well then, draw ALL the cards!






3 out of 5
Don’t lie to me, this is a Shaper card if I ever seen one! This is straight better than Cybersolutions Mem Chip and I think many Big Rig decks will find a way to squeeze a couple of this in their builds. 1 pip of influence is close to nothing. This also mitigates the danger of Scorched Earth and net damage in general.





3 out of 5
Albeit slow, this can net you a fortune, bearing in mind that your deck is full of hardwares. It’s a nice tool to have around, but I don’t know if Inside Man is not more efficient being influence free as well.






4 out of 5
I’ve seen a ton of “Kit” builds since the release of this card. Together with Dagger, they form a formidable rig. I love it! Seems like refractor was the missing piece to make Rielle “Kit” Peddler a real contender (even if I would already count her as such). Running with such cheap decoder and with the efficiency the stealth economy offers makes for a really aggressive game, out of Shaper, a faction not quite know for its velocity. Starting at two strength is really amazing, nullifying a lot of the game’s code gates, and the more expensive ones, you can reach them with 1 stealth credit, it’s really efficient and paired with Kit’s ability to turn anything into Code Gate it brought a fresh new exciting strategy into the game.







4 out of 5
My high rating goes for the uniqueness of its effect and actually this card can grant you a lot of credits down the road. The obvious interaction is when you’re at 5 credits and play a Sure Gamble, you have to spend the five credits so that grants you 1. This works on the Corp turn as well so you can just search for an expensive program with Self-Modifying Code or just spend all your credits on a run. Nasir Meidan, of course abuses from this card since his economy is constantly fluctuating from nothing to something to nothing again.






5 out of 5
Alright, so I know it’s only one copy per deck. It costs you one influence and it’s seven credits to install. But on the upside, you can make an unsuspecting run and install it for free and then access Archives without granting a window for Jackson Howard to work its magic. That is huge! It may possibilitate a win without running, which is a bit, not fun, but, fortunately that’ll happen very rarely, actually that's something worth trying to pull off!





3 out of 5
Eight credits. Gee-zus! You pay 7 credits more than Joshua B. only to get yourself rid of the Tag-train, but eight credits is a lot of money for a resource that may only compensate you two turns after. And, be you spared from getting a Tag! The agenda TGTBT is incredibly efficient against this card, but luckily since no one plays it, you’ll just need to concentrate on your usual tagging suspects to avoid getting Rachel to bail out from your cause.


And that's it.
Don't forget to hit me in the comments with the cards you think are best, where you agree or disagree!
Until next time

Ashtaroth