Blech, 2 strength for 4 bits that does nothing after you Rez it. Then if you want it to do anything you have to spend 1 click and a bit for each sub routine. For wayland it's ok, for any other corp it is, frankly put, poop.

Could be fun with Amazon Industrial Zone, lots of advancements, and Corporate Troubleshooter.

Shipment from Kaguya comes to my mind

I do agree this card is very limited in scope. You need too many other cards to make it effective.

could combo well with commercialization from this pack.

Parasite fodder, but if you have no parasites you'll live in fear once this statrs getting pumped up.

After playing against this as a criminal, this card is underestimated. With commercialization, weyland's economy/defense just sky rockets.

Since it says "can be advanced only while rezzed" and you can advance cards by taking actions only in your turn, I assume you need to rez this in your turn and spend 1 click and 1 credit for each advancement token you wish to add on it. This means with the normal 3 clicks you get for each turn, the max tokens you can add to it are 3, unless you have a way to gain clicks from cards like Biotic Labor. So if the opponent plays Forged Activation Orders, he essentially cripples this card. (What happens if there is an ice in play with a strength of X and no subroutines?) Additionally, the card can't gain advancement tokens from cards like Shipment from Kaguya or Trick of Light. Is that right or am I missing something?

Why wouldn´t it be able to gain advancement from ToL and SfK once it is rezzed? They both affect cards that can be advanced and are installed.
And remember you can´t normally rez ICE on the corp turn. He has to wait till the runner makes a run and is about to encounter the ICE in question so the first round (barring special tricks of some sort) it won´t be able to do much. I´d say it´s just a matter of tricking the runner into making a worthless run on a server with woodcutter and then, once it has been rezzed and perhaps advanced alittle, you can start putting stuff behind it you really want to protect (or wish the runner to think you want to protect... oh the mind games)

"And remember you can´t normally rez ICE on the corp turn.": You are right about that. I completely forgot about the timing. However, how can you advance a card in an opponent's turn. Do you even have clicks to spend before your turn starts?

Also, if you could advance this ice any time you wanted or use other cards that place advance tokens on cards, wouldn't a text like
"You may advance Woodcutter while rezzed. For each advancement token on it, Woodcutter gains "[Subroutine] Do 1 net damage."?

I never claimed you can advance Woodcutter anytime you want to just that you can use Trick of Light and Shipment from Kaguya to do so during your own turn (which is how they work on everything else too). Woodcutter takes a bit to set up (which is why I suggested tricking the runner to make a low-profile run just for the sake of rezzing it) but once you got it running properly with lots of sub-routines, it has the potential to make a whole lot of difference.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the advancement counters are only on there for net damage, they do nothing for the cards' overall strength? In this case I'm not really impressed by the card unless I have a troubleshooter to back it up as a surprise.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the advancement counters are only on there for net damage, they do nothing for the cards' overall strength? In this case I'm not really impressed by the card unless I have a troubleshooter to back it up as a surprise.

Correct, the advancement tokens do nothing to build up the strength of Woodcutter. But each one does give it an additional subroutine that they will need to break to prevent that one damage.

The many downsides of this card (4 to rez for only 2 strength, no subroutines the first time you rez it, etc) seem to suggest that adding more subroutines is more powerful than adding strength. It's not. Look at it this way:

a) Many icebreakers cost more than one to increase strength, or -can't- increase strength. Very few cost more than one credit to break a subroutine once you're up to strength. Those that do are almost all Criminal, which is why they have E3 Feeback Implants now. So, in most cases, it's going to cost more to break an ICE with really high strength than it's going to cost to break an ICE with lots of subroutines.

If you have an ICE that has been advanced a bunch of times to boost strength, and they're just short a few credits of breaking it, they suffer the full effects of it. If you have an ICE that has been advanced a bunch of times to add subroutines and they're just short a few credits, they can break most of the subroutines and only suffer partial effects.

In conclusion, if you're going to spend your time advancing ICE, advance for strength, not new subroutines. Ice Wall is way better than this card, for so many reasons. In addition, damage is only really any good when you can catch them by surprise with it (and therefore kill them all at once). Which this card is incapable of doing. So yes, this card is garbage. Use Ice Wall instead.

Hmm, it seems that Woodcutter combos really well with the new Jinteki cards. Whirlpool into a Bullfrog, jump to a server with a highly advanced Woodcutter, and they can't avoid the damage.

Sure, a card that did a large amount of damage and had advancable strength would be better, but there aren't any such cards. So, the nice part of Woodcutter is that it doesn't matter how much they pump their icebreaker, they still need to pay to break through each routine. And, even one for one, that can be very expensive. Especially if you chum it, or follow it with a neural katana.

Of course, a highly advanced woodcutter is total parasite-bait... That's my biggest problem with it.

nyren you would probably have a better return on your investment by jumping the runner on a server with a Fetal AI+Hokusai Grid.

Or simpler: Chum a Neural Katana, or a Data Mine, or a Whirlpool into a Fetal AI or trap. Or any other combination that doesn't cost several clicks and credits advancing an ice that is easily countered.

Thinking more and more about it, woodcutter is actually not that bad of a card against any deck that doesn't play parasite. It's not great, and works best with Amazon Industrial Zone, but pretty solid if situational.

This card is (perhaps obviously) most effective for Weyland, and can be brutal when wielded well.

For one, Weyland works well with advancing ICE. Simone Diego, Shipment from Kaguya and Commercialization compliment it for obvious reasons. As a "front door," NBN's Matrix Analyzer also pairs with it nicely, advancing it further just before the Runner barrels into it. The other strong front door is Chum, of course. Now they have to break all those routines.

And, the fact that it has a weak base strength doesn't matter. The goal isn't to blast out a broke runner (who wouldn't be running that server anyhow, in such a case). It's to either deplete his funds or cause a couple points of damage with routines he chooses not to break, and therefore whittle down his hand to make him susceptible to the ever present threat of a Weyland Tag n' Bag. Or at least fearful that it's incoming.

In that respect, it combos well with servers sporting click depletion, so the Runner can't draw his hand up after the run. Ichi, Victor, Heimdall, Viperand so forth. This sort of thing can dissuade Runners from hitting their favorite central server, as that run now involves lots of cost (cash and clicks) or serious flatline risk when the Corp Sea Sources + Scorches a diminished hand the following turn.

The main problem I see with Woodcutter is it's cost to setup. For anyone but Weyland, it may not be practical. Even for them, it takes a bit of effort to get rolling, and by then it may not matter as the Runner will look for softer targets.

And as Clearbeard mentions, a Runner with Parasites will make Woodcutter worthless in no time flat.