Fascinating. That is a very interesting twist, and not only for trading up in points: how about grabbing a Nisei or an Astroscript away from the Corp? Don't like that Domestic Sleepers? Trade it in.

Good stuff. Could be really interesting with Iain or Noise . . . I can't even get my head around this thing: it's too big. Love the idea -- opens entirely new possibilities in play.

The Corp is never safe with this on the table, and any agenda is equal to your best and biggest agenda.

I'm literally laughing out loud. Mwah ha ha. This thing is crazy powerful. This might just challenge Desperado for the title of "best console".

This does seem pretty ridiculous, although against decks with relatively non-varied agenda points-per-card, it doesn't have much of an effect. The good news is that there aren't a lot of decks that are only 1s, only 2s or only 3s. 

So in a vacuum, pretending agendas are blank cards that are only worth a certain number of points, this isn't as over the top as it might seem; best case scenario you might swap a 1 point for a 3 point to net 2 points. It's unlikely to pull that off more than once per match, maybe twice if you are really lucky. Strong, but not melt your opponent's face off.

BUT that's not the entire story. Let's keep pretending that the agendas are blank and consider only points, but let's extend the thought experiment from the obvious agenda swapping to the ripples of effect it has on the dynamic of the game. A smart corporation player, seeing this console on the board, will certainly amend their play style. They know their own deck, including how many 3 pointers and 1 pointers they are running and how vulnerable they are to this console, and are unlikely to score a 3 point agenda if they fear it getting swapped out from under them. And that's good for the runner too, as agendas will clump up in HQ or be cycled back into R&D with Jackson, which makes them easier to be stolen outright with persistent digging. The corporation's game plan is getting jammed up just by this card being on the board; intangible but still a potential advantage.

Now lets recall that agendas aren't just blank card with a point value. Most confer some kind of active or triggered ability to the corporation when in their scoring area. Most of the very best agendas have some kind of an agenda counter based effect. Thus swapping a stolen agenda for another scored agenda with a more powerful effect can radically alter the game state in the runner's favor even if the point total difference isn't significant. Considering both Astroscript and Nisei are agendas that offer the corporation a soft lock on game win once scored and help drive two of the dominant deck archetypes, this alone makes the swapping effect very solid.

I'd start using my Nisei counters to stoop that happening.

Even better; now you're blowing your Nisei counters to maybe prevent a steal instead of saving them to guarantee a score. Turntable did work even when it wasn't "on". Win win.

Thanks to cards like this, trashing hardware might become a thing.

Thanks to cards like this, trashing hardware might become a thing.

...again. And not just out of Weyland.

Is this card better than Vigil?

When not playing as Valencia Estevez or Laramy Fisk, yes.

I just hate this card existing. Against the standard agenda mix it's effective enough to see play, but it's ludicrously overpowered against a non-standard mix. 5/3 agendas that aren't "The Future Perfect" just got removed from the game. Even if it wasn't efficient I really loved that style of play.

Maybe. On the other hand, 5/3's in a deck running no 1 point agendas are not all that more disadvantaged than before. The agendas that are hardest hit are those with the best scored abilities, regardless of how many points they are worth or how difficult they are to score. Mandatory Upgrades for instance was just starting to see real play, and this console kicks that card in the privates.

If anything, assuming Turntable sees heavy play, it will tend to push agenda suites towards homogeneity so as to avoid disadvantageous swaps. That homogeneity could take any pattern wherein all the included agendas are approximately equivalent in power and point value to each other.

Is this card better than Vigil?

I'm only just starting to come around to liking Vigil after some unimpressive early showings for me in a deck that originally relied on Wanton Destruction and other hq-trashing effects, where the anti-synergy prevented Vigil from doing its job. After some deck reconfig it is now doing very decent work for me.

When the corp isn't actively playing to keep their hand size down and the runner isn't trashing out of hq a lot, Vigil is a very consistent and reliable card draw engine. It wont win you a game all on its own, but it will lube your deck for you when it is working. Vigil is modest in power level but relatively low variance and high reliability.

On the other hand Turntable wont do anything for you a lot of the time (beyond +1 MU), and even when it does do something for you it will often be of limited utility, but it has the potential to tilt the corporation and even to win you games outright. Turntable is high power level but high variance and low reliability.

Thus, is it better? Depends on your contextual definition of "better"; i.e. depends on your deck and your preferences around variance and reliability.

I think most Whizzard and Edward Kim decks should strongly consider Turntable as their console unless they are particularly leveraging some other console (for instance, trash everything decks trying to milk the most value out of Imp are better off with Grimoire).

Valencia want's to get thru her bigger deck, so Vigil is solid...particularly if you are using Itinerant Protesters vs Hacktivist Meeting.

The current crop of Reina decks tend to prevent the corp from playing stuff and rely less (or not at all) on Caissa, and thus hq stays stuffed and Vigil works well.

Noise still likes Grimoire best.

I've always discounted Quetzal as being irrelevant since day one, but regardless l don't think Turntable does anything either way for her and it would just come down to preference and deck theme.

I'll take a pass on MaxX, she's a hole in my experience as I've never played her and only played against her once; I understand her pros and cons in theory but the pragmatic decision of Vigil vs Turntable is a solid "not sure" for me...if pressed I would probably try to make a MaxX deck that +hand sized and buffered cards in hand and thus would go with Vigil...but really someone else will have to weigh in on that as I'm not qualified to speak to MaxX yet.