Could get pretty gross if you can manage to defend it. Nice and aggressive, it sucker gets large enough all the bad publicity in the world wont make a difference.

Is making the runner trash two cards and get one BP better than one extra click each turn (Mandatory Upgrades) ? Obviously not. Of course, it's more versatile, but still... I don't see Mandatory Upgrades getting much play.

Is making the runner trash two cards and get one BP better than one extra click each turn (Mandatory Upgrades) ? Obviously not. Of course, it's more versatile, but still... I don't see Mandatory Upgrades getting much play.

There is a world of difference between overcharging project Ares when you can, and having to advance mandatory upgrades six bloody times no matter what. You basically have to play a 4/2 agenda, might as well be useful (I'm looking at you PSF)

there are so few ways to trash hardware that this agenda is good if only for that.

There is a world of difference between overcharging project Ares when you can, and having to advance mandatory upgrades six bloody times no matter what. You basically have to play a 4/2 agenda, might as well be useful (I'm looking at you PSF)

That's what I meant by "more versatile". Even so, if need a few more 2 points agendas, I'd much rather play Efficieny Committee : same cost and you don't have to overadvance it to get a (pretty good) benefit.

Wouldn't this card also make Thomas Haas or Cerebral Overwriter overall more effective?

Wouldn't this card also make Thomas Haas or Cerebral Overwriter overall more effective?

I agree, this will work nicely in a super-advancing deck bluff. Advance a card 5 times ... is it Project Ares that if left will next turn go to 8 advance and wreck your rig? Or Cerebral Overwriter that if run now will wreck your brain? (Or Thomas Haas who will just waste all your credits!)

Haas bioroid already has so many great agendas that I believe this will recieve no higher level play.

I don't see any situation to ever play this card. You want a 4/2? Efficiency Committee. You want something that is awesome to advance a lot? Project Vitruvius and even Mandatory Upgrades or Priority Requisition. A super-advancing bluff deck is just a bad idea in the first place. It's insanely expensive and hard-countered by expose effects, thus making it really risky. You will be so sad after you spend 5 clicks and 5 credits on Ares or Cerebral Overwriter only to have it infiltrated. It's not even that amazing when you pull it off. By the time you have the security as the corp to get a card advanced more than 2 times the runner already has 12 cards in their rig. Making them discard the worst 4 is hardly a big deal. And you take a BP. Seriously, a Mandatory Upgrades would be better than this in a super-advancing bluff deck. You only need to advance it 6 times and it's always amazing when you do score it.

Okay, while I agree that the card has some issues, 12 card rigs are not the norm for me at least. The card is clearly aimed at an HB trap deck, which they have given a few cards for. Not every card is intended to be super useful right now, they will be releasing cards to build future archtypes as well.

Personally, I have enjoyed this card in a deck with some Ronin and Junebugs, as a different style of HB. HB already ahs ice that "lets people through" which can support a trap strat.

The only place where this could ever possibly work is a Custom Biotics midseason psycho kind of thing. Still, the fact that the runner chooses what to trash makes it not really worth it for me - simply because in order to get to that one target you actually do care about, you have to have advanced enough to nuke his whole rig. No, more than just his rig... his resources too. That's a lot of counters.

Not only that, but if you are going for midseason/psycho, why not just play NBN and win the game instantly with a Beale?

I've been playing around with some different decks, and if you want to go for a super-advance deck then NBN with Beale and Junebug is way better than HB with Ares and Overwriter. The thing with Overwriter vs Junebug is that 1 brain damage is just flat out worse than 2 net damage unless you have other ways on capitalize on it. This difference becomes very apparent here because if you hit 4 (even 3) advanced Junebug you die unless you have Deus X, but if you hit a 4 advanced Overwriter you are still in the game. The same thing is true of Beale vs Ares: if the corp scores a 9-advanced Beale they win (pretty much), whereas with Ares that's not necessarily the case. Consider the best possible situation for the Ares deck over the Beale deck: You have 0 points and you can score your agenda with 10 counters. For NBN, a 9 advanced Beale gets scored (the last advancement does nothing), putting you at 5 points. Now you are essentially $8 away from winning (SanSan into another Beale or Astro is pretty hard to stop if it only needs to happen once. Failing that a simple 2 breaking news will do the trick). For the HB deck, you score a 10 advanced Ares for 2 points and the runner trashes 6 cards and you take a BP. 6 cards is a decent amount, but won't necessarily be their entire rig, and thus they keep maybe 1 or 2 of their most important cards. Now you have a small window in which the runner needs to rebuild and you can score a few agenda points (probably no more than 3 or 4). You end up at the point that the NBN deck was at IMMEDIATELY after scoring their Beale! And this is the best case scenario for Ares over Beale! If you can only advance it 7 times, then Beale is clearly better because 4 points is way better than forcing the runner to trash their worst 3 cards.. Also, some runners have bigger rigs, and even forcing them to trash 6 cards won't do a lot; you may have to advance Ares even more than 10 times to do anything relevant, at which point if it was a Beale it would have resulted in an instant win, even from 0 points. Not only that, but Beale, being a 3/2 and not a 4/2, is significantly better to have in your hand in any situation. HQ pressured? No problem, score it with only 1 fast advance trick (generally Astro counter or SanSan). 4/2's are so much harder to score. Sure, you could argue that there is a difference in having to play NBN vs HB, but I would argue that NBN is better anyways with their great ice, tag punishment, agendas (best out of any faction IMO) and fast advance support. Sure, HB has money, but it's not enough to make up for all of these other factors.

Anybody who even thinks about doing an HB deck that tries to do things with this card really needs to take a close look to be sure that NBN can't do a better job at it with Beale. For the Junebug vs Overwriter argument, I think that Junebug is better unless the runner has Deus X, which shapers tend to pack these days, so it's a bit of a tough call. For NBN, I'd say Junebug wins out because it's only 1 influence, $1 to trigger, can be run without any additional flatline support and has good surprise factor. Of course, if you plan to take advantage of brain damage then Overwriter becomes the better choice since if the runner hits a 2-advanced trap then it can still lead to a flatline win (as opposed to Junebug, where they just draw 4 times to reset).

I like this agenda and it is an awesome surprise factor. I would argue that this card pairs better with Thomas Haas as the runner who has seen an super advanced Thomas Haas will be more likely to let this agenda to do mega damage

I've managed to let this thing fire with 7 advancement tokens on it. Therefore, the runner had to trash 3 Cards out of his rig, which gave me a big tempo boost for the remainder of the match. Fun card, especially combined with Cerebral Overwriter/Thomas Haas/Trick of Light.