Deep Data Mining

Deep Data Mining 3[credit]

Event: Run
Influence: 4

Run R&D. If successful, access X additional cards when you breach R&D. X is equal to your unused MU or 4, whichever is less.

Extracting data from complex systems is what running is all about.
Illustrated by Alexandr Elichev
Decklists with this card

Terminal Directive Cards (td)

#14 • English
Startup Card Pool
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Rulings
  • Updated 2017-05-02

    UFAQ [Michael Boggs]

    If the Runner has 4 unused MU when they play Deep Data Mining, do they access 4 cards or 5 cards from R&D?

    The Runner accesses 5 cards. “Up to” limits the number of additional accesses the Runner can get, not the total number of accesses.

Reviews

The shaper section of Terminal Directive seems to have a bit of a theme of cards that become powerful based on free MU. Deep Data Mining seems intended to work in a deck built around that theme. Compared to The Maker's Eye it's more expensive by 1 and where The Maker's Eye has a fixed 2 extra accesses Deep Data Mining can get up to 4 extra accesses.

The idea of accessing 5 cards is enticing and given sufficient MU extenders and/or cloud breakers certainly achievable. Outside of a deck built around free MU Deep Data Mining is almost sure to be worse than The Maker's Eye.

It's a bit of a shame that Deep Data Mining costs 4 influence. It works great in many Sunny decks as Sunny's own breakers don't cost MU (since she has 2 link at start), so Sunny decks often run around with 4 free MU. Were Deep Data Mining any cheaper with regard to influence I'm sure it'd become an auto include in Sunny. At 4 influence it's still a good option, but one that will force hard deckbuilding choices.

(Terminal Directive Cards era)
393

This card is another R&D run event for the Shaper faction, so let's see how it stacks up against its 2 main competitors, The Maker's Eye and Indexing

The comparison with Maker's Eye seems obvious. You access an additional 2 cards for 1 credit extra, provided you have 4MU. This last part is somewhat tricky though, as your breakers will obviously take up said MU, unless you have help from a little friend.

The same "issue" comes up with Indexing. This card has the obvious advantage of being free, but at the cost of having to run multiple times to actually snatch the agendas. If you got all your MU (or only 1MU occupied if you are Chaos Theory: Wünderkind ) you basically get to see all the cards Indexing lets you shuffle around immediately.

But so, Deep Data Mining requires you to have a dedicated deck which lets you set up your rig without taking up precious MU. The aforementioned Dhegdheer helps a ton, no wonder they are in the same set. If you still need spare MU, a cheap option in faction is Akamatsu Mem Chip.Of course, plenty of consoles give 2 MU nowadays so you might not even need it.

tl;dr. Indexing and and Maker's Eye are better in almost any shaper deck, Deep Data Mining is better in dedicated decks

(Terminal Directive Cards era)
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