Advanced Assembly Lines holds a wealth of possibilities but is a bit dependent on the runner not running your remotes. With its low trash cost of 1 there is very little question that the runner will trash this card, unless you are Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions and/or have some Hostile Infrastructure or Encryption Protocol installed. As an asset it will clog up one of your remote servers, so either you will need to protect it with Ice, or have a situation where the runner is reluctant to run your remotes (Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon or Jinteki: Personal Evolution shell game).

It's important to note that Advanced Assembly lines has two seperate functions 1. Rezzing for 1 to gain 3, a net gain of 2. However this ability is not available to the corp if they have been Account Siphon/Lamprey/Vamped down to 0. 2. Installing any non-agenda card not during a run. This is similar to Executive Boot Camp or Tech Startup but far stronger because it can also be used for Upgrades or Ice and you do not need to reveal the card you installed. The disadvantage is that you can only install from what's in HQ and this ability cannot be used during a run, so if the runner runs on the server containing Advanced Assembly Lines, the opportunity is lost.

What can you do with Advanced Assembly Lines?

• Gain 2 by installing it, rezzing it and then using it to install something else. This can potentially gain more s if you have Turtlebacks installed. This effect vaguely resembles Green Level Clearance and has the advantage of getting two cards out of your hand, if you want to avoid discarding. While 2 for a card is not a horrible result, it's not optimum either. This could potentially be used as a response to Fisk Investment Seminar.

• Near-Earth Hub: Broadcast Center can install a new remote during the runner's turn to draw another card, trigger Turtlebacks and generally gain tempo. If you install SanSan City Grid you might even be able to score an agenda next turn. This is a great synergy since the runner might not check all your spammed remotes.

• This card is hidden credits. These credits can be used to punish runners face-checking Ice or running Ambushes when you are low on credits. Run Ice when you are down to 1? Hello Caduceus or Cortex Lock! 2 will get you to Architect/Rototurret and 3 will get you Komainu. What about Ambushes? 2 is enough for Snare! and just 1 is enough to trigger any psi game, so Caprice Nisei, Marcus Batty and Psychic Field are back on. The same goes for traps like Cerebral Overwriter, Aggressive Secretary or Edge of World. This does recommend it for play in PE shell game decks since you could even play it in a naked remote. Don't forget to use its trash ability at the end of the run and before the runner's next action. Now they know it's not an agenda, but could it be Jackson or a Ronin? You could also just install another Pup.

• Cyberdex Virus Suite that Clot!

• Install Corporate Town before the start of your turn and blow away an important resource.

• Install economy such as PAD Campaign, Adonis Campaign or Melange Mining Corp..

• Spend to purge viruses, gain 7 with melange or advance an agenda and then install something anyway.

• Install countdown/power-up cards like Public Support, Rex Campaign or Mumbad Construction Co.. In fact any non-agenda card that says "When your turn begins" can benefit from this treatment.

• Mushin No Shin and put two pieces of ice in front of the remote.

• Install Elizabeth Mills to instantly clear 1 bad publicity. Sadly you cannot do this in response to a Blackmail, but it will end any DaVinci/Activist Support/Aesop's Pawnshop nonsense. NB: Timing structure of a turn - you must wait til after they spend their 1st before they use their 2nd .

• Did the runner just install a breaker? Install Ice of a different subtype to protect your critical server.

• Keyhole, Medium or R&D Interface? Ice up R&D. Sneakdoor Beta? Ice up Archives. HQ Interface, Nerve Agent or Same Old Thing/Déjà Vu with/for Account Siphon in the heap? Ice up HQ.

• Did Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire or a bad Accelerated Beta Test drop some Agendas into Archives? Out comes Jackson Howard.

• Executive Boot Camp can give put the Asset you need in your hand for Advanced Assembly Lines to use. So can Project Vitruvius or Project Atlas. This works during any paid ability timing window except during a run.

• Did the runner just hit 3 Central Servers? Use the action window before the 4th click to install Hostile Infrastructure before the Apocalypse.

edit for Democracy and Dogma

• You can install the new Political Assets: Bio-Ethics Association, Clone Suffrage Movement, Sensie Actors Union and Commercial Bankers Group. You can also throw down Political Dealings for some fast advance trickery.

So this card is starting to sound really amazing! What about the downsides?

Again 1 to trash is really cheap, so it will make your R&D more porous to multiple access.

If you have agendas in hand then using it to install could raise the chance of a successful HQ access.

Also if your opponent runs on the server where it is installed it just turns into 2 for a and a card. (Although it's worth factoring in the cost of a 'wasted' run for the runner).

You must have the relevant card to install in your hand.

Lastly it costs 2 influence outside of so you'll need to budget for it if you want it.

Unscheduled Maintenance is a bit of a headscratcher, whilst its effect is potentially useful, it almost feels like the deck needs to support the card, rather than the card supporting the deck.

Because it is a current it lets the runner turn off a corporate current for 1, 1 and 1 card. This effect hardly warrants inclusion in a deck when there are much better currents out there like Hacktivist Meeting or Employee Strike.

The first question is how much impact does this effect have on the corp? That depends on how often the corp will put down more than 1 piece of ice per turn. Lets look at some potential situations:

1. First turn corp ices R&D and HQ. Problem: Corp gets first turn, so no opportunity for the runner to play Unscheduled Maintanance.

2. Corp fires Accelerated Beta Test (or uses Bifrost Array) to install Ice from the top 3 cards of R&D. Problem: scoring an agenda trashes Unscheduled Maintenance.

3. The runner just trashed a lot of Ice on a central server using some combination of Run Amok, Forked, Knifed, Spooned or Parasite etc. This could possibly put the Corp in a position where they would really want to put down a lot of Ice but that also depends on whether they even have more than one Ice in their hand to begin with.

4. The runner just returned a lot of Ice to the corp's hand using either Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist's ability or something like a DDoS/Crescentus/False Echo run. Maybe the runner is Leela and wants to just torture the corp using Fisk Investment Seminar to fisk them while they're down.

5. Maybe the runner just faceplanted into an Architect and the corp wanted to install two pieces of Ice... but will have to 'settle' for just installing one. Solution: Install a sentry breaker before running.

6. Maybe the runner is running through multiple Cricks without breaking the subroutines. I'm going to assume this is because of hitting a Whirlpool into a Susanoo-No-Mikoto (rather than the runner being insane). Just like the case with the Architect, the corp can just install something else.

7. The corp is The Foundry: Refining the Process and they have a lot of ice in hand. Solution: Stop triggering the ID ability until the corp either offloads some Ice or gets rid of the current.

8. The corp is using Minelayer, Howler, Awakening Center and/or The Twins in some sort of bizarre mass-ice-install server. What!?

9. The corp mulligans into a terrible iceless hand full of agendas and desperately tries to draw for Ice to protect their centrals and to create a safe remote. Problem: In this situation the runner would much rather have some multiaccess cards to run central servers and score agendas.

10. The corp has been using Melange Mining Corp. as their only econ card and is now prevented from installing multiple Ice on a non-Melange turn! The same applies if the corp had to spend purging viruses.

11. Inconvenience Blue Sun: Powering the Future by preventing them from playing the 'Ice Shell Game'.

Out of all these potential cases, the only one that seems even remotely plausible is case 4 and even then most likely Leela will have accessed most of the agendas in that hand already anyway, so the corp won't have to discard too many cards. Also big turns that cause the corp's hand to fill up with Ice tend to use up a lot of s to set up. This means that you would either need to play this card before (spoiling the surprise and risking it being removed) or save another click to play it, in order to get a rather minor effect.

The final analysis is that Unscheduled Maintenance is a dud card because there are very few (if any) situations in the game where the corp needs to install multiple ice in a single turn, these situations are extremely rare and the inconvenience is generally minor. During deckbuilding it is worthwhile asking yourself whether a card either helps you win or prevents your opponent from doing so. This card does neither and is unlikely to provide a return effect that justifies the cost of including and playing it.

Corporate Scandal can be a great support card for Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe decks that rely on Blackmail. Given that Corporations have BP removal cards such as The All-Seeing I, Rex Campaign, Clone Retirement, Elizabeth Mills, Veterans Program, Witness Tampering or Exposé.

For decks that don't rely on Blackmail the closest comparison would be to the current Net Celebrity. Net Celebrity costs just 1 but it only works once per turn. Corporate Scandal on the other hand costs you 3 and works for every run you make. Both cost a to draw and a to play, so assuming 1 = 1 it takes 3 runs over 3 turns for Net Celebrity to pay for itself and it takes 5 runs for Corporate Scandal to pay for itself. Considering Corporate scandal is a 1 influence neutral card it does not seem to pay at all for Shaper decks.

Corporate Scandal can be very useful if you play Valencia or some other type of BP reliant deck, but not particularly helpful otherwise.

This card will only ever mildly inconvenience the Corp, even when used against a scoring server, even when the runner has managed to Account Siphon or #Vamp the corp. A Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire deck that just wants to mill out the corp can consider playing this card for its cheap install cost, but since it takes up 1 it will probably get sold to Aesop's Pawnshop before long anyway.

Diwan is also vulnerable to getting purged with Cyberdex Virus Suite or Cyberdex Trial although it is extremely unlikely to provoke a purge by itself.

Now considering targets, either the scoring server already had plenty of Ice or the corp can just start building up a new scoring server. This means the corp will only need to pay to install upgrades or agendas in that server. Now if you manage to put 3 Diwans on a single server then the corp will probably purge. This means you've spent 3 and 3 and tied up 3 to force the corp to spend 3 (and mill 3 cards if you're Noise). You will also have had all your other virus counters purged as well. Likely you will have spent additional and to tutor or recur the Diwans in the first place since it's quite unlikely to just draw all 3 of them in the first place.

For corps that are tired of getting their Ice walked over by AI breakers Swordsman may seem really exciting at first glance. At 1 influence this seems like an easy splash for any faction and also an easy include for Jinteki as well.

In practice Swordsman does not deliver. Against decks that do not use AI breakers, Swordsman is a 3 to rez Str 2 Sentry that says: Do 1 net damage.

• can play a Str 3 Architect for 4 and 1 "influence" (NAPD MWL). Rototurret is another possibility that works against all programs.

• has Pup for 1, Cortex Lock for 2, Gemini for 3 or Neural Katana for 4. If you really want to land 1 net damage you may as well play Data Mine for 0 or Neural EMP.

• has Caduceus and Shadow in faction for 3.

• has Gutenberg or Datapike for 2 or Data Raven for 4.

But what about decks that do use AI breakers? In almost every case they will be escorted by Mimic, Mongoose, Faerie, Femme Fatale (to target Tollbooths etc.), GS Shrike M2 or some type of Parasite/Datasucker insta-kill combo. In the very rare cases where you can actually land the "Trash 1 AI program." sub they will be recovered within a turn or two using Clone Chip, Test Run, Special Order, Déjà Vu or some other type of recursion. However even if you manage to kill the AI breaker, you will not have ended the run. Not ending the run can be a big deal if they land an Account Siphon or multi-access.

So if Swordsman is effectively useless against decks without AI breakers and unlikely to get results against decks that DO use AI breakers what can you do about runners who use an AI as their main breaker?

• Wraparound is an all-star performer at taxing runners trying to get through with just Parasite+Datasucker or AI breakers such as Eater, Faust or Darwin. Wraparound won't stop Knight but you can kill a Knight by installing another Ice over Wraparound in order to Trash Wraparound. If you try this watch out they don't recur the Knight with a Pawn. The usual result of rezzing Wraparound is forcing the runner to install Corroder, Cerberus "Lady" H1, Inti, Breach or spend a D4v1d counter to break.

• Turing is a fantastic card that is amazing against AI dependent runners. It is even reasonable against runners who use normal breakers (unlike Swordsman). If you have multiple Turings you could use one on a central server if you need it since it doesn't matter what strength it is if the runner cannot break it. Please note that on a central Turing can be vulnerable to Parasite and on a remote Turing can be broken by D4v1d. Double stacked Turings cannot be clicked through (barring Hyperdriver madness - although it's a sorry Runner that can't beat a Code Gate). Keep in mind that Turing is vulnerable to Inside Job or DDoS if it is the outermost Ice. Mess with runners who are willing to spend the each turn by installing time wasting assets and upgrades in your Turing server turn after turn while spending your other 2s to build up your economy and board position.

• Keegan Lane will kill that AI if you can tag the runner (Data Raven is one possibility).

• Aggressive Secretary will also kill the AI and it's friends as well (Goodbye Keyhole).