Film Critic has a lot in common with Clot for me. It's a card that directly counters a number of decks when it hits the board, turning entire strategies on their head. It's also a card that, simply by existing, changes the meta. It doesn't actually matter all that much if you're running Film Critic. It matters that Film Critic exists, and that some people are running it. It means that people who are building corp decks built primarily to take advantage of on Access abilities have to either abandon those decks entirely (as it was expected would happen with Fast Advance), or remove tertiary pieces of those decks to include things like Snatch and Grab or Contract Killer to answer people who are using Film Critic.

By the same token, it now means that "all you have to do" as a Runner is have Film Critic. And Clot. And Plascrete Carapace or IHW. And....

Film Critic has the upside that it addresses a number of the most popular Corp decks in the meta that aren't Fast Advance - Butchershop can't affect you if you don't steal any agendas. RP's self-protecting agendas like The Future Perfect become far less safe. NAPD Contract's ability to hide from Runners with less than 4 credits is gone. Even Fast Advance suffers a bit, as NAPD looses the ability to be a "safe" or tempo destroying install.

However, it suffers from the fact that it can only be found by drawing, or by using Hostage, which is reasonably rare. Street Peddler can help if you get a good draw, and has the same "Surprise! I can deal with you!" quality. It's also a resource, which means decks that want you tagged only have to ensure they have a way to tag you that isn't based on agendas and it's turned off.

But to go back to the beginning - that's not really the point. The point is that it exists. And at 1 influence, it's potentially in every deck out there.

Turntable seems to be one of those consoles that feels brilliant and game changing, but really makes you sad.

There will certainly be games where you are amazingly glad you had it - when you're making that last turn run against R&D, hoping that you can pull enough Agendas to turn your 6-4 pending loss in to a win, you'll certainly remember the turns where you snagged a 3/1, and turned it immediately in to a 5/3, winning the game. The time you snagged their ABT, then swapped it for their double advanced Vitruvius. Etc.

But in practice, there are very few times that will fire. The two biggest agendas this would seem to target - Nisei MK II and AstroScript- aren't going to worry a bit. If you're stealing something the corp wants more than the Nisei, off comes the counter. And you're not going to get any agendas stolen when the corp's Astroscript has a counter - they're just going to use the counter up.

The one niche where this card shines is in decks that rely on giant or repeated digs in to R&D for scoring. That's the situation where you're going to be occasionally pulling out a 3/1 when the corp has a 4/2 or a 5/3 scored. If you're playing a highly R&D focused deck against decks with high agenda density, this may be useful. If the corp scores a 5/3 before you steal a 3/1.

But even then, you're probably better off getting a console that lets you get in to R&D (Fan favorites Virus? Okay and Auto-Include Blue in particular) for this.

I think Turntable will feature strongly in "CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!" stories, because it will lead to those huge swings that everyone remembers. But those stories will come far far less often than the "And then I ran his server and took my 7th point" stories that better consoles get you....

Adjusted Chronotype is a niche card, for certain. But the niche it occupies is incredibly interesting.

There seem to be two reasonable paths to success:

1. Starlight Crusade Funding and a mix of Doubles (Hostage, Lucky Find, Queen's Gambit, etc) to allow you to use a cross-section of cards that were effectively deemed twice as good as a regular card (arguably they're 1.5x at best, but...). The upside is that many doubles are worth playing on their own, and currently see play in a reasonable number of decks. When Chronotype and then SLC come out, they get that much better. The downside is that you're effectively playing a 3 card combo that has 2 useless pieces, which is generally a bad idea. All the doubles may be reasonable, but playing AC or SLC alone is a waste of resources.

2. Go with a card like Hard at Work, Wyldside, Qianju PT, etc to get a continuous free benefit each turn that would usually cost a click. Of those, Wyldside seems to be the most valuable of the lot. Hard at Work costs 5 to install, plus 3 for the Chronotype, and nets you 2 per turn. There are a fewother ways to net 2 credits per turn with 2 cards (Underworld Contact, Data Folding, Tri-maf Contact) that aren't quite so expensive, but they all also have drawbacks. I would again argue that you're better off playing 3 of one of those, which benefit you with only 1 in play, than pushing for the combo. Wyldside, though - that's where you start to get some interesting choice. 2 cards a turn for 2 cards played is a pretty good return. You're paying 6 setup cost to get it, and then you're basically set for draws for the rest of the game. Contrast that with Earthrise Hotel, which is 4 cost for 6 cards (say 8 to get 6 turns of drawing), but works with a single card. It's still a toss up, but one that's much more interesting to consider.

The truly extreme versions will combine this with Gene Conditioning Shoppe, and play multiples of those cards. Arguably, that makes the combos more consistent - if you're playing 3 AC, 3 Wyldside, 3 Qianju, 3 H@W and 3 GCS, you can start the combo off easier because 1/3 of your deck is part of it.

It's hard to say if this is another card that looks amazing, but ends up just being average, or whether AC+Wyldside is the new core of a consistent draw engine.

An interesting card. It means that you can much more securely play naked assets - throw this in an open remote, and see if it gets run. If so, no great loss. If not, trash if for the Eve/Toybox/Whatever you wanted it to be.

You can use it to protect your SanSan City Grid if you're really worried - use this instead, then SS at the start of the turn, fast advance.

The real sneaky combo is with Director Haas. Throw Tech Startup in a remote. Start of your turn, trash it for Director Haas. Now you have 4 clicks. Install Accelerated Beta Test. Triple-Advance. Score. Use the Ice to protect Director Haas. Takes a lot of the sting out of her 2 virtual agenda points if you don't have to leave her in a remote until she's helping. And scoring an Accelerated Beta Test + 1-2 Ice means that even if the Runner gets her the next turn, you've both gotten 2 points, but you spent 3 creds and netted some Ice, whereas the Runner just invested credits.

The downside, of course, is that Tech Startup is 1 credit to trash. Anything else you would have installed would either cost more to trash (Daily Business Show, Adonis Campaign, etc) or would have been safe anyway (because the Runner didn't come after it).

Overall, the ability to easily tutor assets, I think, makes this a card to consider. Add something like Hokusai Grid or Hostile Infrastructure to make it more painful and then get whatever it is you need to score!

The only real value to this card (other than some great flavor text) is in two very specific circumstances:

1. You're playing someone like Ken "Express" Tenma: Disappeared Clone, and have no events that aren't run events except Sure Gamble or
2. You have 3 Prepaid VoicePAD in your deck, and just don't feel like you're getting enough free credits.

Compared to Prepaid VoicePAD, which is the most direct comparison, you save 1 credit in install, but lose the ability to play any events that aren't runs. If your econ package is made up of Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry, Desperado and Security Testing, which is entirely possible in criminal, you may benefit from the 1 credit discount on install (although even that is countered by the potential extra credit you're spending on Sure Gamble). But in 99% of the cases, Prepaid VoicePAD is a mechanically better choice.