Moon Pool

Moon Pool 3[credit]

Asset: Facility
Trash: 3
Influence: 3

Remove this asset from the game: Trash up to 2 cards from HQ. Reveal up to 2 facedown cards in Archives and shuffle them into R&D. For each agenda revealed this way, you may place 1 advancement counter on an installed card.

Designed by the Borealis Playtesters
Illustrated by Olie Boldador
Decklists with this card

Midnight Sun (ms)

#42 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Midnight Sun
Rulings
  • Updated 2022-10-22

    Can the Corp use Regensis’s ability after using Moon Pool? If the Corp uses Moon Pool on their turn and does not trash any cards from HQ with its ability, they can still meet the condition on Regenesis. Moon Pool itself is removed from the game by its ability, so it never enters Archives.

  • Updated 2022-10-22

    If the Corp shuffles 0 cards into R&D with Moon Pool, do they shuffle R&D?

    Yes.

Reviews

Well, this is a crazy bit of Jinteki fast advance tech. Looking at this card, I think the real impressive bit is just how many problems it solves at once.

  • First off, it's a surprisingly credit-efficient fast-advance tool. For and 3, you get two advancement tokens. (Compare and contrast with Biotic Labor, which costs 4, plus an addition 2 for the advancement! (Admittedly you could theoretically use Biotic Labor's clicks for something else, but let's be honest - if you're including Biotic, it's probably to rush out agendas.)
  • It helps you get unwanted agendas out of your hand, if you need to.
  • It helps you get vulnerable agendas out of archives if you need to!
  • You can use it to recur other important non-agenda cards in a pinch.
  • If you put it on the board and the runner doesn't trash it, you can fast-advance 4/2 agenda!
  • It can be used to dump agendas into the trash for Regenesis. (Although you can't do this while fast-advancing, or Regenisis won't work.)
  • It operates on a fast timing window, so you can use it on the runner's turn, or mid-run.

There are a few drawbacks though.

  • You can't fast-advance without at least one (extra) agenda in HQ or Archives.
  • You can't recover cards from archives unless they are unrevealed.
  • It gives the runner info about what agendas are still in your deck.
  • Runners can trash it if they find it in HQ or R&D. (Although at least it costs 3, which isn't SUPER expensive, but isn't trivial either.)

Overall though, these drawbacks seem pretty workable. Obviously this can work well in glacier decks, where you install it in your scoring remote, and if they break in, great, you just taxed them a bunch, and if they don't break in, you fast-advance out a 4/2 or something.

From the Nisei writeups, I get the impression that this is intended to speed out Regenesis, as a way of sneaking out big 5/3s, and that's probably great. But I think this card also has some serious potential in a standard Personal Evolution thousand-cuts deck.

PE decks will almost always have extra 3-cost agendas laying around, so it will be easy to power the moon pool, and this represents a decent way to speed out the occasional 4/2 agenda they have, when necessary. Also, the runner is more likely to leave unadvanced assets alone in PE, since they're unlikely to be big agendas, and they might be Urtica Ciphers or Snares. And given how cheap the whole thing is, you can do things pretty efficiently. Which is good, since PE tends to run cheap! So having a turn where fast-advance out, say, Offworld Office means that you can gain 2 agenda points, and net 2, in addition to the PE net damage.

Seems pretty good!

Also, one last parting thought: You can use this to advance things that aren't agendas too. While advanceable ice might make for a funny surprise, I think it would be far nastier to use this to power up a Urtica Cipher or Cerebral Overwriter after the runner commits to accessing it.

And let's not forget that Ronin and Clearinghouse also exist...

I think this card has some serious potential. Looking forward to seeing how it shapes up in tournaments!

(Midnight Sun era)
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