Gaining 2 per turn isn't great. Criminals are very rich thanks to Temujin being a zero influence econ option for them, on top of the Desperado and Security Testing suite.

You've got to ask yourself how this ID stacks up to other blue IDs. Would you rather have 4 free clicks of draw with Andromeda: Dispossessed Ristie, or two credits every now and then? Would you rather bounce some ICE with Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist or get two credits every now and then?

If you play this ID and then derez support like Emergency Shutdown, Crescentus, Muertos Gang Member or the birb breakers, how is spending your ID ability and these card slots better than being Andy or Leela and spending those slots on cards that advance your game-plan better than 2 credits a turn?

Short answer is, as of Station One, it isn't. If it were an aggressive ability like Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter, or if it were draw a card, then that's different, but as it stands, its an ID that is supposed to accelerate your game-state but needs support cards that then weaken your game-state by virtue of not being other, better blue cards.

Every now and then we get a new card that elicits the usual "The sky is falling!" I remember when Marcus Batty came out, people said "You can't just give Jinteki another 3 copies of Caprice!" Batty never ended up warping the meta and the worry was for naught.

This card though... oh boy, this one truly has the potential to change the entire meta game. For 5 credits, the runner can invalidate an entire piece of ICE per turn. In that respect, it is the same as Security Nexus. This needs a lot less set up, is only one influence, and is a red card. Red cards are good.

Let's remember the way Cutlery Whizzard- or Dumblefork- the most oppressive runner since Pre-Paid Kate plays the game. They would break ICE once, on a face check. Hit a Tollbooth or Archangel, break it once with D4v1d or Faust and then never break it again until it was using Spooned.

That deck is still very good, as Faust breaks most things, Mimic/MKUltra breaks the other things, and your resource cost and speed can outpace the corps equivalent costs of rezzing ICE and installing it.

This card fits right into that deck as a way to make both the facechecks and subsequent destruction a lot easier. Now, you facecheck, break/bounce at a reduced need for D4 tokens/Faust pitching, and then you can play Parasite next turn, make the ICE zero str with this console, and it's gone. You can recur the Parasites with Déjà Vu, you can Levy AR Lab Access everything back through.

1 influence means you can do the same with Shaper and Clone Chips, using the in faction draw engine of Diesel and Quality Time in place of Wyldside and Adjusted Chronotype.

ICE has had a rough time of late. Corp late games are weaker than ever, this is why cards like Caprice Nisei and Ash 2X3ZB9CY were staples in the glacier based game. Rumor Mill made that harder than ever, and this card doesn't help. Even a more "fair" reg-Anarch can use breakers like Yog.0 to pay zero for some of the best ICE we've seen in a while, Fairchild 3.0 and DNA Tracker.

So what are the answers? Lotus Field is immune, and also doesn't rotate out of the card pool later this year. However, it is broken for 2 cards with Faust, is expensive to rez, does nothing on facecheck, and gets Spooned easily. I'm not a fan of it.

Architect can't be trashed, and is invariably a "must break" for the runner.

Magnet is immune to Parasite, but at only 3 str, it is a gear check at best. A good gear check, for sure, but not a long term solution to already amazing runner late game.

Lab Dog trashes hardware, Faust/Atman 0 breaks it no problem though, and I would imagine these are the two most common AI breakers you'll see in Sifr decks. Oh and the runner chooses a piece of hardware to trash, so like, it's really bad.

Best Defense if you can land 5 tags.

Observe and Destroy if they are tagged and poor. I'm not sure about this one really. Trashing a key runner card may buy you some time, but at 1inf and so powerful it will be a 3-of in decks.

Shattered Remains lol.

idk, tbh. I think any corp relying on scoring behind ICE are even more screwed than they were before, and this card needs to be instant ban material if any kind of glacial strategy is to be viable. Get rid of this and Rumor Mill and I honestly think the game will improve ten-fold.

I'd add Hellion Beta Test to your list of possible answers, I did like it before but will like it even more now probably —
That and Hunter Seeker which is coming soon but I suppose discussing upcoming cards isn't useful at the moment. —
Just to prove a point i splashed for 3x Prey in a Reina deck with this console. it was messy and was rude. I felt bad. Dont do it. (Do it) —
@DarkHorse Prey does not work with this, as the encounter ends, and it's strength is restored before Prey gets to trigger and trash the ice. —
That's simple. As I play with a glacier casual deck and you encounter Sifr, I apologize, I remind the runner's lie to live a nice moment and I concede. With the explosion of cards which can derez/trash/move back your ice, Sifr still remains a hardware I cannot bear. Whatever, I think glacier gonna live more dark hours and it's time for me to turn on other strategies like trap decks. —

So, this is the most obnoxious piece of ICE in the game. What do you want your ICE to do? Like, generally, in the game of Netrunner, what's the plan?

  • You want it to End The Run. Check.
  • You want it to be bad for the runner if they run it without knowing what it is. Check.
  • You want it to be difficult to get through every time afterwards. Check.
  • You want it to be difficult to Parasite. Check.
  • You want it to have a decent influence cost so you can use it in every deck. Check.

So, just for example, this costs a Gordian Blade 3 to encounter, 3 to buff, and 1 to break.

Cyber-Cypher is 3 to encounter, 1 to buff, 1 to break.

Even a D4v1d is going to still cost you the 3 encounter fee.

Faust is 3 and 3 cards.

I could go on, but there are only 15 Decoders in the game right now, and in my opinion, at the time of this review, big code gates are the biggest issue for runners, but Anarchs especially. With Yog.0 and Parasite taking hits in the Most Wanted List, getting code gates down to a manageable cost is very difficult.

So, how do you play around it? Well, easy answer is to make that large 8 rez cost a really difficult choice for the corp. It's not always easy with Breaker Bay Grid asset econ being the flavour of the month, a corp will gladly go down to zero knowing they can bounce back up to 2/3 credits before even their mandatory draw.

Femme Fatale is the best answer, turning this card into a simply 1 tax, but this has its own issues with the card being 9 to install. (Femme in the bin, Stimhack + Clone Chip.) Sure they might remove the targetted Tollbooth, but even if they replace it with another one, you've made them spend 8 credits.

The other answer is to run a few Spooned out of Anarch, and I think this is the way to go. Anarch's already have the worst problem with Code Gates. Lotus Field, is already enough of a headache for Yog.0 based rigs, enough to spend the influence on Atman for, and an Atman at 4 can break both Lotus and Tollbooth with Datasucker/Parasite support, but you've still got that egregious tax for encountering that is simply unsustainable, especially on a central. If you can't poke centrals consistently, the game moves to the remote, and thanks to BS like Ash 2X3ZB9CY and Caprice Nisei, contesting the remote is extremely difficult.

And hey, even an Ash behind a Tollbooth is egregious on a remote as well. Making two runs in a turn against that nonsense is painful.

Hunting Grounds is also a sort of answer, and does help against NBN especially with Data Raven, Pop-up Window and the like, but it's not foolproof by any stretch. You still have to actually break the Tollboth, but at 1 influence, it might be your preferred solution.

So, all in all then, great card, maybe even the best ICE in the game, post-MWL. 1 of goes in pretty much every corp deck I build, and as a runner it's one of the cards I really hate to see rezzed.

Nasir with Crescentus recursion makes Tollbooth sad. Probably sad enough that the corp won't even bother installing/rezzing it. If only Nasir was viable... —

Oh, man I hope this card starts seeing play.

Laughs at Data Raven, which is especially helpful post Data as Destiny and Keegan Lane is going to be causing headaches. So is Quantum Predictive Model behind something like a 6 strength Gutenberg on R&D. Casting Call never took off, but it also ends those shenanigans.

Also lets you keeps the pain away from News Team, totally turning it off, providing you manage to hit it with one of the 4 runs (low odds).

Of course you can only run 4 times with this, and you have to click it to run, so it doesn't work with The Maker's Eye or Legwork runs, something that New Angeles City Hall would be better for, and that card also works outside of a run, which also lets you avoid 24/7 News Cycle into Breaking News. Dorm computer doesn't stop SEA Source or Midseason Replacements either which is huge.

Minor pros are that it lets you avoid Enhanced Login Protocol, and helps against Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed as well, so it's not totally useless out of the NBN matchup.

Extra points for excellent flavour. You're using a dorm computer so it's really hard for the corp to know who you are, but you can't do it too often or they get wise (or you get b& from the dorm). And they were playing beer pong in the background!

I like this card, btw, if that wasn't obvious.

Most infuriating thing is that you just can't combine it with other run cards, which means it's antisynergistic with Criminal's whole schtick, and not many are gonna splash influence for a card unless it's clearly amazing or in their game plan. —
Having said that, I had fun running this with Forger and just avoiding as many tags as possible without actually running out of tag removal. —
I don't think Bandwidth works with Quantum Predictive Model. The run is successful (and the Bandwidth tag is removed) prior to access. —
I used this in an early iteration of my [Sunny Lebeau: Security Specialist](/en/card/09045) deck alongside [John Masanori](/en/card/04009) and [Security Nexus](/en/card/09047), which both can backfire. It was really helping to defend my resource economy against Data Ravens and other NBN shinannigans. I ditched it at some point, because Sunny isn't really the one who needs this. But the card did a good job. —
Another minor pro: it's a valid victim for power shutdown that keeps sitting around once the counters are gone. —

Fun fact: can´t help you against funhouse (prob in eternal) as taking the tag is a cost which can´t be prevented (also rip Jesminder)

The best use of this card is to then advance something else with impunity. You'd have to leave it advanced "overnight," but in the Jinteki mind-dungeon, that's not too difficult.

You can then score this in 1.1 of the timing structure or advance it for click one, name the ice type that you are going to score the next type behind, let's just say Code Gate, and then install a Nisei MK II behind your Enigma or whatever (nothing that can be ruined with Parasite, anyway), and then advance it once/twice, knowing the runner cannot get in at all, leaving you to score it easily on the next turn.

It's not too janky. All you need is this and the required agenda on hand, as you can name whatever ice is protecting your scoring remote (or even put one down on the second turn of this combo if you Mushin this out).

The fact that it works on ALL ice of that subtype, means it's not so easily ruined by Femme Fatale or Inside Job, but only on servers with two ice of the same type (hello Eli 1.0)

You will need End The Run ice though, obviously; nothing saying they can't just tank the net damage from a Neural Katana or pay through Pup.

There are worse ways to get a 4/2 or 5/3 scored... probably.