So, this card has an obvious purpose and a less obvious one. The obvious purpose is to try and retrieve a specific program at a discount. For this, the card is...okay? You gain two credits and decent deck digging, and in exchange nine cards go to your heap. (I'm not counting the card and click spent to play this because you save a card and click playing the program). This is an interesting trade-off and whether it's a good idea depends on your exact deck. Which brings me to the less obvious purpose...

...namely, that some decks would probably play an Event that cost 0 and just sent ten cards to your heap.

This is a much more entrenched strategy in MtG, where "self-mill" as it's called there is a valid tactic. Essentially: If you have cards that can retrieve stuff from your heap then putting cards into your heap is almost like drawing them, right? The strongest example illustrates why our friend Omar is the face of this card: Dumping a Paperclip and a Black Orchestra into your heap is great. Hell, using this to find your Killer can give you a full rig in one fell swoop! Throw in some Déjà Vu and some Clone Chip and suddenly trashing all your important stuff doesn't seem so bad. Trashing a bunch of copies of Exclusive Party isn't a terrible idea either.

There's still the question of ID. MaxX probably finds this card to be overkill, although that deck sounds like it would be hilarious to play. Noise might be able to get some mileage given that Déjà Vu returns two Viruses, although you probably want Same Old Thing as insurance on that. Exile could probably use it to fuel some jank...if it wasn't three influence, anyway. And really, any recursion-heavy deck running Omar's breakers could probably look into a build tuned to use this card.

It's also worth noting that while unlikely, this card can entirely "miss". Or you may find only a program you don't need. In that case you just spent 3 credits to screw yourself over. —

It looks like you're trying to access sensitive corporation data without a Fracter. Would you like help?

  • (x) Get help breaking through Barrier ICE
  • ( ) Just bounce off the Vanilla without help

[ ] Don't show me this tip again

Had it coming... —
Surprised it wasn't done yet, honestly :v —

So the obvious point here is that now that there's a fourth distinct Directive, Adam can choose one of the four to not have to start with. I'm going to be uncontroversial and suggest the best option to skip is probably Safety First, simply because it ironically makes early game runs against Jinteki (and some Weyland/HB builds) a lot more dangerous. You should probably still run Safety First though, because once you've got some other way to shore up your hand size up and running (Brain Chip?) the free draw is really strong. So the main value is in DELAYING Safety First until you're ready to deal with the downside, not getting rid of it entirely.

Now, the card itself. The effect is strong by itself (it's easy to see this from what other things that reveal the top card of R&D like Deep Thought require of you), and I honestly think the downside gets less nasty the better you and your opponent are at Netrunner. If your opponent is good, they'll be able to roughly guess what they need to be defending against ANYWAY based on cues in your initial turns. It's the same reason Expose is often considered a "newbie" thing: Once you get a feel for the game, you can gauge what ICE you need to be prepared to faceplant into without needing it. It does mean you can't pack any nasty surprises into your deck though, unless you work around it with "tutors" like Self-modifying Code. Or by ending the game really quickly.

The other good news is that it synergizes well with Always Be Running and Neutralize All Threats to produce insane levels of early game pressure. You can hit HQ pretty reliably on your first turn (clicking through the ICE if necessary), score a double access, and reveal the top card of R&D to see if you ALSO want to hit that. This is before even considering any cards that you might have in your deck proper! Plus, this card lets you pitch your mandatory run into Archives without feeling too bad if the situation demands it. These two things together put the Corp into a nasty situation on their first turn. They can:

  • Put no ICE on HQ and take a large risk of losing an Agenda for almost nothing.

  • Put one ICE on HQ and take the same risk, but knowing that it'll cost clicks to get in if they decide to rez (remember that you can choose to bounce off an ETR if you'd prefer to use your clicks for installation and it still forces them to rez to keep you out, AND if they decide not to rez because they value their creds more than denying you your clicks then you get in for free!)

  • Put two ICE on HQ and be able to put only one ICE on ONE of the other centrals, meaning the best case is probably that Adam hits an undefended Archives to reveal the top card of R&D, then has time to install breakers before going for it if he wants it. Or you can just open with The Maker's Eye.

  • Build a remote server. This is risky for the usual reasons, but it's even worse in this case because you can probably get into both the remote and HQ on your first turn now, and if HQ is empty of Agendas then there's a good chance the thing they installed is one. Not to mention that you're still getting to see the R&D top card...

There are answers to this (any multi-ETR early game ICE like Spiderweb, the usual "get Agendas out of HQ" suspects, NAPD Contract and Fetal AI, etc) but most of them require investment on the corp's part which means they're setting themselves back to counter something you're doing for essentially free. This can do one of two things:

  • Aim to win quickly. In this case the use case is obvious: you can pick up some quick accesses early on, this directive allows you to pressure R&D automatically if you're running other servers (which you should be!), and the downside is even mitigated because your game plan is more straightforward.

  • Aim to win SLOWLY. In this case, your early pressure buys time for you to get established and helps to shorten the midgame by forcing the corp to commit more stuff to defending centrals rather than scoring out (or if they ignore the pressure, it gives you a good chance at a point advantage). Not starting with Safety First installed also makes it harder for you to get flatlined before you can make it to endgame, and the informational advantage of getting to see some of the cards the Corp is getting shouldn't be underestimated either.

In summary, I think the main reason not to start with this card installed instead of Safety First will be if you want to surprise your opponent with something or you're playing a certain type of event-heavy deck (where the clickless draw from Safety First is so valuable that it's worth giving up the R&D pressure on offer here). Since Adam's signature console lets him snowball games (i.e. KEEP winning if he STARTS winning), a free tool to help you start winning is powerful. You COULD replace other Directives instead and in some cases this is important (Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions makes Neutralize All Threats a huge liability, for example), but you can make this decision after seeing what your opponent's ID is! This also means you can take Safety First instead if you judge that it will be safe enough.

Now what about using it in other factions? Eh, probably not. It's too much influence and it loses a lot of its appeal if you're not starting with it installed (meaning you have to find it and it essentially costs a click to draw)

This card also works nicely with Omar Keung (though at a high cost to his precious 12 influence) as you can use his click ability and then see if the top card of R&D is worth accessing before choosing whether or not to access cards from that server. —
Statement from Damon : you choose your installed directives before drawing your hand, after knowing the ID of your opponent. —
Oh good, that's what I was assuming, Lupus. It's really helpful for preventing Adam from falling prey to flatline decks without necessarily giving up Safety First in every matchup —
Just played my first build with Finding the Truth (using few events + Street Peddler to hide my options) and wow, does it enable the laziest aggression, ever. 3/5 of my agendas came from Finding the Truth triggers, and this was in Jinteki. I almost never feared running anything because I still knew what card was coming up. 7 / 5 would play again. —
I'm actually a bit surprised by that ruling. I'd of thought you would have to pick your three directives as part of your deck just like any other cards. The fact that you can choose which three after seeing your opponents ID is pretty big. And any new directives released are a huge addition to Adam, giving him a lot of different building options. —
Well the obvious parallel is with Jinteki Biotech: Life Imagined...although it does specifically say that you can swap it before taking your first turn. Still, it suggests the direction they want to take with these sorts of abilities. —
because Omar is a constant ability and Find the Truth is a conditional ability, the decision of which server the run is on is made before the top card reveal. —
The first part of Find the Truth is certainly conditional, but it looks like the second part is constant. http://ancur.wikia.com/wiki/Abilities_Explanation_Ruling (Qs 2, 4, & 14) —
And isn't Omar's ability a paid ability? Which would mean it gets resolved after constant abilities AND conditional abilities? So wouldn't find the truth interrupt it? Or am I reading that wrong —
@KingMerrygold: The Rules Reference, which is both much newer and more official than that ANCUR page, has the following under "Conditional Abilities": "Some conditional abilities use ordinal events as trigger conditions (e.g. “The first time each turn…”)." So the second part of FtT is definitely conditional. As for Omar, his ability as a whole is clearly paid, but I think the middle sentence kind of breaks free and becomes a separate, temporary, constant ability while the overall paid ability is being resolved. —

How to annoy anyone aiming to score out in three easy steps:

1) Slap at least one copy of this on them

2) Wait for them to score up to the point where they win by purging virus counters. (OPTIONAL: Receive condescending advice about how this card isn't really useful)

3) Play The Black File

Evil. —
4) Play Populist Rally on the turn the File expires. Wonder how long it'd take the corp to get fed up and just try to score through... —

Sounds painful.

Let go your material attachments and realize that we are a- OH MAN! This Fan Site you have is totally bitchin'.

Unfortunately it still isn't possible to win without any steals unless the Corp is dumb, since Fan Site guarantees they have an Agenda to forfeit to stop him going off. In terms of the click requirement...you likely need Hyperdriver or Amped Up in a pinch. You want to be able to install and trigger him in the same turn.

This makes the whole thing start to get pretty janky and unwieldy (it only slots naturally into a deck already running Fan Site AND extra click cards) but the payoff (two Agenda points or force the Corp to forfeit) is unique so that's KIND of to be expected. It might be worth shoehorning into decks that have a very specific problem with losing at around 5/5.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can get 3x fan site off of one agenda scored, get 2x liberated chela (they sacrifice one) and then use notoriety to close the gap? —
Unfortunately, the Corp can still forfeit whatever agenda triggered Fan Site to stop one of the Chelas from working. Although if you used THREE Chelas it would just scrape through. —
So here's my question: what exactly is going on thematically here? In the context of the Megacorp trying to advance world-shaping agendas vs. the Runner trying to tear them down, what is the relevance of whatever the chela is doing for the runner? I'm okay with Notoriety being agenda-point-worthy since obviously the corps' stockholders get angry when their enemies gain fame, but who cares about the runner transcending materialism or whatever? —
My guess is the runner spends his five clicks to consolidate and popularize a new-age movement focused on rejecting the consumerist world. Which, naturally, hurts the corporations that thrive on consumerism. —