Dripping economy is quite a thing for Corps, that’s why you see PAD, Adonis and Launch Campaign in many decks. Servers Diagnostics offers a pretty good one, with 2 per turn, as long as it stay on the table.

And there stands the problem. At least, the ice installation prerogative can be manageable in some type on deck. But 3 to rez and 2 to trash, seriously… Can it stay on the table long enough to break even ?

Glacier deck who want to use it as short lifespan money asset in their scoring server will frown if they can’t install an ice for 2 turns. Asset spamming deck that can live with thinner protection will have hard time to keep it on the table, and have anyway more resilient dripping econ asset.

So well, players seems to be less optimistic about this one than the flavour text. Nice illustration, though.

It could work in IG, I see a number of deck lists for it that run very few ice. —
Combining this with Encryption Protocol could help, but that's a lot of deck slots. I could also see rushing out agendas behind a Hive, then installing SD later on in that server and relying on Biotic Labor to score from hand. —

Ice tutor ! Levy University, you should have been so great if you weren’t so crappy !

What’s the problems with you ?

  • you cost 3 to rez, which could be acceptable if for the rest,
  • you ask for one more and to apply your effect,
  • you send the fruit of your fishing in the HQ, that ask for one more (and s, probably) to fully apply,
  • you can’t defend yourself : 1 as trash cost, so we must protect you to enhance our protection.

Had we been keen on using you as a one shot, we should consider you as a double event with a 4 credits cost. That’s pretty expensive for something that let us with an installation to do. Well, done as an asset, at least you force the runner to spend and few not to let you on the table (if they ever care).

But still. We as Corp need to put on average a dozen and half of ices in our deck and furthermore must play a lot of them. We’re not like Runners, who just can go with 3 different icebreakers on their rig, so prefers to put a few of them in their deck along with tutors.

So why bother to give you a slot ? Let’s just put a piece of ice instead.

The worst part about an ICE tutor in the abstract is that you're also reducing the number of non-trashable, non-stealable cards in R&D. Having to reveal the ICE is also a nasty piece of information revealing that even the greatest of head-fakes aren't getting value. —

Arcology is a concept imagined by the Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri, as an utopian structure mixing architecture and ecology, hence the name. He tried to apply this somewhere in Arizona as an ensemble of quite open building in the middle of the desert, where still leave a bunch of people, the kind of idealist ones, I suppose.

In case you wonder why you see my name on so many reviews these last days, it’s because I go chronologically through unreviewed card to give those forgotten children a few words.

Most of the time, they are bad cards, and I can figure why even if I didn’t play them, and it can be fun to analyze. More rarely they are good card with obvious effect and it becomes hard to not just say "well, that card does what it tells on the textbox and it’s nice in some deck."

Gila Hands Arcology is such a card. It’s a 3/1 agenda which effect is to earn 3 with , which is a nice econ support and shows useful in never-advance shell-game deck (Jinteki: Personal Evolution likes it well) but hardly in decks that want to minimize their agenda density, neither in deck which factions commands the agenda composition.

That is.

So science-fiction, especially cyberpunk, took the word arcology and applied it to some large closed sky-scrapper, as the one showed on the illustration. What makes it special is that they’re supposed to be self-sufficient (which is the only thing it has to do with the original concept) but cyberpunk being cyberpunk, they tend to be quasi-totalitarian corporate-controlled space.

Think about it, next time you .

Lupus, looks like we were typing up our reviews at the same time, I don't think I would have bothered if I'd known you were working on it at the same time. Thank you for doing what you are doing as this is kind of my vision for netrunnerdb.com as well. I would prefer if you wouldn't mind adding Pro/Con/Summary sections to your reviews, totally up to you just a suggestion. —
Sorry meant to suggest adding: Combo/Pro/Con/Summary sections —
In fact, I wrote the review I published yesterday a few days ago. Then, seeing yours, I felt the urge to publish them. Yeah, that's childish :) About my style, I prefer to do informal review rather than listicles. Keep on reviewing, anyway, you do good job at this. —
Thank you both for your many great reviews. I originally proposed the concept and design of the reviews section of nrdb, and the vision was for exactly the kind of informational reviews you both write :) —

In his otherwise extensive review, chris_walker says he's not surprise that this card didn't get a review for so long. I strongly disagree, and I'm surprise it didn't get any, since from the 3 HB identities from Creation & Control, Cerebral Imaging is the only one that have seen some success at a time.

(Also, I wrote this review a few days ago and let it sleep in a text file, expecting it to be the first CI review. Chris stole my thunder, and some commenters already made the points I will do in this. But no worries, of course.)

It is first notable to be arguably the weirdest Corp identity of the game. And when it was released, nobody gave a serious look at this one. But then after, a few cards helped it, namely Green and Blue Level Clearance. For CI, getting both draw and money is a good deal. Out of faction, Celebrity Gift has been a good help too. Also Restructure as neutral.

And soon, a CI archetype emerged that has known quite a good success with the following plan :

Then a second flavor of this appears :

  • add 2x SEA Source and 2x Scorched Earth in your deck,
  • flatline the Runner with a simple SEA Source/Scorched/Scorched if you can,
  • flatline the Runner with a SEA Source/Scorched/Scorched/Efficiency counters/Recamation Order/Scorched(/Scorched) if you must.

Heck, there's stories of Runner dying while sporting 2 Plascrete Carapaces and a full hand. That’s simple, for a short time, before NEH was released, the main meat-kill archetype was this.

In case you wonder why CI is more efficient than other identities for such a plan, it’s because keeping your hand growing without bothering for remote server really helps to assemble the pieces of otherwise quite clanky combos.

That is, CI is great for combo deck. Some Power Shutdown + Accelerated Beta Test deck have seen come various success.

Then it has fallen out of flavor but in a faction that suffers to be trusted by one freaking good identity with others desperately running after, CI, not despite but thanks to its weirdness, has shown some success. I hope it will again.

No problem. I've changed my perspective since my first impression of this card but with the addition of your review, I figure there's no point in updating my review any further. —

Another quite popular card that have no review yet.

TWIY*, the poster-child identity for rush and fast-advance. What makes it good is its reduced deck size. But I’m afraid it’s going to lose some play. Why ?

Because 12 influence is 3 less than what you’re used to build with.

Let’s face it, its ability isn’t very interesting. Oh, sure, you are sometimes happy to not to have to discard at the end of an install-advance-advance-astro-token turn, and sometimes happy to see your agendas or Jackson dodging a Legwork access, but apart if you tried a grail building, have you ever chosen TWIY* for its ability ?

And because SYNC had just been released. And now, if you want to build a 44-cards NBN deck without taking care of your ID ability, you can benefit of 3 more influence points.

And if you want to use your ID ability, chances are that SYNC one is more useful.

Seems like TWIY* will join your binder until rotation (if you ever clean your binder from out-of-date cards).