Devil Charm

♦ Devil Charm 1[credit]

Hardware: Chip
Influence: 2

Whenever you encounter a piece of ice, you may remove this hardware from the game. If you do, that ice gets −6 strength for the remainder of this run.

A simple little box, brimming with temptation.
Illustrated by Elizaveta Sokolova
Decklists with this card

Uprising (ur)

#68 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Uprising
Rulings
  • Updated 2020-03-20

    NISEI Uprising Release Notes [NISEI Rules Team]

    Can the Runner use Devil Charm to lower the strength of a piece of ice to 0 or less before using Chisel to trash it?

    Yes. Devil Charm and Chisel meet their trigger conditions at the same time, so the Runner can choose the order to trigger and resolve the two abilities. Chisel does not check the ice's strength until its ability resolves.

    If the Runner uses Devil Charm to lower the strength of a piece of ice to a negative value during a run made with Prey, can the Runner trash that ice when they pass it? How many cards do they need to trash?

    Yes, the Runner can trash the ice by trashing 0 of their installed cards. Any time a cost is less than 0, it is treated as 0.

Reviews

With D4v1d rotating, Anarch’s answer to big ice seems to be gone. But now comes this little box. Whilst it cannot be recurred, a single use drops the strength low enough to break fairly cheaply (for the remainder of the run, if you end up getting somehow bounced back to it with Ganked!). This means you can quite freely run with Aumakua and not mind if you hit an Anansi, or use fewer counters from Yusuf or even one of Giest’s bin breakers if you import it. Hippo, Chisel and Prey seem to work well with it too.

It’s not much use against low strength, taxing ice, such as Gold Farmer or Endless EULA and it doesn’t do much to help Black Orchestra or MKUltra on plus-2 sub ice, but I think this little box has a lot of potential.

Note: It’s a Chip, which means it dies to Scapenet! But it’s also a hardware, which means it triggers Masterwork (v37) and can be installed on the fly by the console as well as Prognostic Q-Loop.

(Uprising Booster Pack era)