Serious question: would you rather have a pocket giraffe or a dwarf elephant?

Another serious question: would you rather have two credits or two cards?

In general, the answer is "two cards". It's easier to turn cards into money than it is to turn money into cards. Point to Patron.

They're both three influence. Tie point.

Patron costs you three credits to install, compared to SecTest's zero. Point to Security Testing.

Patron is a connection. That means you can host the elephant woman in your apartment, you can call in a favor, or tutor for her. Point to Patron.

Security Testing is in faction with Desperado, while the best Patron has to offer is DaVinci. Point to Security Testing.

Score: Patron 2, Security Testing 2. So it's a tie. The answer, then is to run both, in a Criminal deck with Desperado, Career Fair, Hostage, and run econ like Dirty Laundry, Account Siphon, and High-Stakes Job.

As I've said in some of my other reviews, the economic value of a card is the number of credits it gives you for doing things you would have been doing anyway. Sure Gamble gives you 4 for one click, which is 3 more than clicking for credits, so it has a value of 3. If you use Dirty Laundry to make a useful run, then you're getting a net gain of 3 for no extra cost--but if you make a throwaway run on an empty Archives, it's only a value of 2. With me so far?

Playing the first Exclusive Party costs you a click, and draws you a card. Assuming you would have clicked to draw that card anyway, that means you're getting your value back, and nothing else (remember: events don't go into your heap until they resolve.) So the first Exclusive Party has an economic value of 0. Gross.

But every one after that causes it to creep further and further up the economic tree. The second is as good as an Infiltration for cash. The third is an Easy Mark. The fourth is a Sure Gamble. The fifth is a cheaper Lucky Find. And the sixth is...well, there isn't a comparison, but it's damn good.

Since you have to get through the low-value versions first, another way to look at it would be the average value per card. Playing three Parties gives you 1 per play on average, four gives you 1.5, five gives you 2.0, and six gives you 2.5.

Looking at typical economy options, most players won't bother playing a card with an economic value below 2. Easy Mark (with a value of 2) does occasionally see play; we'll call that the minimum to be playable.

So to really justify including Exclusive Party, you need to be confident that you will see at least 5 of them per game, and 6 fairly frequently. Which basically means you need to be drawing your entire deck. Every game.

That's a big ask. Of course, many decks do draw their entire decks (LARLA sees play for a reason), and you're already going to be drawing through six of them with Exclusive Parties, but they just aren't enough. You are going to need some way to draw cards faster, whether that's Wyldside, Geist, or the brand new Patron.

Note, however, the anti-synergy with Professional Contacts and Symmetrical Visage. These cards don't draw you cards any faster, they just give you money when you do draw cards. Since this is the same effect as Exclusive Party, and they don't combine, you're better off picking one or the other.

So if you're already playing a draw-heavy deck, Exclusive Party lets you earn money as you slurp up your stack. But this brings us to the next issue: card slots.

See, there's enough diversity in the Netrunner card pool that you want to be able to counter whatever gets thrown at you. There are an enormous number of silver bullets, some of which (like Clot or Plascrete Carapace) are the only thing standing between success and failure against certain decks. Including six Exclusive Parties means you have six less slots to spend on these cards. But having less than six means you won't see enough of them to be worth including at all.

So I guess the conclusion is this: if you're playing a slow archetype that wants to draw its entire stack every game, and you're okay having fewer deckbuilding options, and you're either in Criminal or have six influence to spare, maybe try Exclusive Party.

There are two ways to play this card.

Way One is the safe way. You set your board up so you have an extra click on the turn you plan to score an agenda: maybe you install-advance-advance a 4/2, for example. If it survives the night, then next turn you play Clones Are Not People, advance-advance and score, If you do this, you're spending a card, a click, and 3 to get yourself an agenda point. This is pretty reasonable, but probably not worth 3 influence out-of-faction.

Way Two is the Jinteki way. This is where you play CANP, and threaten to score next turn. The ideal play would be: click one CANP, clicks two and three Mushin No Shin.

This is a terrifying move. Mushin No Shin is already a scary card, since it threatens a Junebug flatline or Cerebral Overwriter, weighed against the possibility of them scoring The Future Perfect.

Most runners, when presented with that dilemma, will not run that card unless the corp is already at 4 points and threatening a win. You can always come back from an agenda deficit, but you can't come back from flatline,

But when you raise the stakes with CANP, you are asking them: are you willing to give away FOUR points? Four is a lot more than three. Here, I expect most runners would take the risk and go for it.

Of course, raising the stakes means you have more to lose. If you WERE trying to score an agenda, and the runner snags it, not only do you lose the agenda, but CANP dies as well.

But if you feel like wagering the outcome of an entire game on a single decision, Clones Are Not People + Mushin No Shin is a fun way to go.

The third piece of consumer-grade hardware as here, and I personally find it to be the more interesting and exciting of the bunch.

Let's actually look at the second ability first. ": Look at the top card of R&D." If nothing else, this means that it's worth the click to install Spy Camera. Knowing the top card of R&D is immensely valuable, because it lets you make targeted runs to snipe out agendas, and also because you can predict the corp's game plan better. Two cards have given you that ability before Spy Camera (namely, Deep Thought and Globalsec Security Clearance) but for substantially higher costs and drawbacks that aren't feasible in many decks.

And you get this as a trash cost, so Geist is happy, as is anyone running Tech Trader.

The first ability, though. If you only have one out, you can only click to look at the top card of your stack, which is not particularly useful since you could have just drawn it. You could potentially peek and Oracle, spending two clicks for a card and 2 but that's a weaksauce combo compared to Motivated May (which is also not very good). Ditto for Eureka!.

But on the other end of the spectrum, when you have all 6 out, you have an immense amount of control over your draws, and knowledge of the future. Looking for your Corroder? If it's in the top six cards, move it to the top and grab it...and now you know what the next five cards you will draw will be, letting you plan your turns more efficiently. Likewise, you can use it to find that Account Siphon when you have a window for it, or an Inside Job when you need one.

The problem is getting enough out for the peek-and-sort to be worth using. Replicator helps, but even with accelerated draws it's still 6 clicks to play them all. Is that worth it? Maybe. It does work nicely in Hayley, since she can just spam them out, but running 6 Spy Cameras is six influence, which is a big ask.

Spy Camera feels like a combo card, but the other parts of the combo don't seem to exist yet. Keep an eye on this one for the future, but for now play it for the free R&D look, not for the stack-sorting.

Man, oh man. This is going to shake the meta up. A lot.

First things first. It's a 1-cost, 1-influence Connection with a trash ability. Off-Campus Geist loves the shit out of this card for that reason alone, especially given that Tech Trader is now a thing which exists. Throw in a couple Fall Guys and let the good times roll.

But that's just the surface. This card delivers a whole world of hurt to any deck running assets and upgrades.

Assuming that you're running HQ once in a while anyway (and of course you will be), it costs you a click and a credit to install this card. In return, it lets you trash a card without needing to run.

This already saves you a ton against glacier decks. Corp trying to run out an Adonis Campaign in their scoring remote? That's not happening. Being Blacklisted by Chronos Protocol? This guy will handle it. The existence of this card means that no asset is safe, no matter how much ice you put in front of it.

But there's more. Oh yes, there's more. The trashing is a paid ability. Instant speed. Which can be used in the middle of a run. Meaning that Caprice Nisei is dead as soon as she is rezzed, and Ash not long after. Meaning that you can kill that Dedicated Response Team before the Snare! tags you, saving your goshdarned life.

Of course, the card has to be rezzed. But if the corp is refusing to rez something, that's a victory by itself, and there's always Drive By in case you need something dead before you even see it, or if you can't afford the trash cost.

There is one regrettable thing about this card, though. A lot of two-word card names get abbreviated: ProCo, CyCy, Mopus, that sort of thing. And Political Operative has a rather unfortunate one.

Plop.