Front Company

♦ Front Company 2[credit]

Asset: Political - Seedy
Trash: 2
Influence: 2

Rez only during your turn.

The first run each turn cannot be made against a remote server.

The first time each turn a run on Archives begins, if this server is not protected by ice, do 2 net damage.

"Do you take walk-ins?"
Illustrated by Mauricio Herrera
Decklists with this card

The Automata Initiative (tai)

#41 • English
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Reviews

Let me tell you a tale. A tale from the olden days of Netrunner, before the System Reboot.

"Political" is a really interesting idea for card design here (these megacorps practically own governments, after all. NBN can play into the surveillance industry, Weyland's your private military but you still need lobbying and willingly corrupt politicians. Why didn't we get more explicitly "political" cards before then?), and it led to one of the more intriguing one-cycle mechanics from the days of Mumbad. Keep your servers open and very trashable, but get some sweet payoffs for keeping them clear. Whether that be recursion (Clone Suffrage Movement), draw power/agenda management (Sensie Actors Union, the one actors union I personally think its OK to boo), or steady net damage (the infamous Bio-Ethics Association).

"Wait!" I hear you say through this series of tubes "There's four corp factions, but you only listed three cards? Didn't Weyland get one of these?" Yes they did. However, Commercial Bankers Group just made 3 credits a turn. Stealing a joke from one of Willingdone's old videos: Weyland's signature mechanic is making three credits.

Now, the concept is back, and that's not the only mechanic getting a new Null Signal shine.

Jinteki: Replicating Perfection was the first Jinteki ID outside of Core Set 1.0, and it was an absolute beast at glacier...once it got a few more tools. Sundew gave RP a potential SIX credits per turn (2 creds for each of the three copies you could have rezzed). Honor and Profit was decently kind to RP, what with Komainu, Susanoo-no-Mikoto, and The Future Perfect adding to tools like Tsurugi and especially Caprice Nisei as ways to tax the Runner. Ultimately, RP fell off as glacier was out-paced in the meta, and now it is currently out-of-rotation.

But now, we have the lovechild of RP and Bio-ethics, though more fair than the latter being, unique this time. This is, I believe, a very good move. As fun as it was to pilot Bio-ethics decks, it wasn't nearly as fun to play against them. 3 net damage per turn will do that to you. I know its tempting to call this power creep, but given this and the other restrictions I think its more of a lateral move. It hurts more on the surface, but it also takes more setup and isn't able to chain itself. And it still only works if you don't ice the server, and with that low trash cost this is going to be a high-priority target that is easily disposed. Fine design, and I hope the Liberation cycle gives us more cards like this!

(Parhelion era)