Cluedrew has already added an exceptional flavour review above, so I wanted to provide a more logistical overview of what this card does and when to use it.

If you're unfamiliar, Netrunner is an expandable card game with a continuously updated ban list and regular set rotations. This does a lot of important things regarding balance, staleness, creative opportunities and accessibility but one of the smaller things it does is open up opportunities for what are commonly referred to as "near-prints." Cards that closely resemble prior cards that have been banned or rotated but with some critical details changed. This allows one to attempt to keep the best and most interesting parts of a card's identity while trying to fix its most problematic elements.

So notable examples include cards like Spin Doctor which closely resembles Jackson Howard but has a limited use card draw effect, recurs 2 instead of 3 cards and costs 2 instead of 3 to trash, limiting its strength and making it cheaper for the runner to trash it. Or Diversion of Funds which closely resembles Account Siphon with the additional cost of a click and a credit to play as well as reducing the amount gained so that it represents a 10 credit swing instead of 15 should it succeed (though it no longer gives the runner tags either).

Ashen Epilogue is a "near-print" of Levy AR Lab Access, a potent card that allowed you to recur the entirety of your heap back into your stack, essentially refreshing you back to the game start (while allowing you to keep all your installed cards, credits and agenda points of course). Since cards almost invariably get trashed, be that simply from playing events or from using trashable resourses, hardware or programs cards will end up in the heap. And, since those cards have value and uses, it can be important to get them all back.

And that's saying nothing about rigshooting or Net Damage, Meat Damage or Core Damage removing key cards either.

In a more abstract sense, if you were worried about running out of cards, you could simply make a larger deck, including more cards to last you longer in a more protracted game, however, due to most cards being limited to a playset of 3, this runs you into the problems of consistency and efficiency as you are forced to gradually bloat your deck with unnecessary and inferior cards to avoid running out of them. Levy Ar Access solved that problem by letting you make a tight, efficient deck with all the best cards and then just recurring them once you've gone through your whole deck. Giving you most of the potential upsides of a much larger deck, without any of the drawbacks.

Ashen Epilogue tries to preserve the potential of such a card while limiting its universal safety with one major change "remove the top 5 cards of your stack from the game." Put simply, if your goal was to try and use Ashen Epilogue as a safety blanket against key icebreakers or combo pieces getting trashed then you run the even bigger risk of accidentally removing those cards from the game, putting them even further out of reach.

A smaller change from Levy to Ashen is that Ashen is a 2 influence neutral while Levy was a 3 influence Shaper card, this change makes the card slightly more accessible for non-Shaper factions and slightly less accessible for Shapers.

When to Use

This card is ideal if your economy is particularly dependent on finite cards, event-heavy econ like Sure Gamble, Creative Commission, Dirty Laundry, or Bravado all come to mind. As well as decks that trash their own cards for money through Aesop’s Pawnshop, Spec Work or Isolation. But is markedly less useful in decks with self-sustainable econ like drip or the old Magnum Opus.

It's particularly valuable in Anarch decks where self-trashing is common Steelskin Scarring, Strike Fund, Moshing, The Price, Eye for an Eye, Audrey v2, Lago Paranoá Shelter, Friend of a Friend and many many more. It's practically a must-include for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist where without it she would probably mill herself out long before she mills the corp.

It also has applications in run-event heavy Criminal decks, the aforementioned Bravado, Dirty Laundry and Carpe Diem all being core to high-tempo Criminal econ. Or even in a high card draw Shaper deck where you'll regularly see Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, Diesel, Aniccam and Lat get through the entirety of your deck before the end of the game.

In terms of timing, this card is best used when your deck is empty to maximise the potential number of cards recurred, but it's also best used on an empty hand if possible. Remember, spending 5 credits just to draw 5 cards is good value even if the massive recursion effect wasn't even there.

When Not to Use

As mentioned previously, if you need to recur specific, highly-valuable cards more safely and reliably, there are other better options, Harmony AR Therapy is one of the most common at the time of writing alongside Simulchip in Shaper while Anarchs have Labor Rights and Privileged Access, all of which are quite good. There are also Katorga Breakout, Rip Deal and Test Run though they see relatively little play comparative. All of these cards can more precisely and reliably recur a single card you need, allowing you to recover that one lost breaker or combo piece without risking it being removed from the game and without having to recur everything else in your Heap at the same time and sort through your deck all over again.

Edit: Something I forgot to add is that you should almost always run this as a 1 of. Since the ideal time to use this card is once you've gone through your entire deck, you're guaranteed to draw it by the time you want to use it and you almost never need to cycle through your entire deck 3 times over. Thus including multiple copies brings nothing but drawbacks, namely, that you double the odds of drawing it early in the game when it's a dead draw that will clog your hand, as well as the extra two influence cost.

TLDR: A "near-print" of Levy AR Lab Access that allows you to recur almost all cards from your Heap back into your Stack, best used in self-trashing Anarch decks but not particularly safe or reliable for recurring any specific card in your Heap.

I don't normally write hate reviews because there's a lot I love about this game, and there are a lot of good, interesting and fascinating cards, so it feels like a shame to focus on the negative, but here we go.

Strength shredding has always been a staple of the Anarch roster, from cards like Wyrm, Parasite, Datasucker and Ice Carver in the original core set to modern staples like Devil Charm, Leech and this card right here.

The underlying premise is solid, instead of pumping up icebreakers to match the ICE's strength, what if we bring the ICE's strength down to match the icebreakers? Thus all strength shredding is best paired with fixed-strength breakers like Mimic, Yog.0 and the spiritual successors to fixed-strength breakers released in System Gateway: Cleaver and Buzzsaw which can technically pump but do so with extreme inefficiency while simultaneously breaking subroutines more efficiently than your average breaker, thus incentiving not having to pump with them.

The Corp/Runner dynamic here is solid. If the runner can get set up, make smart, measured runs, manage their virus counters well, and lock centrals, then they can efficiently get into almost anywhere with Datasucker/Leech counters. Suppose they can pin the corp down with pressure. In that case, it becomes difficult to purge virus counters making not only Datasucker/Parasite valuable but also causing the Corp to lose ICE to a Parasite/Chisel giving them even more cheap and reliable access.

Alternatively however, if the Corp can get set up, use their ICE intelligently, build an econ lead and have enough tempo to reliably purge Virus counters then the runner can get locked out, unable to generate counters from central runs and either unable to break ICE due to their fixed breakers or forced to do so at a heavy tax, especially against large and powerful ICE. Thus, the Corp can open up scoring windows by playing around this weakness.

There's a clear push and pull here, this combination of strength-shredding and fixed-strength/soft fixed-strength breakers make a beautiful duet, an elegant set of complementary gameplay mechanics where the potential value of your fixed-strength breakers is held in check by the need for strength shredding and the potential for the Corp to tax and lock the Runner out without them.

Even the sources of strength-shredding themselves are respectable, the aforementioned Leech generates Virus counters through central runs, something the Runner already wants to do and is blocked by ICEing centrals, something the Corp already wants to do, while simultaneously playing into the theme of "defend your Archives" that Anarchs often have going on. The counters are expended when used too, which means that from the Corps perspective, even if your ICE isn't directly taxing the runner credits, it's never the less taxing them on a finite and valuable resource. It's also always vulnerable to Virus purges (and by extension Mavirus) should the corp decide it's worth it to do so.

Ice Carver is strong and universal but it's expensive to install and unique, limiting it's efficacy to only shredding a single strength, it takes your fixed strength breakers from effectively 3 to 4 strength but doesn't do anything against 5 or 6+ strength ICE and even for Cleaver and Buzzsaw, it helps, but super large pieces of ICE retain their ability to heavily tax the runner.

Devil Charm is incredibly strong but so emphatically "single-use" that it removes itself from the game, saving the runner in a pinch, but making it clear to the Corp that, Devil Charms are a finite resource in and of themselves.

Meanwhile, Chisel, also another ICE destruction tool, is limited by time and setup, only being able to threaten a single piece of ICE at a time, and offering the Corp a window of opportunity to purge virus counters should they decide their ICE is important enough to save. Not only that but the runner must encounter the ICE regularly to shred and destroy it, requiring further investment of time and resources to break the ICE conventionally, repeatedly, before it can be destroyed (which arguably makes it more balanced than Parasite by comparison too). It's also vulnerable to cards like Magnet and the aforementioned Mavirus (that being said, even before Arruaceiras Crew, Chisel + Devil Charm was heading in a similarly dangerous direction as well).

Trypano is similar to Chisel, though it doesn't reduce strength and standardizes the trash requirement to 5 virus counters and accumulates at the start of the turn, this means it's still vulnerable to many of the same techs like Magnet and Mavirus and takes significant time to set up, while avoiding the Devil Charm combo.

Hippo, one of the few other ICE destruction tools in standard, is limited by only being able to target the outermost piece of ICE on a server, allowing the corp to protect their potent ICE anchoring the base of their servers with weak fodder ICE on the edges. Additionally, it requires the runner to fully break the ICE in question, thus requiring the runner to have installed the necessary breakers and have the necessary econ to fully break the ICE at least once (while also being countered by cards like Akhet or Afshar). Plus, it removes itself from the game when used. The old Cutlery run events (Spooned, Knifed and Forked) were also limited by most of the same things and even then each option could only target one of the ICE types and could be countered by pre-emptive end the run effects like Bio Vault as once the run event was trashed you couldn't just run back.

Even Arruaceiras Crew's strength shredding effect is relatively tame on its own, reducing an ICE's strength by 2 and only for the duration of the encounter is useful but limited and taking a tag is a hefty investment that costs a click and 2 credits to clear, while going tag-me is actively anti-synergistic with keeping this card alive, and it also synergies with Seb and Valentina too, which is good for thematic and mechanic consistency. It can also only be used once per turn which further limits its applications and helps keep it in check.

The problem is the secondary effect, the sheer ease and universality with which Arrauceiras Crew can destroy ICE (especially in conjunction with Devil Charm) and perhaps more specifically, the lack of counterplay open to the Corp. Purging does nothing, Magnet does nothing and many of the other healthy limitations placed on other forms of ICE destruction, like only being able to target the outermost piece of ICE, only being able to target a specific type of ICE, having to fully break the ICE or requiring time to set up, simply don't apply to Arruaceiras Crew. It's ICE destruction without any drawbacks, it's the Boat of ICE destruction if you will, unconditional, universal, fast ICE destruction.

If all that wasn't bad enough this card doesn't even have the decency to remove itself from the game when used like Devil Charm or Hippo do, which means that it can be recurred by cards like Labor Rights, Katorga Breakout, Privileged Access, Harmony AR Therapy and Ashen Epilogue. This means that even after all three Arruaceiras Crews in a standard deck have been used, this card can be recurred and used to destroy even more pieces of ICE, chewing through countless defences without the corp ever really being able to shut them down. Not only that but it's not unique like Ice Carver or Hippo which means that you can have multiple of these in play at once, allowing you to stack their ICE shredding effects together or trash multiple pieces of ICE in a single run.

All of this, in turn, contributes to a swarm of Asset Spam, Rush, Fast Advance, Shell Game and Kill Decks on the Corps side (especially in the online meta-game), due to the sheer vulnerability and unreliability of ICE (and especially of good quality, high-strength, high-cost ICE). Even if you enjoy this kind of meta, it's hard to deny that a card that not only invalidates but actively punishes a player for utilizing what used to be one of the Corporation's most ubiquitous defence tools is out of place in this game.

In fairness to this card, it is not the only culprit, cards like K2CP Turbine, Takobi, Boomerang and Botulus and the sheer amount of bypass introduced in this cycle (as well as the general state of econ) must all share in the blame for undercutting ICE's capability to tax, hurt and stop the runner but I hold a special hatred for a card like this that not only lets the runner break or bypass ICE more efficiently but actively destroys ICE and with such little counterplay.

Whether this card gets banned soon or whether a new tech card is introduced in Dawn to offer some counterplay (like how Magnet can be used as a tech against Botulus and Chisel or Mavirus as a tech against Viruses more broadly) I hope that this meta does not drag on as it makes it difficult to enjoy a game I so dearly cherish.

Edit: I stand corrected! I recently rediscovered Warroid Tracker which does trigger off Arruaceiras Crew, so that's at least some counterplay if you're in HB or willing to import it, there also still exists Lotus Field, but Lotus Field is just such bad piece of ICE against every other match-up (compare Mestnichestvo or Hortum which both offer you substantially more value for the same or lower cost, and even those cards see little play). Even then, Warroid and Lotus Field will rotate with Dawn (as will Magnet for what it's worth), so I still feel strong new tech cards need to be printed, or this card needs to be banned.

Edit Number 2: Belatedly realising this whole review is a long-winded recap of the history of strength shredding, fixed strength breakers and ICE destruction when all I really want to say can be summed up in a TLDR so here you go.

TLDR: This card is ICE destruction without almost any of the limitations, conditions, weaknesses or counterplay that defined prior iterations of ICE destruction and designing cards with game-warping effects without drawbacks is bad actually.

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