He plays hard to get, but I've been playing Phật Gioan Baotixita in BANGUN. It turns out that combining two ID abilities (Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed and Jinteki: Personal Evolution is pretty potent! PGB makes your installed agendas really, really painful to steal. If you surprise rez him, they Byte! with one counter, they're Obokata Protocols, and with 2 they're nearly deadly even with a full hand. Add in Angelique Garza Correa or other Jinteki imports like Daniela Jorge Inácio, or Anemone and it quickly becomes outright suicidal to try to steal. PGB also gives Bangun centrals a little teeth, as a consolation for not getting to fire your ID you get a little damage. Smacking the runner on a Greenmail that's trivial to score also feels really good - PGB is great at setting up catch-22s where the runner gets set back no matter what.

Except for Pinhole Threading. Yeah, PGB folds to Pinhole, played at least 1x in almost every runner deck at this point. Mahkota Langit Grid helps with this, but it still feels bad to see him trashed, especially since BANGUN can't really afford to have more than 2 copies.

tl;dr, oh no, he's hot, and he's down to bang -- BANGUN, that is.

Sericulture Expansion (🐛🧵) first spoiled Dividends N, which keywords the “Neo-Project” Agendas’ “over-advanceability” mechanic:

• Dividends N (When you score this agenda, place N agenda counter(s) on it for each excess advancement counter.)

Sericulture can be:

• a blank 3/2, or a 4/2 with When your discard phase ends, you may place 2 advancement counters on 1 installed card. Use this ability only once., or so on.
• Economically, this converts the one excess advancement (that you invested) into two advancements (in dividend), saving 1[$], [click] (CF. Seamless Launch.)
• Tactically, the timing is much more restricted: you must pass the turn while telegraphing an agenda (or baiting an ambush). But it can also be more flexible: if you have a “counter to spare” after never-advancing Sericulture, then you've “stored that counter” for later (especially if it's a clickless-counter, such as from a Cohort Guidance Program or La Costa Grid).

For example, it:

• lets you “IAA” a 5/3 while still defending it with a Lockdown (like Hyoubu Precog Manifold or NAPD Cordon). Likewise, IAA’ing a Fujii Asset Retrieval while still “defending” it with burn (like Bring Them Home).
• lets you “IAAA” another 3/2 (to “never-score” it out, for Issuaq?).
• can double-advance a Charlotte Caçador (tho which can still only singly-“unadvance” each turn).

Design:

• It implicitly has a once-per-turn limit (being a phase-based trigger). Which NSG's hosted agenda counter: … agendas all do (unlike FFG's).
• An exchange-rate of “one now, two later” is the clearest “investment dividend” of the four.
• The (You cannot score that card this turn.) reminder-text also teaches newer players that you can score agendas only before the discard-phase.

The Dividend Agendas cycle:

• 🟣 Project Ingatan (“neo–Project Vitruvius”)
• 🔴 Sericulture Expansion
• 🟡 Embedded Reporting
• 🟢 Off the Books (“neo–Project Atlas”)

Flavor:

• Sericulture means silk(worm)-farming (like how horticulture means plant-farming). In Latin, silk is "sericum".
• You're investing 1 advancement counter now for 2 advancement counter–dividend later (a 200% RoI).

Kessleroid (🪨🕸️) is an inexpensive, “indestructible” gearcheck.

It represents Kessler syndrome: you can't trash it, because it's already just a swarm of fast trash. I've wanted more cool space names in Weyland for a while now (post–Order and Chaos/post–Red Sands), like:

• Roche Limit
• Orbital Slingshot
• Kozai Resonance
• Flyby Anomaly
• Klemperer Rosette
• Tidally Locked
• Gravitational Keyhole
• _ Periapsis (like At Perihelion, At Perijove, or At Perilune/Periselene/Pericynthion)
• Skyhook
• Plasma Railgun

However, I've also wanted a lot more “Hardened” Barriers (especially on more impactful ice than a 2s/2↳; and especially in Weyland, the “Barrier faction”):

• indestructible: like Architect (or a “larger and/or spikier Kessleroid”).
• unshrinkable: like Lotus Field.
• “un-Trojan-able”: like Tithonium.
• un-bypass-able: like Guard.
• un-derez-ible.
• “un-NonFracter-able”: like Semak-samun (or a “typeshifted Edward Kim: Humanity's Hammer”).

For example (tho IDK if the anti-Hermes and anti-Bankhar clauses would work within the rules as written or without modifications):

Kessleroided

[$3] ICE [2s]: Barrier
[weyland ●○○○○] (ele)

The Runner cannot bypass or derez this ice. While installed (even if unrezzed), it cannot be trashed or added to HQ.

This ice’s strength cannot be reduced and its subroutines cannot be rewritten. (Such as by “When they would resolve a subroutine, instead they resolve …”.)

↳ End the run.
↳ End the run.

I used Hantu at locals to break a Sentry and received a phone call telling me that I was going to die in seven days, all photos of me have also started looking super weird.
Chat, how do I remove this curse?

This review was written with 2025's "Core" set (Elevation + System Gateway) in mind.

Long story short: I really like this card because it smooths out playing mostly big ice in Weyland in a very subtle way. It's taxing to run through for its cost, and damn is the cost affordable for the effect.

I've been playing a The Zwicky Group: Invisible Hands deck, with a very simple game plan:

1. Tons of operations to make money in a very un-interactive way since I only play big ice.
2. Wall up R&D with this beautiful thing, and spin agendas back into the deck using Spin Doctor, Key Performance Indicators, Sprint.

At this point our opponent is in a pretty rough spot. My playgroup has a lot of Buzzsaws running around, and even with GAMEDRAGON™ Pro you still need to boost to break it. Without it, they're losing either 7 or 8 credits depending on if they care about taking one net damage. Sang Kancil and Unity typically still need to boost twice to get over it without a boost, and it still has 3 subs. And that's before it has 3 counters on it, at which point they're giving you an advance no matter what.

But, really, why even bother with a breaker? For the low, low cost of 2c, a card from hand, and an advancement token (or two), they don't even need a breaker at all! After all, what does an advance REALLY even do for the corp as long as the runner keeps all the agendas off the board?

Enter Pharos. Suddenly giving you counters pretty much sets up a ruthless scoring server for you. And once that's done, you can slam tokens on your agendas. Alongside some new friends helping you defend the server after you've fed them, giving you counters is a game-losing tempo loss. Then just close out with Clearinghouse or scoring out.

I haven't played this game in ~7 years, so I can't comment on the viability in the more established formats. But this card feels like some very strong support for any deck that can funnel the extra counters anywhere useful consistently. Highly recommended.