Named for the concept of TANSTAAFL, short for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", a term thought to come from a time in American history where bars would offer seemingly free lunches...full of horribly salty food that would then make you want to buy their drinks! No such thing as a free lunch, indeed. This ICE continues the tradition by looking like it can be walked through for free, but then costing you two credits later if you decide to do so.

How good is that? Well, it's essentially presenting a choice between paying more to break it now or paying less later...except that the corp gets to pick when "later" is. This is very, very bad if the Corp decides that "later" is when you needed those credits to stop Hard-Hitting News.

On the other hand...you can just set aside two credits when you walk through this and pretend you don't have them, and the net effect is essentially identical to paying 2 to break this ICE. Which given you don't need a Decoder to do it and this ICE cost 3 to rez means you're basically relying on the Runner not doing that in order to get good value out of this thing. Maybe you can pressure them into spending those credits, but then you could have just used ICE that cost them 2 up front to get through and they wouldn't have the option to spend those credits at all!

The only real difference between this and a flat 2 credit tax is that this can trip up Runners that make a mistake, and that this leaves the credits in the Runner's credit pool. It's in the latter point that this ICE finds its use: If they set aside credits to cover the power counters on Free Lunch, you can drain those credits with Closed Accounts or Reversed Accounts or other credit draining tools (hi there Spark!). Free Lunch then lets you keep the Runner poor for an extended period of time. Basically every counter on Free Lunch means you can drain the Runner down to negative credits, a fact that makes me sad this card has no synergy with Student Loans.

So that's Free Lunch in a nutshell. It fits the mold of "good rez-to-power ratio" ICE that the Runner can avoid breaking for a price, with the price being that they become more vulnerable to credit drains (which NBN specializes in). As is normal for these things, you put it in a deck where the alternative cost is particularly nasty and this incentivizes the Runner to break it instead, in which case you've gotten a 4 power 2 sub Code Gate for 3 credits (a good deal, if Eli 1.0 is to be believed). Now I'm off to ignore everything I just wrote and build a High-Risk Investment deck with it instead.

Naturally, this is most powerful with unconditional AI breakers (that is, AI breakers that when powered up sufficiently can break through any ICE that's not explicitly anti-AI like Swordsman). With such a breaker, System Seizure can save you a ton of money against big servers and a couple credits against smaller two ICE ones. Let's have a look at some of the candidates:

• Crypsis. That's right, Crypsis! The traditional flaw of Crypsis is that the costs overall are too high compared to just using something else. This card cuts those costs right down, making Crypsis the most no-frills option for a cheap all-server solution...as long as System Seizure remains up. And therein lies the problem: This probably can't be your primary game plan, and if it's not up then Crypsis is quite lackluster. So you're running it with a bunch of normal breakers to keep costs down, and at that point how much benefit are you really getting?

• Faust. Now this is more like it. System Seizure greatly increases Faust's reach, making it far less draining to crack multiple ICE with the famous AI breaker. I think this card will fit well in the Current slot in Faust decks.

• Brahman. Only goes in specialize decks, but given how horribly inefficient Brahman's strength boosting is it benefits quite a bit from this card.

• Eater. Like Crypsis, but usable.

• Overmind. I think Overmind decks will quite like this card. Between using counters to break and System Seizure, you're looking at breaking an entire server for the low, low price of "the highest ICE strength in the server" so long as you have the counters. And an Overmind deck where the Overmind doesn't have enough counters isn't really much of an Overmind deck at all, now is it?

An honorable mention goes to Aghora, which while it can't crack all ICE will generally be targeted at ICE that is expensive to break, which makes a cost saver like this quite welcome.

Finally, it is a 0 cost 1 influence current which means it doubles as a good way to turn off the Corp's current in a deck that wants to use it. This might even make it worth using in cases where the benefit is more marginal.

This card seems quite strong in a vacuum, but much like Dirty Laundry you need to be using it for the right things or the utility will be marginal at best. If for example you just use it to hit an undefended R&D, it's a 4 credit econ card (free Sure Gamble!) plus MAYBE a double access if you can trash the first card or it's an Agenda you can steal. This isn't bad! However, if this is the only reason you're running it then you'll run into trouble when R&D is ICEd up and you draw it and it's not worth paying the tax for the second run even with the 4 credits because odds are you'll just see the same card again.

This means you want to run it with other R&D attack cards, probably. The obvious star is Medium, which not only gives you an extra accessed card on your second run but ALSO gets an extra counter when that run succeeds! If your deck is built around spamming Medium runs on a single turn, Möbius is essentially 0 credits for a bonus click and 4 credits. That's pretty powerful. Indexing isn't bad either, since if the top two cards are both juicy and the server is undefended or thinly defended then this is then essentially a multiaccess with extra credits on top.

The other, more Criminal option is to run it with a bunch of ICE derezzing tools (Saker/Golden/Peregrine maybe, Crescentus, etc). Then re-enable the card late game by derezzing the R&D defenses and making the Corp too poor to rez them. Personally I don't think that strategy in general is currently strong enough to be prevalent as a primary plan of attack, but if it ever is (or if I've underestimated it!) this card might be decent econ in such a deck.

My final commentary is that I think the strongest use of this card is imported into Edward Kim: Humanity's Hammer running Medium. Ed already plays well with Medium since he essentially gets to see an extra card by trashing the first R&D Operation he sees, and in addition to the Medium synergy mentioned above a turn 1 Möbius is a lot stronger on him since seeing an Operation on top of R&D lets you smash it and try again instead of making the second run just for the credits. Plus it's only 1 influence, which makes this far less painful to do.

So I was going to write a boring but practical review about some of the lesser known Icebreakers that interact well with Baba Yaga (Chameleon, Sharpshooter, and a couple others). But then, while combing the Icebreaker list, I discovered...PROJECT: Cerberus

===WARNING: INCOMING JANK===

You will need:

• Baba Yaga (duh)
• Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer
• Cerberus "Lady" H1
• Cerberus "Rex" H2
• Cerberus "Cuj.0" H3
• Study Guide

So, how does this work? Simple: Study Guide's 2 credit ability is used to place power counters on Baba Yaga (NOTE - When Baba Yaga uses the ability, it's Baba Yaga that gets the counter, not Study Guide). These power counters are then spent to use the breaking abilities of the three Cerberus heads.

Next question: Why the hell would you do this??? After all, we're essentially assembling an overcomplicated way to spend 1 credit breaking every subroutine in the best case, which normal breakers can do without all the hoops already. That's where Nasir comes in: Traditionally, Nasir's ability is combined with Study Guide to spend credits on before his ID gets rid of them. This is good, but it only allows you to put those credits towards pumping a Decoder up. Rather narrow! With this new setup, you can instead put those credits towards the break cost of any ordinarily breakable ICE.

A similar argument holds for recurring credits: if you weren't planning to use them in a run this turn anyway, they can be invested in breaking subroutines on later turns.

Optional additions include:

• Sharpshooter for better pumping power and trashing protection
• Any Icebreaker that boosts for the remainder of the run
• Derez effects like Emergency Shutdown to get more credits out of your ID ability
• Any recurring credit that can be spent on Icebreakers. (Multithreader? The Toolbox??)
• Chameleon to give you access to more traditional breaking abilities if needed (it can be used by itself or installed on Baba Yaga if it needs strengthening)

It's important to note that you can use your Cerberus breakers independently since they ARE installed in order to be hosted on Baba Yaga. Combined with the usual methods of recycling these breakers, this can help keep your Baba Yaga power counters for when you really need them.

Of course, this is in fact a terrible idea, but who cares? Finally, we can assemble the Cerberus AI we always knew should have existed!

I'd like to offer a different perspective on this card:

Think of this card more like The Noble Path than like damage protection. If they don't take the BP hit then you can walk through Komainu, Checkpoint, Neural Katana, and even the monstrous Janus 1.0 without even having to do anything! Assuming you have a competent breaker suite it essentially offers the Corp the choice of completely defanging these ICE and more for a single turn, or permanently weakening the tax they provide (since you can use your BP credits to help you break the ICE). This can become a Catch-22 if the two bad publicity is enough to tip you over into being able to access a given server twice more this turn.

The secondary benefit of the Corp being unable to kill you next turn is nice, but in most situations they'll take the bad pub in order to win the game. The notable exceptions are if you can use the two bad pub to get into servers and win the game on YOUR turn, or if their kill plan involves trashing all your protection with The All-Seeing I.

Finally, in addition to ICE it also defangs several traps. Project Junebug, Snare!, Cerebral Overwriter, and others become safe to check and dispose of, and a trip into a Shock!ed up Archives becomes safe. This will probably just encourage the Corp to take the bad publicity...but 1 credit for 2 bad publicity is an amazing deal anyway!

In summary, this card is a strong counter to ICE that deters through damage since it either gives you an open pass through them for a turn or gives you a permanent advantage in breaking them. Not to mention that if they take the bad pub there's no rule against playing a second one right after...

P.S. this is especially great because as a Criminal you're essentially saying "I'm going to walk into this server now. You're not going to stop me if you know what's good for you."