Bellona

Bellona

This agenda does a lot for you as a Corp that other 5/3 agendas can lack in.

It instantly recovers your spent money after scoring. This may be obvious after reading but regaining the 5 credits spent to score is incredibly powerful to keep defenses up on central servers. If you are in credit hell (5-8 credits) it is usually a death sentence to try to score an agenda that will not give you some cash. SSL Endorsement would also fit for scoring with low money.

However SSL doesn’t do quite as good of a job for instantaneous evening of money. If a Corp is trying to land a trace on their turn this agenda does some work. Early game this will put the Corp up +5 (+6 if playing as GameNet) from their current position. That is often enough to ensure a HHN or a SEA Source. Since it just makes the runner poorer after a steal, I would recommend SSL Endorsement if you need it as a source of income.

As another NBN agenda that has an additional cost, making the runner poor can be a potential strategy with Degree Mill and this agenda.

With the additional cost, it can add another secret cost to your remote server that the runner had not anticipated. IAA on a remote with all of the ice rezzed can be dangerous without some additional defenses. This agenda has been quite successful to stop Stimhack runs that had not anticipated an additional 5 coins on top of the server costs.

This is a great agenda and will probably be joining Degree Mill as the only consistently played NBN 5/3s.

31

Good review with comparisons to other meta-heavy 5/3s.

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Important to note, however, this does lose to Critic :(

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That is true but since she is restricted we might see more whistleblower if NAPD Cordon and Bellona start bubbling up.

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Whistleblower

Whistleblower

This card has some problems. Before we look at the drawbacks, we need to look at when this card is good.

Reasons to Use:

1) Steal agendas with additional costs like: Obokata Protocol, SDS Drone Deployment, Degree Mill, Ikawah Project, NAPD Contract, Fetal AI, Bellona and any agenda buffed by Utopia Fragment.

2) This will also block upgrade costs like: Red Herring, Strongbox, and Ben Musashi

3) This blocks on access abilities from Award Bait, City Works Project, Explode-a-palooza, Fetal AI, Quantum Predictive Model, TGTBT, The Future Perfect. Thank you for the correction Mezuzi and valerian32!

4) Combos with “stolen” agenda triggers like: Mad Dash, Leela, Freedom through Equality, Another Day Another Paycheck and getting rid of any Corp currents. Thank you for the additions Rahrhino and 3ric!

5) Better tempo than having to spend two clicks to retrieve an agenda.

Why this Card is Not Good:

1) Why not use the queen of this? Film Critic It is the same influence cost. Only reason you say no is if you already are using 1 restricted card. (Aesop's Pawnshop, Crowdfunding, Dorm Computer, Employee Strike, Gang Sign, Inversificator, Levy AR Lab Access, Mad Dash, Paperclip, Rumor Mill) (posted during MWL 3.2)

2) This does nothing against all of the cards you want it to. Haarpsichord Studios, Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed, and Jinteki: Personal Evolution. Don't forget, you are also still in range of a Punitive Counterstrike as well.

3) It costs 2 coins, it is 1 influence, and you have to know the agenda you are stealing. Ugh...

If only this said "add to your score area" instead of "steal".

This is my first review. Please comment if you find anything wrong.

31
A small correction - Whisteblower blocks on access effects like Explode and TFP similar to Film Critic (Runner effects trigger before Corp effects). That said, its still going to be hard to call those cards unless you've seen them previously or have some nudge via expose. —
since you're interrumping the access, it also works to prevent the net damage, the future perfect etc. But as you say the efects of stealing are still happening. That means that Jinteki, Personal Evolution happens, Argus happens and Haarpsichord effects are still applying. And thank you for reviewing = D —
We do need to consider that it allows you to bypass on-access/steal effects while *not* having to spend 2 clicks to actually add it to your score area. I agree it's not great, but it's sort of like half the effect of Film Critic at twice the speed. —
Worth noting that this does combo with Mad Dash whereas Film Critic does not so you can steal the agenda without paying the additional cost and still get the cheeky bonus point on top :) —
Also worth noting that this card could work well in a Leela Patel deck. Film Critic is a bit of a dud for Leela, since it has anti-synergy with her ability and it prevents her from being able to use Gang Sign. Whistleblower gives her access to all the protection you mentioned in your "Reasons to Use" section without these downsides. —
Thank you all for your continued additions. I will update the post when I can to make sure this post does not go stale. Please continue to comment and I will try my best to add in all the pertinent information. —

I'm surprised that no one actually ever stated the main reason this card is hot, stinky garbage: it costs a click and two credits to install, in addition to having to pay one influene and a card slot to put in your deck and the time spent to draw it. There used to be some tiny fringe case where this could get you an unstealable Obokata Protocol, but now that that world doesn't exist, you just pay more than the actual cost of stealing any agenda in the game when you use this, in the rare case you get it to hit. If you're worried about Bellona, play econ in the slot instead. If you're worried about Ikawah, play... econ, probably, or Pichacao, or Hannah. Or you could play Imp. Even in the former Obokata scenario, you'd get halfway there by not playing this from hand and not playing one econ card you would have needed to afford it. Basically, the design team seemed to miss that not ignoring on-steal effects meant this was effectively a niche econ card they were designing, outside of the rare Data Loop into Obokata scenario, but it's not priced appropriately for that role in the slightest.

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I guess I will add that it was theoretically good into exactly "SSO sitting on a 5 advancement City Works Project", but that ceased to exist as an effective deck as soon as Hollywood Renovation rotated, and was off the table entirely when MassComm was banned.

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