Some IDs in Netrunner are very general-purpose: you can build pretty much any sort of HB deck you like out of Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future, for example (which is why it was eventually rotated out – there was rarely a reason to run anything else). Some are much more specific. SYNC: Everything, Everywhere is an ID at the "more specific" end of the scale; the only general-purpose benefit you get from it is the 40-card deck size, so if you're planning to use this as your ID, you're going to want to do something with the increased cost to shake tags.

There are basically two ways in which increasing the cost to shake a tag benefits you as the Corp:

1. It gives you more value from "value tagging"; unless the runner is running Networking, Misdirection or the like, every tag you land is going to give you a 1 swing, and that really adds up over the course of a long game.
2. If you can land a lot of tags on the Runner all at once, the increased cost to shake them increases the chance that they will have to leave some going into your turn.

These are both reasonable bases to build a deck around! However, one thing you have to bear in mind is another, very similar, ID: NBN: Reality Plus. "R+", as it's affectionately known, also gets a benefit from the first tag it lands each turn – and it gets a swing of 2 (or 2 cards, if you prefer), which is usually going to be worth more than taxing the Runner 1. R+ also gets the coveted 40/15 deckbuilding statistics, just like SYNC does.

So in order to find a niche for SYNC, doing something that R+ can't do better, you'll need to be going heavily onto one of two plans: landing a huge number of tags simultaneously, or exhausting the runner of credits, Spark-style (so that −1 runner credit is worth more than +2 Corp credits). These are both things that SYNC does better than R+, although you're giving up a lot to get them. Most notably, SYNC doesn't give you any economy directly, so you can often end up starved for credits; unlike R+'s economic drip, SYNC needs to get all its credits the hard way. This means that a lot of thought needs to be put into trying to make your deck's economy work.

There are thus some cards that you're going to see almost-universally in SYNC decks. The most obvious is Hard-Hitting News; it lands four tags all at once, and is better when the Runner is low on credits, so if you have a deck that doesn't want HHN, it won't want SYNC either. HHN is particularly good in SYNC, because the Runner will need 12 to clear all the tags without tech cards, as opposed to the usual 8. SYNC is thus very good at punishing early aggression (even better than NBN: Controlling the Message is), and can typically score an agenda or two early.

Because of this, another very good card for SYNC is AR-Enhanced Security. ARES is one of the best agendas in the game, generally improving the decks it goes into even if it has absolutely no synergy with them. SYNC decks have quite a lot of synergy with ARES, though. For one thing, the ARES tags cost more to shake, causing a direct synergy between the two cards, but there are a couple of more subtle advantages: SYNC can often score early through the threat of Hard-Hitting News, meaning that you can often get your ARES score in while it really matters; and unlike R+, if you score multiple ARES, your ID is giving you benefit from all of them (unlike R+, which triggers only once per turn). Most importantly, though, ARES can patch up SYNC's economic problems by enabling you to run an asset economy; asset economies work best when the assets are hard to trash, and the combination of ARES's tags and SYNC's economic denial creates an excellent environment for economic assets to thrive (e.g. the classic PAD Campaign, whilst not a universal inclusion, is an entirely reasonable card to run in SYNC).

There's also the matter of deck style to think about. Generally speaking, both R+ and SYNC want to run a lot of cheap taxing ICE and a lot of random tagging: cards like Ping, IP Block, Turnpike, and the like. SYNC would prefer to land all its tags at the same time, though (if you're not doing that, R+ is normally better). This pushes SYNC decks towards the glacier end of the scale: they like building big servers in order to get lots of tags off at the same time. So you'll often see big-server cards like Surveyor in SYNC decks, even though they'd be rare in R+. "Heavily ICEd R&D, heavily ICEd scoring server, and lots of unICEd remotes as well" is a very unusual build shape, but it's almost the default when it comes to playing SYNC. Daily Business Show (or even Sensie Actors Union if you somehow found a format where it isn't banned) is thus a fairly important card for SYNC: it helps prevent the deck running out of ICE, by reducing the need to protect HQ.

Bellona is close to an auto-include in SYNC, unless you're using an agenda mix that can't tolerate 5/3s. It's a good card even in the abstract and it also works well with SYNC's economic denial plan – it wins you a lot of games that you would otherwise lose because the Runner doesn't have 5 to steal it with, or because they do have 5 in their credit pool but need to hold it back to avoid a lethal Hard-Hitting News hit.

One final card that's seriously worth considering is Snare!. The Jinteki decks that play this normally hardly care about the tag. In SYNC, though, the tag is half the point; your Snare! may be expensive to trigger, but when you do, it'll be an enormous tempo hit to the runner (who ends up losing three cards, three credits, and a click). If you can build a big server which tags the Runner repeatedly as they run it, and get them to hit an ambush at the end of it, you've probably won the game; direct tagging ambushes like AMAZE Amusements are theoretically better for this, but Snare! has the advantage of firing on random HQ and R&D accesses, so the additional centrals protection means it's worth the influence cost. Quite a lot of my games playing SYNC have been won by a Snare! hit, either from the tag, or from a flatline, or just from value damage (sometimes it snipes the runner's only copy of an icebreaker, or an Apocalypse, or the like, causing their deck to no longer function). Snare! is therefore a card worth keeping in mind, especially when running against SYNC. (It works pretty well in R+, too.)

In summary: you won't see SYNC very often nowadays, because most of what it does, NBN: Reality Plus can do better. It does still have some niches, though: economic denial, and anything that lands a large number of tags all at once (such as Hard-Hitting News and large servers full of Pings). It finds it harder to build a viable economy than some Corp decks do; expect to be spending a lot of slots on economy. However, it can protect an asset economy with the help of AR-Enhanced Security, so it isn't all gloom on the economic side. So overall, not a terrible ID, but fairly niche, and you aren't going to see much deck variety out of SYNC decks in practice. And if you're playing against it, watch out for Snare!!

Normally, I only write reviews for cards I've played. This one, though, I haven't played, and there's a good reason for that.

Instead, I'm writing this review to say: if you ever considered playing this, play Retribution instead. It's the same influence cost (but a different faction), and costs 1 more to trash programs and hardware (and 2 more to trash resources because you have to use the basic action); but it doesn't require keeping the Runner below 6, and it doesn't require spending the tag. So in effect, Observe and Destroy saves the Runner , 2 (unless they're going tag-me, which is probably a bad idea if your deck contains this sort of tag punishment card), making it more expensive than Retribution in basically all circumstances. And, well, the requirement to keep the Runner below 6 is a very hard one to satisfy nowadays, especially with Closed Accounts having rotated.

The only niches Observe and Destroy might have over Retribution would therefore be a) as a flexible punishment card that gains value when the Runner goes tag-me (the problem is, it doesn't gain very much value, only a credit or two, and your deck would have to keep the Runner under 6 permanently for this to be worth it); b) if you have some sort of jank combo that requires trashing your own installed cards (but you can do this way more cheaply than spending a card and a click and a tag and keeping the Runner poor; and if you're willing to spend clicks+cards to trash your own cards, why not just overinstall them?); or c) you're in NBN and can't spare even 1 point of influence for Retribution (I guess this is just about possible).

You can imagine the only sort of deck that could want this, therefore; something that's in NBN, tag-heavy, and tries to keep the Runner poor (maybe Spark Agency or SYNC). But those decks don't normally want program/hardware trashing anyway; if you're keeping the Runner poor and getting the tags to stick, your deck is already on the point of winning, and you'd prefer something that's better at actually closing out a game. It's also rare for that style of deck to become particularly tight on influence (frequently it can fit High-Profile Target despite the five-dot cost), so probably you'd be able to afford to fit a Retribution or two if you preferred that mechanism of winning the game.

Another similar card that's worth mentioning is Keegan Lane. This has a very similar effect to Observe and Destroy, and the same cost, but different timing (and no 6 restriction). However, Keegan Lane is much better; the reason is that it's much easier to get a tag to stick mid-run (e.g. Ping, Thoth, Turnpike, maybe even Funhouse) than it is to tag the Runner on your own turn. Using Keegan to trash a single icebreaker normally isn't game-winning on its own; but with a little bluffing/mind-games, you can often use Keegan to trash the opponent's killer while they're locked into encountering a destroyer, and get two or more trashes for your single tag. Keegan Lane is therefore quite a good card – but despite that, it's still a pretty niche effect that normally needs a deck built around it. Observe and Destroy has much less upside, and is also much harder to connect with; so given that it's this much worse than a highly niche card, and is also pretty much entirely outclassed by a 1-influence card from another faction, it really isn't surprising that it isn't very strong. So even if you do somehow have a deck that's a perfect fit for Observe and Destroy, it nevertheless won't be doing enough for you to be worth the deck slot.

Don't play Observe and Destroy.

It's been discovered, over time, that Engolo is an Anarch (and minifaction) card in disguise. You rarely see it in Shaper (apart from the occasional Kit deck); shapers have all the best decoders (and thus can typically play something that fits their deck better than Engolo), tend to prefer to spend the early game building up their economy rather than running, and are often short of MU. You rarely see it in Criminal, either (although more frequently in Criminal than in Shaper!); if Criminals want an expensive decoder, they'll normally play Amina which has better numbers, and they have plenty of tools for early aggression other than icebreakers so Engolo doesn't have much of an opportunity to shine.

The thing about Engolo is that it's a card that's at its best when you need to run, but don't have a full set of breakers. It'll get you into servers early, which is nice; but it's also incredibly expensive at doing that, which rather puts a damper on things. The problem is that if you're using it for early aggression, you're paying 5 to install it, and more to use it, which leaves you at a low enough credit total that most of your economy doesn't work and you're at perpetual risk of getting blown up by Hard-Hitting News. Meanwhile, it's able to stand on its own for only a narrow section of time (the time before the Corp can manage to double-non-code gate-ICE their servers), and then is inferior to more normal breakers against the majority of ICE you'll face. So you're putting a lot in, and not getting enough benefit from it before it starts to fade in value.

A side issue is that Engolo looks like it wants to be a card for aggressive decks, but those decks often want to run – sometimes even have to run – lots of times in a turn in order to make their economy work. That isn't the greatest fit for a card which has "Use this ability only once per turn." stapled onto the reason why you'd play the card in the first place.

Still, Anarch as a faction has a lot of features that make Engolo a good fit. For one thing, they have no good decoders (except for possibly Buzzsaw, if you have enough support), so having suboptimal numbers is less of an issue than it would be elsewhere. Most importantly, though, Anarchs are good at keeping servers small; they have cards like Hippo and Devil Charm and Spooned to tear down a large server before it gets too large, and cards like Stargate to prevent the Corp drawing more ICE to replace it. But the main drawback of Anarch ICE destruction decks is that they often have trouble tuning themselves to the sort of ICE the corp is using. Being able to break ICE with Hippo needs an appropriate breaker. Being able to break it with cutlery requires knowing what sort of ICE it is.

Engolo fixes all that. "Hey", it says, "I know what sort of ICE you're facing: it's a code gate. I know which breaker you need: me." If you're only facing each piece of ICE once, having slightly awkward numbers isn't that much of an issue, but knowing for certain that you'll be appropriately set up for a specific piece of ICE, regardless of what it is, is really valuable. So Engolo is close to a perfect fit for ICE destruction decks, which can often rely on it as their primary/only breaker.

Engolo is also commonly seen in Adam, who has no breakers of his own, and who gets huge benefits from early aggression. It isn't as great a fit as in Anarch, but it nonetheless is a good fit for Adam's playstyle, often persuading him to import Engolo rather than something else.

As a side note, Engolo is really, really frustrating for certain sorts of Corp deck. Those decks are unpopular, so you wouldn't normally play it just to beat them; but Corp decks that heavily rely on cutting you off a particular sort of breaker (e.g. killers or fracters) hate having to fight through Engolos as well, and it works incredibly well against combos that rely on mythic or trap ICE.

Still, even if you're facing a more normal sort of deck, being able to make critical runs early is nice (even if you have to overpay to get past medium-strength ICE), and the numbers aren't even all that bad; Engolo is at its worst against the common 3-strength ICE (and loses out to Amina against larger ICE too, because it typically has 3 subroutines), but smaller and larger ICE is still widely played, and Engolo is one of the best breakers you could ask for against something like a Surveyor that's completely out of control. Engolo's become a little worse in the current upgrade-heavy metagame because it isn't that great when running multiple times a turn (which you'll need to be able to do against things like Anoetic Void and Border Control). But if you can keep servers small, the heavy install cost and frustratingly frequent need to boost will be offset by the fact that it'll carry you through much of the game before you find the rest of your rig.

The last review of New Construction was over 5 years ago. People have kind-of forgotten about it since, which isn't that surprising because it doesn't fit in most decks (in particular, the similar Oaktown Renovation is better than it in basically every way unless your deck is very weird).

The other review suggests that it's a card for asset spam. Asset spam is very rarely played out of Weyland nowadays, because Gagarin Deep Space has been banned (and all the exciting asset spam cards are over in NBN nowadays anyway; the deck that got Gagarin banned wasn't even an asset-spam deck, but a tag-and-bag deck based around never-advancing False Lead to deprive the Runner of clicks to clear the tags).

Instead, there's nowadays one and only one reason to play New Construction: it happens to fit well into the Dedication Ceremony + Reconstruction Contract combo. Dedication+Reconstruction ("Dediconstruction"?) allows you to cheaply fast-advance a 3/2 from hand, and Weyland decks that use a combination of Dediconstruction and Audacity were a force in the meta for quite a while (up until Titan Transnational, the usual ID for them, got banned). One of the biggest problem with these decks, though, is the perennial fast-advance problem of "I ran out of 3/2s" (which is a particular problem in Weyland because it has a tendency to use copies of Project Atlas to find each other, thinning your deck of 3/2s). Some of them resorted to Merger as a fourth 3/2, but some players noticed that there was a better option available.

The thing is, although Dediconstruction normally only fast-advances 3/2s, you can also use the same two cards to fast-advance New Construction:

1. Install New Construction.
2. Manually advance New Construction, installing Reconstruction Contract. (Yes, I know it doesn't make too much flavour sense.)
   • Between clicks, rez Reconstruction Contract.
3. Play Dedication Ceremony on Reconstruction Contract.
   • Before ending your turn, trash Reconstruction Contract to move its counters to New Construction, then score.

If your deck is planning to Dediconstruct most of its agendas anyway, then running New Construction isn't all that much worse than running a blank 3/2; you can still fast-advance it with your main combo, after all, and that's what your deck mostly cares about.

Anyway, Above the Law was recently printed, and is a much better option for your fourth 3/2, so to want this, you'd have to be playing a Weyland fast-advance deck that's sufficiently all-in that you want five or more things to fast advance. That isn't so ridiculous in a fast-advance deck, so it's possible we'll see this card come up every now and then on occasion. After all, Weyland fast advance decks have been top-tier over the last several metagames. You often don't see them towards the start of a metagame, because they keep getting key cards banned to keep them in check, and it takes people a while to figure out how to reconstruct the deck to dodge the bans before they start turning up at tournaments again. But they keep finding some way to come back time and time again, so it wouldn't surprise me if New Construction starts turning up again on rare occasions in the future. Hey, it's Weyland. Reconstructing things is kind-of what they do.

After testing it a bit, I'm pretty confident that the best place for this is a fast advance deck.

For one thing, it's a 3/2. Fast advance decks would gladly play blank 3/2s, because they need something to do their fast-advancing on; normally only 3-advancement agendas can be fast-advanced, and you can only do it a limited number of times in the game, so you want to get as many points from it as you can.

But the effect is a crazily good effect in some gamestates (despite being useless in others). If the Runner drops a Liberated Account with all 16 on it, or if their deck is heavily dependent on some particular resource, or the like, then being able to get rid of it, no questions asked, is a pretty huge swing in your favour. When you're playing a fast advance deck, then you have the power to score a 3/2 at the drop of a hat (assuming you have your combo in hand), and being able to snipe a resource with that is a pretty big deal. It's worth noting that your alternative 3/2s (assuming you're in Weyland because otherwise Above the Law isn't legal, your choice is Project Atlas and Merger) don't do anything when scored as a 3/2, so being able to fast-advance something and get a beneficial side effect is awesome.

Above the Law isn't quite so amazing elsewhere, but it's still fine; the 3/2 statline is rare and valuable for a reason. I've tried it out in rush decks too, and being able to save 1, over the cost of rushing out a 4/2 is nice (although a little minor). It usually ends up sniping something when you score it in the early game, too (maybe not much of something, but you're still slowing the Runner down, and slowing the Runner down without losing tempo yourself is something that rush decks love to do but usually can't). Probably it isn't worth running this over something like Offworld Office, Oaktown Renovation or Cyberdex Sandbox if you're building a pure rush deck, though.

That said, Above the Law can still be pretty viable in rush decks, if you're looking for a different way to close out the game. Rush decks often get stuck on 4 to 6 points, and need to switch strategy. Including Above the Law as a 3/2, along with a cheap fast-advance card like Audacity (in Standard) or Trick of Light (in Startup), will give you the potential to be able to score 2 points out of nowhere, and finish off the game. (Project Atlas is better for this, but you may well be running all three copies of that already, and having redundancy in 3/2s is helpful for this sort of game because a lot of them tend to get stolen.)

It's also worth noting that Above the Law is usable in any sort of Weyland deck as a tech card, against The Turning Wheel in particular. Most Runner decks which run it run only one copy, leave that copy installed pretty much all game (making it easy to score an agenda while it's installed), and have no way to recur it, so scoring an Above the Law can shut off what is usually one of their main win conditions. I've won several games this way. Probably Scapenet is a better tech card against this in the abstract, but Above the Law has the advantage of going in an agenda slot and not costing any influence, so it disrupts your deckbuilding a lot less than a Scapenet would. The Turning Wheel isn't popular at the moment, because the sort of decks that it goes in are bad against the top Corp decks; but if you're playing a Weyland deck that's weak to that sort of effect, you may well consider slotting in Above the Law just to be able to handle it.