I've loved this card from the moment it was first spoiled. It's big and dumb and silly, and I love it.

All of it's numbers (both the good ones and the bad ones) are huge and ridiculous. But it's also astonishingly good at what it does, if you can land it on the table.

As a rule, shapers are the worst faction at breaking sentries. Usually this manifests as simply having terrible break costs. Pipeline and Creeper were the original awful shaper killers. Things have gotten a little better since then, but even so, most shaper killers are highly specialized, and only really good in particular situations. There are several that require stealth credits (Dagger, Fawkes, etc), several that have other weird limitations (Ika), and the usual run of ones that are just plain inefficient. (Echelon, Na'Not'K, etc.)

In general, if you want to break sentries as a shaper, you just pay the influence cost, and import the latest hotness from criminal.

Well, there's a new sentry breaker in town. And it has a slightly different approach to its limitations. It's actually got good break numbers. Great numbers, even! Breaking all subs for 2 is actually pretty nice, since sentries often have multiple subs. And base strength of 3 is actually really amazing. As of this writing, there are 13 sentries available in startup, and 9 of them are strength 3 or less, with only 4 requiring you to boost Orca to break. (Okay, really 5, since Stavka really should be on that list.)

AND it givers you free power counters for your power-counter-powered shenanigans!

So where's the downside? It has two big ones. One is that it costs 2 which is a little steep, although manageable. (Shapers have plenty of good ways to boost their memory after all. Endurance, in particular, has very nice synergy with the charge mechanic, and gives +2 by itself!) But the real downside is, of course, the eye-watering 10 install cost.

For reference, consider Carmen, a solid criminal killer in its own right. To get through, say, Archer, Carmen requires 8. (Archers are no joke, you guys!) Orca gets through impressively for half that, 4. But Carmen also probably only cost 3 to install, which means you have to break that Archer three times with your Orca before the improved break costs start saving you money, vs. just using Carmen.

And that's against Archer, which is one of the best-case scenarios for Orca. If you're facing smaller sentries like Rototurret, then Carmen has equal break costs, and if you start hitting single-sub sentries like Anemone or Vasilisa, then Carmen is actually cheaper, and Orca will never catch up!

But hey. Orca is a program. And we're shapers! "Tricky nonsense with programs" is practically the unofficial motto of the faction! So obviously if you're planning on including Orca in a deck, you're likely to have some way to cheat it out for significantly less than full price.

In standard, this is pretty straightforward. Good old Test Run plus Rejig puts it on the board for a total of 3. (And two card plays.) In startup, our options are a bit more limited, but we still have access to the classic Retrieval Run.

There's also this new card, Spark of Inspiration, which seems designed to pair with Orca. You can use Test Run to make sure Orca is on top, but at that point you're using a 2-card combo to save 4, which doesn't seem quite as worth it. (I've had good luck just using Spark of Inspiration without knowing, and fishing for it though!)

I've been using this breaker in my startup deck with Captain Padma Isbister, and I have to say, I am really impressed. I put it in at first for fun, thinking it was not going to be practical, but I've managed to get it on the table every game, and I don't think I've paid full price for it once yet. And once it's on the table, you really don't have to worry about sentries ever again. Heck, most of the weak ones might as well just read "pay 2, charge up the boat!"

Oh man, this identity. It has some strict requirements, but when you can pull it off, it gives the corps bonus points! That's huge! In many games, this corp will be able to score out with only 5 or 6 points, while the runner still needs all 7. In some ways, it feels like a better version of the old Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneer - it forces the runner to go fast and take risks, because the game is not going to last long.

But unlike Harmony, it's not automatic. The corp has to meet some very specific requirements to get their free points! You need to score an agenda that wasn't installed or advanced this turn. So any time the runner sees something with advancement tokens on it's not just the usual "is it a trap or not" mind game. The stakes are higher! If it turns out to be an agenda, the corp could easily get an easy 3 points off of it, if the runner isn't careful!

So let's talk about what that would actually look like. If you're playing as (or against!) this Identity, there is one super-important fact that you need to keep in mind at all times:

Placing advancement tokens is not the same as advancing a card

You might look at this identity and think that you need to advance your agendas up to 3-4 tokens, and then sit on them for a turn before scoring. You do not. You simply need to advance them to the point that you can finish them off with Seamless Launch or Trick of Light. So in practice, you'll mostly be leaving things on the board with only one or two advancement tokens, and using other means to finish them off and score.

So what are these "other means"? Well, in startup, the most obvious ones are:

• Seamless Launch
• Moon Pool
• Trick of Light
• SanSan City Grid
• Big Deal

There are a few others, but they generally are impractical for various reasons. Psychographics and Shipment from Vladisibirsk require a lot of tags, and are expensive on the influence. Vladisibirsk City Grid puts tokens on things, but doesn't actually help much. Even Big Deal is kind of questionable, given it's prohibitive costs, both in credits and influence. (It does let you never-advance out a 4/2 agenda and get the bonus point from it though, which is pretty cool if you can pull it off!)

So how does it fit together? Seamless Launch is probably going to be doing most of the actual work, with Trick of Light or Moon Pool filling in the rest. You'll either install cards normally, and click to advance them once, or maybe put out multiple with Mitosis or similar. Then, if one was an agenda, next turn you just play an operation to add more advancement tokens to it, and enjoy your free points!

(Special shoutout to Jinteki's new 2/1 agenda, Hybrid Release. Since it only requires 2 tokens to score, you can just install it unadvanced, and if they don't run on it, next turn Seamless Launch it, and enjoy your surprise bonus points!)

It's tempting to try to activate the identity on every agenda, but in practice, if you get it even once or twice, you're doing pretty well. And the nice thing is that the tools that let you place advancement tokens are ALSO tools that can help you score out agendas in surprising situations. Seamless Launch can be used to never-advance out a surprise 4/2, and Trick of Light can fast-advance out 3/2s or 3/1s. (Trick of Light is also important for letting us reclaim tokens from any failed traps!) And Moon Pool can actually help you fast-advance out 4/2s, if you have enough agendas in hand, and they don't contest it!

Overall, this is a really neat new identity, and I like it a lot. Big props to the Null Signal Games team for coming up with such interesting new cards!

This is a pretty interesting card.

On the face of it, it has surprisingly good numbers - 2 rez cost for a 3-strength "end the run" gearcheck. That's solid! But then it has the weirdness of being both a code gate and a barrier, so it's a pretty forgiving gearcheck - they're likely to have something that can break it. But when they do, it's still not cheap. 3 strength for only 2 rez is solid, and very little breaks it for less than 2. (Begemot, Cleaver or a pumped Hyperbaric take 1, but Paperclip, Unity, Gordian Blade and Corroder are still 2, and almost everything else is worse.)

But the fun part, of course, is not the stats, but is that extra text. Trash a card, and oops, a runner card can't break ice now! Granted, it's only for the run, but disabling one of their cards has a VERY good chance of making the run impossible for the runner, if there is any ice behind this. Especially if they don't have a full rig yet, and are counting on something like Endurance or an AI to get them through.

As far as anti-boat-tech goes, it's not quite as good as NEXT Activation Command, which can block the boat for a whole turn, but this can work on actual icebreakers as well, as well as having the advantage of being a surprise. Since it will usually force the runner to run an extra time, it pairs nicely with most forms of click compression. (Manegarm Skunkworks, Anoetic Void, bioroids, etc.)

The downside, of course, is that even though this is a mid-run surprise, the runner is unlikely to get caught in too awkward a position by it, since most of the time you'll be rezzing it as they encounter it. So at worst, they will just bounce off the ETR sub or jack out, and run again next click, once their breakers are working again. In this way, it's sort of a Border Control-lite, except that they can get around it by having some extra breakers, and it sticks around providing some minor tax.

Much like Anemone, its ability to toss a card has nice synergy with all the fun archives tech Jinteki has been getting lately. It can ditch agendas for Regenesis. It can throw ice for Nanisivik Grid. It can just even just keep facedown cards in archives for Jinteki: Restoring Humanity.

Overall: Solid card. I'm definitely using it in my startup decks at the moment!

Also, if you're wondering, the name is a reference to a 500-year-old clam.

The most obvious comparison for this card is the ubiquitous Dirty Laundry. They're both econ cards disguised as run events. They both give you net 3. But while Dirty Laundry lets you pick your target and efficiently earn money while also running places you want to run, Carpe Diem only lets you run on a central server. And if you don't have other mark cards in play, you might not even know which one before you play it!

Now it's not all bad news. Carpe Diem costs 1 less to start than Dirty Laundry, and more importantly, gives you the money before the run instead of after. (Meaning that you have use of it during the run.) So this almost makes it more akin to Overclock or something. Except Carpe Diem gives you real money you can keep, instead of temporary credits for the run. (Albeit 1 less.) And finally (this is probably the most interesting bit) Carpe Diem doesn't actually require you to make the run at all! You can just play it and pocket the cash and walk away. So maybe we should be comparing it also to Easy Mark?

Well, maybe not entirely. There is a reason people didn't play Easy Mark. So if you're using Carpe Diem without taking advantage of the free run (A worth of value right there) then you're sorely underusing it. But hey, sometimes you're in a bad way and you really just need 3 for something other than a run!

Overall, Carpe Diem is in a weird place. It has aspects of a lot of other cards (some good, some less so) but it is somehow usually worse than most of them. It lacks the freedom to pick easy targets (and remotes!) with Dirty Laundry, doesn't give you as much money as Overclock, and costs more to start than Easy Mark. It's probably still useful if you're already running a bunch of mark cards. (Specifically resources or Nyusha "Sable" Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy) because it is "markedly" better if you know what the mark is before you play it. (Sorry, that wasn't intentional, I only saw it when I was proofreading and felt like I had to add the quotes.) For Sable, it's basically Dirty Laundry copies 4-6, since she's going to have enough stacked effects targeting marked servers that she's going to want to be running on them anyway. For everyone else, I suspect it will stay in the binder. Criminal just has too many better run-based-econ options, in my opinion.

Jank shoutout though - if you are playing Sable and using Swift though, assuming you make it in, this card actually gains you , instead of costing you !

So I think this card exists so that people who like to make ridiculous decks have something to obsess over. It has a very powerful effect, but it's not immediately obvious how to make it useful. And I'm not going to pretend that I've cracked the code here either. I've made a few decks with it, and they've all been universally terrible.

But I do have a few observations, which will hopefully be of help to anyone trying to make this monstrosity work...

• Getting free installs/rezzes when you trash your stuff is cool, but in most cases it probably should be viewed more of as a consolation prize, than a goal in itself. You're basically making one of your things worse instead of trashing it.
• You can use this identity to install ice without paying the ice costs. This lets you make some very tall servers, if you're into that sort of thing.
• One of the biggest strengths of this ID is the built in card-search on its ability. It's very feasible to put in one-off tech cards like Mavirus, and just fetch them when you need them, by trashing the correct-sized target.

Also, consider the following scenario:

• You install Alexa Belsky for some reason.
• You install and start advancing Oaktown Renovation.
• The runner, predictably runs to steal it.
• If they manage to get through your ice and commit to accessing Oaktown, you use Alexa's, ability to trash herself and trigger Ob's ability.
• Using Ob's, you overwrite Oaktown with a Snare!. The runner has already committed to accessing, so instead of stealing your agenda, they get a face full of net damage and a tag.

There are probably better sets of cards to do this with. Alexa Belsky is not a card you'd normally want in your deck. It's surprisingly hard to find 1 cost self-trashers though! (Very unfortunate that Mark Yale just rotated.) But either way, the ability to trash an agenda mid-run is noteworthy. And the ability to replace it with something harmful after they commit to access is very interesting indeed.

Food for thought!