This card is interesting, especially in the startup format.

Because in theory it represents an alternative win condition - Start the turn with 6 advancement tokens on this bad boy, and you've almost certainly won the game. You might not even need all 6, depending on the runner's grip size!

In practice, of course, it's not quite that easy. Getting 6 advancement counters on a card takes a significant investment of time and resources. That's at least 7 + 6 worth of effort. More than two turns! And during that time, the runner is going to be gleefully looting HQ and R&D, and very likely the Clearinghouse itself once you start to advance it. Or at the very least, building up enough cash to go catch it.

So trying to get a game-ending 6-point kill with this card is probably a trap, and should be reserved only for decks that go into it knowing that they are planning some serious jank. We'll talk more about that later. But that doesn't mean the card is bad!

But even in regular Weyland, it is probably an okay card. Weyland is good at advancing cards cheaply or automatically. It costs the runner 3 to trash, so if you throw it behind some ice that is even moderately taxing, the runner will probably feel like they need to go check it out, and take an econ hit. And if the runner happens to end their turn low on cards, maybe you get a lucky snipe!

In Jinteki, (particularly 1000-cuts Jinteki) I think it has some serious promise. It's got a lot of overlap with Ronin, but is generally more efficient. Also, runners are more likely to end their turns with less-than-full grips, so you might get a kill even if you only have 2-3 counters if you're lucky. And possibly most importantly, when dealing with Jinteki damage decks, runners are a bit more cautious about running on a facedown card with advancement tokens, so you might be able to slap Clearinghouse down on a La Costa Grid, and let it build up, while the runner fears an Urtica Cipher or Cerebral Overwriter. Trick of Light some counters off of it early to fast-advance something, and the runner will be SURE it s a trap.

Seems workable?

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about jank.

There are a few ways I can think of, to live the dream of getting a kill shot from this card.

You could just treat it as an agenda - drop it in a scoring server unadvanced, and maybe advance it once or twice. Second turn, if you think they can't get in, drop some Seamless Launch love on it or something, and hope for the best. But that's probably boring.

The best I've come up with (and by that I mean, probably the least likely to actually work in a real game) is to bring our old janky friend Jemison Astronautics into the picture. Because if you can sacrifice agendas on the runner's turn, you can quickly load up the Clearinghouse before they can react. There are a couple of effects that let you reliably forfeit agendas on the runner's turn, after they've taken their last action - rezzing Oberth Protocol, Quarantine System, or Corporate Town for example.

But the cleanest way is probably just to score out two False Leads, and then the next time you draw a Clearinghouse, you can just install-advance-advance, and then sacrifice both false leads to obliterate the runner's turn, while also adding four more advancement tokens for a grand total of six. And then boom.

Happy Janking!

I like this ice. It's simple and direct.

It's basically Rototurret, except it only does one of those two things. It costs 1 more, and is 4-strength instead of zero. Overall, I think it's better? 4-strength sentries are not cheap to break, so even after the runner has their rig set up, it can provide some tax.

Since it's ice, let's look at some break costs:

• Carmen breaks it for 3
• Bukhgalter for 4, (with the possible 2 rebate)
• Femme Fatale does it for 5
• Odore costs 6, assuming you have virtual resources. (And you wouldn't play Odore without virtual resources.)
• Mimic just gets shut out, unless they have Leech, Ice Carver, or some other way to lower strength.
• Echelon costs 1-7, depending on how many icebreakers you have laying around. (Usually going to be around 4)

So you can usually count on the runner needing to spend at least 3-4. Not bad, for ice that only cost you 5, and punishes facechecking! 4 strength means that it doesn't insta-die to Chisel, although 1 subroutine means that Botulus kind of negates it. One way or another though, the runner has to deal with it, because even the best case for the runner, you just stop the run. (And the worst case is you trash something they need.)

The existence of Simulchip weakens program trashing subroutines a little, but hey, you've always got the "end the run" alternative to fall back on!

All in all - Solid mid-range ice for Weyland. Good stuff!

Whee, a 3/2 agenda! Let's be honest. This card could be blank, and it would be in many decks, because 3/2 agendas are valuable and easy to score.

But it's not blank! It's Weyland's unique 3/2. Time to start trashing the runner's stuff! ...Except ... why does it feel so familiar....?

Let's talk about Character Assassination for a minute. Since it does nearly the same thing, it's probably a good point of reference. It was never really a popular agenda, partly because it was printed, at a time where it competed for agenda slots with the best agenda in the game. And also Project Beale, which was also no slouch. But even without the competition, Character Assassination was ... not great. (I should know! I tried to make janky decks around it!)

Part of the problem was the meta - This was back when one entire faction had some major incentive to build around the possibility of having to float tags. Which meant, they often avoided playing trashable resources. But the big, underlying problem with Character Assassination is that 4/2s are awkward to score, and there is no guarantee that the runner will have anything that you want to trash.

Above the Law fixes one of those problems - 3/2s are considerably easier to score out than 4/2s. The other problem is still there though - there is not always anything good to blow up when you're ready to score. Sure, sometimes you live the dream and nuke a Professional Contacts or mostly-full Liberated Account or something. But it's equally possible that the best you can do is nuke their Smartware Distributor or something.

Now don't get me wrong - even nuking a 0-cost resource still means that you basically set the runner back by 2 worth of tempo, from the draw and install! That's not bad!

But the fact that it's limit one-per deck means that there are now two strikes against it - you might not even get to draw it, and when you do, there is still a real chance that it might do literally nothing. I think Weyland kind of got the raw end of the stick on this one, when compared to the other corps' unique 3/2s - Luminal Transubstantiation, Longevity Serum, and Tomorrow's Headline are all basically guaranteed to do something useful. None of them can fizzle in the same way as Above the Law. (Arguably Tomorrow's Headline might not be useful if the runner never wants to install a resource again, and you have no tag punishment, but I think it's still a more reliable effect.)

So yeah. That's my review. The effect can be strong, but it's also really inconsistent, and in ways that you, as the corp, don't have complete control over. But whatever else, it's still another 3/2, so if you already have three Project Atlas in your deck, and you want a fourth 3/2, (which is not an unreasonable thing to want) then this is probably your card?

Jinteki has an interesting relationship with economy. They have some real powerhouse econ cards, but they also also tend to give the corp some kind of disadvantage, and then challenge us to build decks where that penalty is minimized.

Well, Hansei Review is another one. Strictly by the credit amount, it's a Government Subsidy that only costs 5 instead of 10 to play. But it has that little condition, about having to trash a card from HQ if possible. Or, another way to think about it is that it's a Hedge Fund, that gives you +1, and -1 card draw.

It's possible, of course, to get around the trashed card by playing it when it's the last card in HQ. But generally it's harder for corps to empty their hands than runners, so this isn't always practical unless you're actively discarding cards. (Which DOES give it an interesting possible synergy with Anoetic Void...)

But all of that is assuming that you don't want to put a card in archives. If you find yourself with too many agendas, tossing a card might be exactly what the (spin) doctor ordered. And of course, there's the new Jinteki identity, Restoring Humanity, that really likes having a facedown card in archives at the end of their turn. Honestly, they seem like the ones that Hansei Review was probably intended for. It's a better Hedge Fund, that also turns your identity back on if the runner has been checking archives.

All in all, an interesting econ card. Probably not worth playing if you don't have some way to benefit from trashing a card from HQ. But if you do, it's basically a better Hedge Fund.

Okay, TL;DR version: This card is a powerhouse that will almost certainly play a role in shaping the meta for glacier decks for the foreseeable future. There is zero question in my mind that this will be showing up in tournament-winning decklists, so if you're not already familiar with the card, start getting used to it and start learning how to play around it.

There. Now that that's out of the way, time for the rambling wall of text. Because this is a really interesting card, and there are a lot of aspects to cover!

Bottom line though, this card's power comes from three magical words: End the Run.

These are common enough words in Netrunner, of course. Except, here, unlike most other places they occur, it has no special conditions that need to be met. Once Anoetic Void is online, the runner can't contest it. There is no trace to beat, no ICE to break, not even a psi game to luck out on. Just those three, short words. The corp pays for the effect, and the run ends, and that's that.

Unconditional "End the Run" effects are super powerful. They serve as the lynchpin in glacier strategies, acting as a multiplier for giant scoring servers. There's a reason that Border Control is in so many decks. There's a reason that Nisei MK II is probably the single best 4/2 agenda in the game.

This card clearly exists to fill the void left by dear, rotated Caprice Nisei, so it makes sense to compare the two. A quick rundown:

• Anoetic is cheaper to rez, at 0, vs. Caprice's 2.
• They're both 4 influence, so they're expensive to import.
• They both have the same trash cost, 1, so neither one is going to survive direct contact with a runner.
• Much like Caprice, Anoetic Void is not a region, so it can be combined with other defensive upgrades.
• Much like Caprice, Anoetic Void is unique, so you have to pick what you want to secure.
• Caprice requires you to win a psi game, whereas Anoetic Void has a fixed cost.

That last point is probably the most important. With Caprice, there was always a chance that the runner would guess right, and get in. Countless games of Netrunner have been won and lost based on whether Caprice could outguess a runner at match point. Anoetic Void removes the guesswork: If you can pay the cost, you can keep the runner out, 100% of the time.

And oh what a cost. Two credits and two cards is a lot of tempo for the corp to give up! This is no Caprice Nisei, who can sometimes get away with bouncing the runner for 0. When you trigger Anoetic Void, you feel it. The cost increase is definitely a nerf over what Caprice was. (But that's probably okay, because what Caprice was, is borderline too-good.) Is the new cost still worth it? That depends an awful lot on exactly how much it costs to run the server, and how much you need to keep the runner out for a turn, but probably yes. This is still a very powerful, very uncommon effect, that improves glacier builds dramatically.

Because it acts as a cost multiplier, Anoetic Void is at its best when the server it protects is expensive to run. It's hard to say exactly how much 2and 2 cards are worth to the corp, (and depends a bit on exactly which cards they have available to discard) but you probably want a server that costs the runner at least 4-5 to get into. (Or the expenditure of limited resources like Inside Job or Overclock!) Ideally you want to put this in a scoring server with at least 2-3 moderately taxing ICE.

Of course, ICE isn't the only way to make a server more costly to run. Manegarm Skunkworks is a great addition to Anoetic Void, in much the same way that Ash 2X3ZB9CY and Caprice Nisei used to be best buddies. And if I understand the timings right, since they share the same trigger, the corp gets to decide the order that they resolve in. So even if the runner gets past all of your ICE, the corp can force them to pay the Skunkworks tax, and then bounce them with Anotic anyway!

Also - Anoetic Void's cost is high, but it is also far more reliable than a psi game. The corp can look at their resources and KNOW (as much as the corp can know anything, in a world full of runner surprises!) how many times they can fire Anoetic Void in a turn. With Caprice, if the corp had more than zero credits, there was always a chance that the run might fail. You could play some games if the corp had 1-2 credits (and you could afford to run multiple times in a turn) but for the most part, Caprice caused a lot of uncertainty for the runner. And for the corp as well! Because even if your server was great, and you had a 10 lead over the runner, there was always the chance that they'd guess right, and get in anyway.

Anoetic void though, is easy to predict. Both the corp's credit pool and cards in HQ are public information, so the corp and runner can look at both, and generally know how many times the corp can afford to keep them out of the server. If the corp only has 3 cards in hand, and you can afford to get into the server twice, then you can be pretty sure that Anoetic Void is only going to go off once.

This also offers some hints into how the runner might play around this card: If they can force the corp below 2, or below 2 cards in hand, then Anoetic Void is neutered. Criminals then, can try to get past the void via economic warfare, and forcing the corp to lose or respend money via things like Emergency Shutdown, Tranquilizer, Tread Lightly, or Diversion of Funds. Anarchs, of course, can attack the corp's cards in HQ, with effects like Imp, Edward Kim, Freedom Khumalo, Carnivore, and so on.

(Shapers don't really have a good answer I can think of other than to build a big enough rig that running repeatedly on the void is cheap enough to be economically feasible.)

So! Some combos and synergies to think about!

• Jinteki: Restoring Humanity doesn't mind throwing facedown cards into the trash from time to time.
• Cards that give the corp credits and card-draw are obviously good here. (Most corps want credits, but it might be worth slotting in a few card draw effects to power the void, if you think you'll need to use the void a lot.
• Upgrades that increase the cost of access, and fire when the runner approaches the server are great. So Manegarm Skunkworks and Cayambe Grid as well, if you're playing in a format where it's legal. (i. e. Startup)
• Cards that let the corp gain credits or cards on the runner's turn (ideally mid-run) are great, because they allow the corp to bring the Anoetic Void online after the runner has already committed, thinking it was safe. Spin Doctor deserves special mention here, since he can not only draw you cards mid-run, but also protect the cards that you used to pay for Anoetic Void's cost, if they happen to be agendas.
• The void combos nicely with other guaranteed ways to end the run (Border Control and Nisei MK II especially), for some good old fashioned click compression - situations where the runner can't contest your 5/3 score (even if they can get in!) because they simply don't have enough clicks in a turn to get past all of your ways to end the run.

And one last thing - can we just take a moment to appreciate the artwork on this card? BalanceSheet really knocked it out of the park here, with the tiny runner looking out over the strange region of netspace populated by massive digital entities. It is both gorgeous and evocative. Which is good, because I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of this card in glacier builds from here on out!