Data Ward is a ten-meter metal door ready to lock the Runner in forever once you find the right lock and, in the meanwhile, it's a ten-meter metal door that isn't easy to get through. It's a one-card solution to at least three or four problems NBN usually has and wants to solve.

1) It completely locks the Runner out after Midseasons/HHN. There are no "easy" ways around it and it will stop glory runs while you wait for your Boom.

2) It can be used to create very powerful remotes with a small investment in both credits and slots. Data Raven into Data Ward isthe most obvious one but it can also be combined with IP Block or even Turnpike for a similar effect. This allows NBN, for example, to score bigger agendas, create extremely taxing SanSan trashing runs and play Reversed Accounts.

3) While not overly efficient on its own, a 3 credit tax that punishes facechecking is not bad and can be a good way to get the ball rolling. For example, Ward into Reversed Accounts is a 6 credit swing, enough to enable Hard-Hitting News or Stinson at the earlier stages of the game.

4) It's resilant. It cannot be passed by D4v1d, it's not cheap to bypass with Femme Fatale and has both a high number of subroutines and a high-strenght, making it almost impassable with Faust alone (7 cards). It's also a barrier, making it easy to protect to Cutlery and making it impervous to Yog. It just works.

One of my new favourite pieces of ICE for sure.

For the average Shaper deck there's very little reason not to run Beth. At worst, she's an Underworld Contacts that doesn't need link, at best she's a cheap, drawback-less Rachel Beckman.

Her numbers are just insane, any Corporation under 5 credits is poor enough to be losing the game and it's extremely easy for them to go over 15 credits just by playing a couple operations or spamming two assets. In fact, you can force them to get so much money by stockpiling credits and locking the remote.

It's only drawbacks are that it's only suplemmentary economy. But damn, it's good!

Mr Li is a tutor of nothing in particular. Unlike Diesel, it doesn't offer any kind of card advantage, it still gives you one card for one click, it's simply a better card for the situation you are in because it effectively cuts your deck size in half and let's you actively chose not to draw the wrong card.

Mr Li is for decks that want different kinds of cards at different points in the game. Early on it filters out unnecessary Mem Chips and expensive R&D Interfaces and gives you Inside Jobs and Faeries, late in the game it gives you the cards you need to control the game. It won't get you, specifically a Legwork, but you'll be much more likely to get something to pressure the Corp when you need and those singletons become much more worthwhile than they would normally be.

For decks that can work with any combination of cards, like those based around AIs or Parasite recursion cards like Earthrise Hotel or Quality Time are better. But Mr Li is a great choice for many Criminal decks, specially the most controllish builds which can afford the luxury of a slow, expensive card that does nothing on its own.

Hostile Infastructure does something incredibly powerful: It ties together credits and net damage, allowing decks to tax the Runner through both at the same time.

This has a huge effect on most runner economies because they rely on one-use cards like Sure Gamble that are not great when you are taking damage. After all, if you have to spend two cards and a click to trash a single PAD Campaign you are really going to suffer and you'll suffer more when you don't have two more cards to spare.

Tying credits and net damage also offers some benefits: Damage takes away economy cards and playing around damage is inefficient, which makes gathering credits harder. And more time spent gathering credits means less time drawing cards, making net damage stronger.

It also has lots of benefits that makes it incredibly dangerous: It makes even the weakest asset untrasheable under risk of opening scoring windows. It nullifies Keyhole, nerfs Parasite and makes upgrades indestrutible when paired with Fetal AI or other damage sources. And it stacks, which is amazing.

The drawback is a big fat cost: Hostile Infrastructure is the most expensivenon-economy asset in the game and the goal is to keep two of them rezzed on the table. Of course, the Runner won't allow it so they'll trash it at any cost, meaning you need to bring it back and rez it back again. Very few decks can play both the taxing game and the damage game and even fewer can do that while racking in enough credits to play this card. But they exist and in their hands, Hostile Infrastructure is really powerful.

Pop-Up Window is one of the best and most versatile pieces of ICE in the game.

It might not look like it, but it has a huge amount of stopping power. Early in the game paying one credit is a lot and giving one extra to the Corp is even worse. It slows the Runner and speeds the Corporation at the same time, so even if the Runner has the economy to not be bothered by it, it might not afford the speed boost it gives the Corporation. Consider that the moment the Runner crosses it twice it has given the Corp the equivalent of a Hedge Fund, without them ever spending a click!

And they are often stacked, which is specially worrysome. Crossing a single Pop-Up once is tolerable. Crossing two a couple of times is a huge swing credit swing that will let the Corp rez something nasty, like SanSan City Grid or Tollbooth which helps them gain back what they lost to those accesses. And the servers they are on become very taxing with the addition of some cheap pieces of ICE like Caduceus or Viper which keeps them from being too easy to exploit.

Pop-Up is also impactful enough to be great on a less traveled servers. For example, it's a great way to protect utility upgrades and assets. Cards like Daily Bussiness Show will inevitably get trashed, so sticking them one after the other behind a single Pop-Up will exhaust the Runner at an increased rate while giving the Corp enough money to keep dropping cards.

It also pairs extremely well with cards like NAPD, Midseason Replacements and Manhunt because a one credit difference can end up being very meaningful.

Pop-Up Window has, though, a very important limitation that comes through deckbuilding: It needs porous servers to shine and not all decks can afford to do so. For example, it's a terrible choice for Glacier decks because it's small effect won't compensate its installation costs and it's also bad for Scorch flatline decks because the Runner just won't run over centrals very often. But it's great for decks that don't care if a Runner gets in like NBN Fast Advance or Jinteki PE.

As a Runner, don't be afraid to killing it with Parasite and avoid build-ups of two or more Pop-Ups unless you have multiaccess and money to attack elsewhere.