It's a Trap!

It's a Trap! 2[credit]

Ice: Trap
Strength: 0
Influence: 3

Whenever this ice is exposed, do 2 net damage.

[subroutine] The Runner trashes 1 of their installed cards. Trash this ice.

I warned you.
Illustrated by Liiga Smilshkalne
Decklists with this card

Old Hollywood (oh)

#90 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Old Hollywood
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

The three stages of "It's a Trap!":

Stage 1: [reads the card for the first time] "WHOA THIS IS GREAT"

Stage 2: [re-reads the first sentence] "Wait... when exposed? This doesn't seem that great."

Stage 3: [filed into your collection, never to be seen again]

(The Universe of Tomorrow era)
192
I'm glad I'm not the only one :D I actually put it in a deck the week that the pack came out thinking I could chum it for 5 net damage... —
I'm starting to think FFG regretted making Au Revoire + Snitch a thing. So the answer was give Jinteki all the counters. (This, Ancestral Imagery, Upgrade that requires a program trash to jack out... ) —
Port Anson Grid, for whoever's still reading comments for this card. —

Since exposing is very underutilized in Netrunner, it isn't very likely that the net damage will ever land. (Unless you are playing against Silhouette: Stealth Operative, but she isn't very popular either.)

Trashing a program for a click and two credits is good value, but it's the runners choice, which severely limits the punch in the mid and late game. Also, if there is a Crypsis or Overmind on the board it is worthless.

At 3 influence, it's not even likely to be splashed, so there is no surprise factor with it being played out of faction. All in all, a very weak trap, although the flavor is fun.

(Old Hollywood era)
aaaand it doesn't even have to be a program, as I just noticed. so the runner could just trash a nearly depleted Armitage...even worse. —
Even if exposing were popular - which I agree, it's not - and even if exposing ICE were common, rather than the focus being on cards in servers to see if they're worth breaking into or not - the runner's not going to expose this more than once to find out what it is. So it's at best a one-off hit of 2 net damage. —
Only possible use I can see for it is to counteract Au Revior/Snitch builds, and then they'll just run a different server instead. I like defending cards, but so far, this one is utterly terrible. —
I think this ICE has potential with other ICE like crick or architect - it's worth trying out in my opinion —
I didn't think about Snitch, but yeah, that's definitely an edge case. Crick combo could be cool. Maybe in Industrial Genomics? —
I think it could work in a range of decks, including Genomics providing you have multiple cricks and ways to deal with decoders. I personally see it's a trap as support for Jinteki code gate decks that use lag time and encrypted portals - this will then force them to pay big bucks to break crick over and over or repeatedly forfeit installed cards to trap —
OK, bit of a noob question but is exposed not the same as if the runner encounters it? Technically if he didn't know what it was it is now exposed. —

No

Hail To Admiral Ackbar, a.k.a., I Will Personally Punch The First Person To Make A Trap Joke


It's high time we had another look at It's a Trap!, with the rise of a certain turtle into the forefront of the meta. For those who can't be bothered hovering over the link, Aumakua is an icebreaker that partially relies on exposing cards to build strength. Traditionally the Corp hasn't had much in the way of protection against exposure, save outliers like Akitaro Watanabe (who is no longer with us), and this card here. Surprise! A Runner using Infiltration, Deuces Wild or some other exposure mechanic (Silhouette comes to mind) will find themselves blasted in the face. Downsides are that this trap is unlikely to be fired more than once, and as a 2-to-rez, self-trashing ICE with a mediocre subroutine, it's barely worth the effort to include in your deck...

...but wait, what's that I see there on the Martian horizon?

Is it that time of year already? When the weak sun rises over the planting domes, and it's time for our Mandatory Seed Replacement? I guess it's time to get Replanting...


Historically Jinteki has had a few tricks like the ones I've just mentioned, like the now-set Sunset, the single-option Tenma Line, and the semi-inversificatory Mumbad City Grid. But the Red Sands cycle really kicks this sort of shenanigans into high gear: Mandatory Seed Replacement allows you to shuffle all your ICE around, and Replanting allows you to install ICE into nasty positions without paying the install cost. These two cards together can let you play cup and balls with It's A Trap!, re-hiding its hidden information and forcing the Runner to be extra careful about using exposure tactics. This either means they have to dive into Archives/open remotes for Aumakua tokens (always a bad idea in Jinteki), facecheck ICE (also a bad idea in Jinteki), or bite the bullet and expose things all over again (now with extra traps!)

Now if only its subroutine wasn't so terrible...


tl;dr - It's A Trap has some potential in an Aumakua-heavy meta, and synergizes well with Jinteki's native ice-shuffling cards to make the Runner nervous about running. However, it's still not that great. I would say the changes in the current meta have maybe bumped it up from 46th card to a maybe-include for a specialized Chronos Protocol or Potential Unleashed deck.

(Crimson Dust era)
110
Aren't a bunch of the Aumakua splashes these days not even bothering with expose effects? The majority of the decks I've seen rely on datasucker, dean lister, or just accessing a ton of cards to power the turtle up. —
Nah, still not even close to worth it. —
Whoops, I just noticed I meant Zaibatsu Loyalty over Akitaro Watanabe. Still rotated, though. —

Real good against 419: Amoral Scammer and GPI Net Tap. Just like Psychic Field. Uh. It's also highly inconsistent. Just like Psychic Field. This card is probably never worth rezzing. It's on expose effect is the only worthwhile thing about it.

(System Core 2019 era)

How does accessing archives work? Are upside-down cards "Exposed" at time of access, then selectively accessed, or are they simply in limbo waiting to be "Accessed"?

Wondering how this would interact with something like Industrial Genomics.

(Crimson Dust era)
Cards in Archives can't be exposed. Only installed cards can be exposed. When the runner moves to the access cards step of a run on Archives, all cards are flipped face up, and then the runner chooses which order to access each card inside and in the root of Archives —
Awesome, thanks! —