So I guess everybody knows about the MCA Troubleshooter by now. I'm not going to talk about that one as I think he'll take a dive once the agent from the Errata Corporation in Minnesota gets his ass to Mars.

I have to say, I kinda like MCA Informant. It's not a strong card but it's nice from a game design perspective. The idea behind MCA Informant is to make one of the runner's connections a snitch and make the runner pay up or risk corp retaliation through a tag. This forces a choice on the runner and forcing choices on your opponent should increase the interactivity and tension of the game, both good things.

Because MCA Informant only works on connections there's a limited list of options. Looking through that list we have some familiar names like Professional Contacts, Street Peddler, Film Critic, Tech Trader, Political Operative, Technical Writer, Beth Kilrain-Chang and Aaron Marrón.

However not all of these are suited to put MCA Informant on. Cards that trash themselves kinda defeat the purpose of forcing a choice, the runner will simply trash them. That means Street Peddler and Technical Writer aren't good choices.

Another way to get rid of MCA Informant is by simply installing a second version of a unique card. Most connections are unique. This is a good way to replace that snitch Aaron Marrón with it's own twin brother (I guess he learned that trick from Rene at the cafe).

A third way is to consider The Price of Freedom. Ok, it's a bit silly but if MCA Informant ever becomes popular it's a good counterplay. I do think The Price of Freedom deserves a special ruling that you can pay with corp cards with it though.

Assuming you've got MCA Informant installed, is it any good? Well... kinda. Most of the time the runner will simply trash the connection, most aren't that critical and being tagged is generally worse. So it's probably click 1: pay 2 and dump the snitch. It's a bit of a tax but it's not very reliable since you don't know if the runner will have use connections.

Because MCA Informant is a terminal you can't immediately follow up with the usual tag nastyness (The All-Seeing I, BOOM!, Closed Accounts). There are a few small tricks you can still use though.

Most useful is probably rezzing a Zealous Judge. If it's well protected enough that gives you the option of tagging the runner at the start of your next turn so you can unless corp payback.

A more creative option is scoring a sufficiently advanced Market Research. It's not terribly easy to do but if you can get the combo off that's a 4/3 you scored and one that's only a 4/2 to the runner.

In Harishchandra Ent.: Where You're the Star even having the runner tagged for a little while gives you valuable information.

That's about all I can think of though. I'm sure someone will pop up in the comments to point out the obvious thing I missed because my palm hasn't has sufficiently close contact with my forehead today yet.

MCA Informant is an interesting card and I hope FFG will explore this part of the design space further, but as is (without the Corporate Troubleshooter accidental combo) it's not really a strong card. I wouldn't want to call it very weak either however, it's applicable in enough cases that there's a fair chance you'll get some value out of it.

So the website here does not reflect this yet, but this card did receive an errata. It can only be used on a "connection resource". So no more cheap troubleshooter plays. That said, lets move on.

This card seems like a necessary evil to me. Using this card will almost always force the runner to trash that connection. And to use 2 and a to do it. Because let's face it, if they were going to play "tag me", they probably wouldn't have installed a connection (there may be some exceptions, like the upcoming Jarogniew Mercs). This is quite powerful, as you can get rid of some of the most troublesome cards runners have access to. And the reason it is so necessary is because there are certain connections that completely undermine a specific strategy you may be employing. Seeing Film Critic hit the table when you are playing as Haarpsichord Studios: Entertainment Unleashed elicits a sinking feeling. Ditto if you are playing a Midseason Replacements deck (if you are playing this kind of deck though, I advise you to stop, it is a stupid card). Aaron Marrón is going to give any tag-heavy deck a hard time, whether you are relying on said tags to flat-line or just tax the runner. So MCA Informant can save the day, and without the chancy psi game. Hence the 4 play-cost seems fair.

The evil comes in the form of its interaction with another card, namely, Zealous Judge. After playing MCA Informant, you can rez Zealous Judge as soon as the runners turn starts. They then basically have to do the following right away: Get rid of the Informant, access the Judge, and trash him. I made a deck specifically to see if this was as easy to win with as I envisioned. And I went 7 for 7. I made it in Skorpios Defense Systems: Persuasive Power just for the smaller deck size. Almost all runners drop a connection right away. Hide the Judge behind a Data Raven and/or a Chimera and they are going to have a real tough time so early in the game. After they try and fail, just hit 'em with a nuke. Anyway, seems a bit too powerful to me, so I will not be doing it again.

So, everyone has seen the MCA-Corporate Troubleshooter combo that hasn't had an errata yet......so CTM just gets significantly better. Obviously MCA is also great for A-a-Ron and other game changing resources. Let's take advantage of this card while it's so powerfulate! Not sure what else to say. Good day.