Corporate Defector

Corporate Defector 0[credit]

Resource: Connection
Influence: 0

Whenever the Corp draws a card with the basic action, reveal that card.

He was suddenly very motivated to pass on confidential information.
Illustrated by Caroline Gariba
Decklists with this card

Crimson Dust (cd)

#109 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Crimson Dust
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

Corporate Defector seems to have three things going for it:

  1. It's free in terms of credits and influence.
  2. It sometimes gives you a bit of information about the corp's strategy. Put otherwise: it makes click-drawing for the corp more dangerous in addition to being efficient because it could reveal an agenda or trap to the runner.
  3. The Price of Freedom.

It has two major downsides:

  1. Opportunity cost (you could have slotted a different card).
  2. MCA Informant.

The problem with the defector is that the effect, while useful, is unreliable. If the corp doesn't need to draw extra cards or doesn't want to risk drawing extra cards or has an alternative way of drawing cards the defector is useless.

In general there are too few deck slots in a minimum size deck to justify cards that may be useful unless they're extremely useful (i.e. silver bullets like Plascrete Carapace). That leaves the defector without a ride.

(Crimson Dust era)
397
Clearly, you have to trash the corp hand to make him any useful :D —
Every corp click-to-draw fuels your turtle breaker. —
Turtle is only on "expose" not on "reveal." Also, this card creates a strong dis-incentive for the Corp to draw cards, which slows the Corp down. I think for a zero-cost resource it is pretty strong. —

As pointed out in Silvs review this card does not give you information on what the corp is going to get on his mandatory draw, making it somewhat unreliable. But what if you did knew? This where a certain escaped Bioroid comes in. With Adam you can usually get at least one successfull run a turn and look at the top card of R&D.

This creates a serious dilemma for the corp, escpecially if there are Logic Bombs on the table. And with double HQ access agendas aren't even safe in hand!

Overall i really like this card in Adam and encourage everyone to give it a spin! (Also: Good Isolation target if you are short on money and don't mind throwing your allies under the bus. Or feed them to the dogs in this case.)

(Magnum Opus Reprint era)