This card was good on release. Advancing ICE always had a cost and felt pretty slow but Mass Commercialization helped recoup these costs.

However, latest innovations in ICE advancement make this card a bit too good. SSO Industries: Fueling Innovation started the ball by advancing ICE for free, hence under a few conditions (having a face up agenda rezzed, only advancing one ICE per turn).

Then NISEI turned the dial by Wall to Wall, which places an advancement counter on a card per turn for free. Again, no need to waste money or time to advance ICE and Mass Comm becomes pure profit. You can always trash Wall to Wall I guess.

Now things have gone out of hands with Weyland Consortium: Built to Last. You now get money for advancing ICE the first time (still losing the click, but that's better than clicking for credits), AND you get loads of credits from Mass Comm.

The cycle is complete: you can now have cake AND eat cake. Being able to go from 0 to 10+ credits (I'm being conservative) in glacier with this card is game changing. It supports grindy Weyland Government Takeover decks which are the worst to play again. Is it time to reconsider this card?

It is pretty fun in PE traps decks through...

I'll just say it: My moderately-experienced opinion believes that this is the strongest corp card in System Gateway, and I don't care about you randos championing Spinny. It does something that very operations do. It's a design space that is equally exciting as it is dangerous, with how quickly Nisei had to hit the PD rush deck that was terrorizing standard. I think we all knew that this card was strong going into release day, but we still underestimated it.

Extra "clicks" are difficult to come by for the corp, and difficult to find cheaply. When they are cheap, it's expensive or interactive. Shipment from Tennin is an amazingly strong card that now finds itself in Nisei jail, and it could be turned off by the runner for most of the game. Jeeves has good numbers as well, but must be preinstalled, has a strict requirement to fire, and can be trashed.

Enter Seamless Launch. Ignoring combos, Seamless Launch is basically the cheapest way to get extra "clicks" ever. As an operation, it cannot be trashed without some kind of tool. Seamless Launch itself cannot be turned off. The way to take away the card's power is to run whatever it's intended for, immediately. This is surprisingly difficult, because any card installed in a remote can be a target.

Basically, the weakness of the card is that it cannot fast advance, so it requires you to build a remote. However, you want to do this anyway. It enables ease of scoring 4, even 5 advancement agendas, and it does so economically positively! You get two advancement tokens for the price of one, and worst case, the extra click you get off Seamless can be used to play an econ operation if you decide to score a 3 advancement agenda.

This card is one of a kind in standard, and naturally in startup as well. With a single card, you get extra clicks while going economically positive. The only card I can think of that can do the same thing is Fast Break, and it goes credit neutral a lot of the time, while being unplayable for a lot of the game.

Without requiring another card to survive in a remote, and allowing you to score basically any agenda you want at low opportunity and credit cost, it does something many runners are just not equipped to handle. This is not to say that the card should be played as universally as Spinny. Some scoring plans just don't need or want it. But if you can make it work, Spinny and Seamless should absolutely make influence 1-9.

System Update - Startup Review!

Sneakdoor Beta is a card, that in startup at least, I think will excite a lot of new players before they use it and realize that while it is not bad, it is not necessarily as amazing as it looks at first glance, requiring a reasonable amount of support to reach it's full potential, and in Startup, that support might not be enough. The dream here is the corp spends lots of time icing up HQ, they think they're super safe and have lots of agendas in hand, when the runner slams this down and then gets into HQ 3 times for free, getting all of the agendas. This is a beautiful dream of course, and not impossible, but I think not really as likely as one would hope. Since I'm starting off so negatively, let's look at some cons first.

Cost: 4 is not a super high cost, but it's not a cheap card you can casually throw down. It'll probably have to be done with at least a little bit of planning. 2 is a pretty high cost as well, and even late game will crowd your memory, unless you've got your full suite of DZMZ Optimizers out.

Click to Run: Click to run cards can be pretty good. Red Team is a pretty useful tool early on for runners. However, I'd say that for that the economy is more important - you're getting 3 creds and also potentially getting a sweet access at the same time. However, for Sneakdoor Beta, since you're clicking to run, you're locked out of your nice HQ multi-access, namely Jailbreak and Legwork. You do have Docklands Pass, but you are locked out of those really big amazing HQ runs. And single accesses are downright sad. As a Corp I've giggled when a runner installs this and wastes 3 clicks running HQ when I have no agendas in hand, knowing they can't be sure if they're getting unlucky on their picks or if they're just unlucky overall.

Meta: Startup in general is not a meta which is adverse to icing up Archives. Red Team, Security Testing, Leech all benefit from running an unprotected archives. Corps might even ice up archives before dumping some agendas in their and reshuffling with Spin Doctor, just so it's not totally free. While most corps aren't putting their best ice here, something still taxing might show up, and hey guess what, you're probably running low on space for breakers since you had to install this.

So when is Sneakdoor Beta useful? It really shines when it has other cards along with it that want you to get into HQ, however Startup doesn't have too many of those. Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter is probably the runner happiest to use this, since he now has 2 routes to get into HQ and get a card back, and he can choose the easier path. The aforementioned Docklands Pass also gives you that necessary multi-access. The other two cards which reward the runner for getting into HQ in startup are Lucky Charm and Emergency Shutdown. These can both be powerful effects, and you could set up a turn where you play Sneakdoor -> get the free HQ access -> Derez their Archer -> Run the remote and stop the Anoetic from ending your run to steal the game winning agenda, but that is another beautiful dream that is even more convoluted than the first one.

The other place this can be useful is with Tāo Salonga: Telepresence Magician, since it will usually force at least some kind of ice on Archives, and with Tao's ability you can really start moving the ice around to right where you want it. If HQ is very unsafe since there's now two paths to get in, corps are going to be desperate to install agendas, and shaper has great tools for digging in R&D, and has the DZMZ Optimizers to make this affordable.

Overall, Sneakdoor Beta is a very powerful effect that I think doesn't have the support required to really make it a great card in startup, but in a few cases it can really do some work.

System Update - Startup Review!

Legwork is a card with a powerful effect that really competes for slots in a Startup deck. Looking at 3 cards in HQ is really quite nice, since it means it's more likely than not that if there is an agenda in there, you will get to see it. You'll also get to see most of the corp's upcoming gameplan. Downside is that it costs 2creds, 2 influence, and if you only look at a bunch of ice it doesn't actually give you much information. Also if the corp is only sitting at 3 cards, it's more access than is even necessary.

Your main competitors are Docklands Pass and Jailbreak. The pass can actually combo really well with legwork, letting you see a whopping 4 cards, which can be great if you feel the corp is getting Agenda screwed or is really planning something big next turn. However, getting that persistent additional HQ access is probably worth more to most decks than a slightly larger burst access turn. Jailbreak is a more interesting comparison. You're getting to access one less card, in exchange for drawing a card if successful, the run being free, and having the flexibility to target either HQ or R&D, and costing no influence. It's a lot of advantages to Jailbreak, and I would most decks who are interested in getting additional multi-access to go for Jailbreak first, and then Docklands Pass. However, it's hard to beat the sheer burst access of Legwork, so I would except many runners to still run a copy alongside the above mentioned tools, especially in run heavy event decks like Ken "Express" Tenma: Disappeared Clone, or in Zahya Sadeghi: Versatile Smuggler where the extra access will pay for themselves, making this card free.

Outside of crim, this card can be useful in Anarch who's going trash heavy with René "Loup" Arcemont: Party Animal and/or Imp, really robbing the corp of some options. Generally I wouldn't except to see it too much in shaper, where you have lots of excellent R&D multi-access tools, and would expect for runners to spend their 2 influence on the pass and using jailbreak over this.

As a startup player, every runner should be aware of Saisentan. It has the honor of being the only card in Startup that, with no setup, can flatline an unsuspecting runner with 5 cards in grip. Yes you need to have at least 3 of a card type in hand to make that possible, but that's not really that unlikely, especially if you're running a specialty runner like Az McCaffrey: Mechanical Prodigy or Ken "Express" Tenma: Disappeared Clone. But what are the odds of being flatlined? If you were curious like me, the math is: Assuming the corp picks the 'correct' card type: 3 Same type in hand - 10% chance of being flatlined 4 Same type in hand - 40% chance of being flatlined 5 Same type in hand - 100% chance....

Seeing the above math, and the fact that the minimum is 3 net damage, and you're often worried about being low on cards against Jinteki, it's clear this ice is meant to be a punishment for runners face checking random ice with no breakers, or basically an ETR against runners who don't have a killer installed (just, this ice ETR by killing the runner. Which will do it). You can even cheekily get some damage on runners who think they are safe putting a Botulus or Boomerang on this and running.

So how does Saisentan do when the runner has the killer? In startup, it's okay. Basically every killer is breaking for 3 creds. Bukhgalter gets through with 4 but their rebate brings to 2, and Afterimage also spends 2. Odore pays 5 if they don't have their virtual friends, and Echelon has to pay 6 if it's by itself. None of these are terrible deals, but really you're looking for an unprepared runner facechecking this. And that's why runner friends, always be aware of your face.