It's been discovered, over time, that Engolo is an Anarch (and minifaction) card in disguise. You rarely see it in Shaper (apart from the occasional Kit deck); shapers have all the best decoders (and thus can typically play something that fits their deck better than Engolo), tend to prefer to spend the early game building up their economy rather than running, and are often short of MU. You rarely see it in Criminal, either (although more frequently in Criminal than in Shaper!); if Criminals want an expensive decoder, they'll normally play Amina which has better numbers, and they have plenty of tools for early aggression other than icebreakers so Engolo doesn't have much of an opportunity to shine.

The thing about Engolo is that it's a card that's at its best when you need to run, but don't have a full set of breakers. It'll get you into servers early, which is nice; but it's also incredibly expensive at doing that, which rather puts a damper on things. The problem is that if you're using it for early aggression, you're paying 5 to install it, and more to use it, which leaves you at a low enough credit total that most of your economy doesn't work and you're at perpetual risk of getting blown up by Hard-Hitting News. Meanwhile, it's able to stand on its own for only a narrow section of time (the time before the Corp can manage to double-non-code gate-ICE their servers), and then is inferior to more normal breakers against the majority of ICE you'll face. So you're putting a lot in, and not getting enough benefit from it before it starts to fade in value.

A side issue is that Engolo looks like it wants to be a card for aggressive decks, but those decks often want to run – sometimes even have to run – lots of times in a turn in order to make their economy work. That isn't the greatest fit for a card which has "Use this ability only once per turn." stapled onto the reason why you'd play the card in the first place.

Still, Anarch as a faction has a lot of features that make Engolo a good fit. For one thing, they have no good decoders (except for possibly Buzzsaw, if you have enough support), so having suboptimal numbers is less of an issue than it would be elsewhere. Most importantly, though, Anarchs are good at keeping servers small; they have cards like Hippo and Devil Charm and Spooned to tear down a large server before it gets too large, and cards like Stargate to prevent the Corp drawing more ICE to replace it. But the main drawback of Anarch ICE destruction decks is that they often have trouble tuning themselves to the sort of ICE the corp is using. Being able to break ICE with Hippo needs an appropriate breaker. Being able to break it with cutlery requires knowing what sort of ICE it is.

Engolo fixes all that. "Hey", it says, "I know what sort of ICE you're facing: it's a code gate. I know which breaker you need: me." If you're only facing each piece of ICE once, having slightly awkward numbers isn't that much of an issue, but knowing for certain that you'll be appropriately set up for a specific piece of ICE, regardless of what it is, is really valuable. So Engolo is close to a perfect fit for ICE destruction decks, which can often rely on it as their primary/only breaker.

Engolo is also commonly seen in Adam, who has no breakers of his own, and who gets huge benefits from early aggression. It isn't as great a fit as in Anarch, but it nonetheless is a good fit for Adam's playstyle, often persuading him to import Engolo rather than something else.

As a side note, Engolo is really, really frustrating for certain sorts of Corp deck. Those decks are unpopular, so you wouldn't normally play it just to beat them; but Corp decks that heavily rely on cutting you off a particular sort of breaker (e.g. killers or fracters) hate having to fight through Engolos as well, and it works incredibly well against combos that rely on mythic or trap ICE.

Still, even if you're facing a more normal sort of deck, being able to make critical runs early is nice (even if you have to overpay to get past medium-strength ICE), and the numbers aren't even all that bad; Engolo is at its worst against the common 3-strength ICE (and loses out to Amina against larger ICE too, because it typically has 3 subroutines), but smaller and larger ICE is still widely played, and Engolo is one of the best breakers you could ask for against something like a Surveyor that's completely out of control. Engolo's become a little worse in the current upgrade-heavy metagame because it isn't that great when running multiple times a turn (which you'll need to be able to do against things like Anoetic Void and Border Control). But if you can keep servers small, the heavy install cost and frustratingly frequent need to boost will be offset by the fact that it'll carry you through much of the game before you find the rest of your rig.

The last review of New Construction was over 5 years ago. People have kind-of forgotten about it since, which isn't that surprising because it doesn't fit in most decks (in particular, the similar Oaktown Renovation is better than it in basically every way unless your deck is very weird).

The other review suggests that it's a card for asset spam. Asset spam is very rarely played out of Weyland nowadays, because Gagarin Deep Space has been banned (and all the exciting asset spam cards are over in NBN nowadays anyway; the deck that got Gagarin banned wasn't even an asset-spam deck, but a tag-and-bag deck based around never-advancing False Lead to deprive the Runner of clicks to clear the tags).

Instead, there's nowadays one and only one reason to play New Construction: it happens to fit well into the Dedication Ceremony + Reconstruction Contract combo. Dedication+Reconstruction ("Dediconstruction"?) allows you to cheaply fast-advance a 3/2 from hand, and Weyland decks that use a combination of Dediconstruction and Audacity were a force in the meta for quite a while (up until Titan Transnational, the usual ID for them, got banned). One of the biggest problem with these decks, though, is the perennial fast-advance problem of "I ran out of 3/2s" (which is a particular problem in Weyland because it has a tendency to use copies of Project Atlas to find each other, thinning your deck of 3/2s). Some of them resorted to Merger as a fourth 3/2, but some players noticed that there was a better option available.

The thing is, although Dediconstruction normally only fast-advances 3/2s, you can also use the same two cards to fast-advance New Construction:

1. Install New Construction.
2. Manually advance New Construction, installing Reconstruction Contract. (Yes, I know it doesn't make too much flavour sense.)
   • Between clicks, rez Reconstruction Contract.
3. Play Dedication Ceremony on Reconstruction Contract.
   • Before ending your turn, trash Reconstruction Contract to move its counters to New Construction, then score.

If your deck is planning to Dediconstruct most of its agendas anyway, then running New Construction isn't all that much worse than running a blank 3/2; you can still fast-advance it with your main combo, after all, and that's what your deck mostly cares about.

Anyway, Above the Law was recently printed, and is a much better option for your fourth 3/2, so to want this, you'd have to be playing a Weyland fast-advance deck that's sufficiently all-in that you want five or more things to fast advance. That isn't so ridiculous in a fast-advance deck, so it's possible we'll see this card come up every now and then on occasion. After all, Weyland fast advance decks have been top-tier over the last several metagames. You often don't see them towards the start of a metagame, because they keep getting key cards banned to keep them in check, and it takes people a while to figure out how to reconstruct the deck to dodge the bans before they start turning up at tournaments again. But they keep finding some way to come back time and time again, so it wouldn't surprise me if New Construction starts turning up again on rare occasions in the future. Hey, it's Weyland. Reconstructing things is kind-of what they do.

After testing it a bit, I'm pretty confident that the best place for this is a fast advance deck.

For one thing, it's a 3/2. Fast advance decks would gladly play blank 3/2s, because they need something to do their fast-advancing on; normally only 3-advancement agendas can be fast-advanced, and you can only do it a limited number of times in the game, so you want to get as many points from it as you can.

But the effect is a crazily good effect in some gamestates (despite being useless in others). If the Runner drops a Liberated Account with all 16 on it, or if their deck is heavily dependent on some particular resource, or the like, then being able to get rid of it, no questions asked, is a pretty huge swing in your favour. When you're playing a fast advance deck, then you have the power to score a 3/2 at the drop of a hat (assuming you have your combo in hand), and being able to snipe a resource with that is a pretty big deal. It's worth noting that your alternative 3/2s (assuming you're in Weyland because otherwise Above the Law isn't legal, your choice is Project Atlas and Merger) don't do anything when scored as a 3/2, so being able to fast-advance something and get a beneficial side effect is awesome.

Above the Law isn't quite so amazing elsewhere, but it's still fine; the 3/2 statline is rare and valuable for a reason. I've tried it out in rush decks too, and being able to save 1, over the cost of rushing out a 4/2 is nice (although a little minor). It usually ends up sniping something when you score it in the early game, too (maybe not much of something, but you're still slowing the Runner down, and slowing the Runner down without losing tempo yourself is something that rush decks love to do but usually can't). Probably it isn't worth running this over something like Offworld Office, Oaktown Renovation or Cyberdex Sandbox if you're building a pure rush deck, though.

That said, Above the Law can still be pretty viable in rush decks, if you're looking for a different way to close out the game. Rush decks often get stuck on 4 to 6 points, and need to switch strategy. Including Above the Law as a 3/2, along with a cheap fast-advance card like Audacity (in Standard) or Trick of Light (in Startup), will give you the potential to be able to score 2 points out of nowhere, and finish off the game. (Project Atlas is better for this, but you may well be running all three copies of that already, and having redundancy in 3/2s is helpful for this sort of game because a lot of them tend to get stolen.)

It's also worth noting that Above the Law is usable in any sort of Weyland deck as a tech card, against The Turning Wheel in particular. Most Runner decks which run it run only one copy, leave that copy installed pretty much all game (making it easy to score an agenda while it's installed), and have no way to recur it, so scoring an Above the Law can shut off what is usually one of their main win conditions. I've won several games this way. Probably Scapenet is a better tech card against this in the abstract, but Above the Law has the advantage of going in an agenda slot and not costing any influence, so it disrupts your deckbuilding a lot less than a Scapenet would. The Turning Wheel isn't popular at the moment, because the sort of decks that it goes in are bad against the top Corp decks; but if you're playing a Weyland deck that's weak to that sort of effect, you may well consider slotting in Above the Law just to be able to handle it.

The previous review are all super good, so instead, I will add some synergies that are fun to play with.

First is with Tāo Salonga: Telepresence Magician. Most corp won't put an ice on archive against Tāo Salonga: Telepresence Magician, because their most potent ice will be sure to move to archive. Once Tāo Salonga: Telepresence Magician put Sneakdoor Beta on the board, there will be many run possible using it, until the corp put an ice on archive. Then, just play as normal knowing you just forked the corp and got to see HQ a bunch of time. This is a game winning strategy.

Second is with Rejig. Early or late, once you put Sneakdoor Beta, you will get a few run out of it before the corp ice up archive. At which point, you can use Rejig to uninstall Sneakdoor Beta and install SOMETHING ELSE for 4 less (and freeing ). On top of it, you will still have Sneakdoor Beta in hand if it could come in handy.

Otherwise, the mere fact of forcing the corp to ice up archive (especially if you have a Docklands Pass installed). You can for the corp to rez its archive ices. Then stop using Sneakdoor Beta and hammer anything else (which is now less iced). But you already understood that.

This card is one of the few game changing non breaker program of the game. It is well worth the investment. Nice graphic and quote too!

Along with Bukhgalter, Femme Fatale is the second iconic sentry breaker of the game.

Yes, it is the MOST expensive breaker in the game also. Upon installation, it will make an ice trivial to pass. Some ice can remain expensive to pass (Mausolus and Ansel 1.0 would cost 3 and Masvingo can be made way too expensive). But it make some ice worthless (Tollbooth and Funhouse for example).

The best support card for Femme Fatale is Rejig. Allowing you to change its ice placement (or to reinstall it after the corp trashed the ice it was on).

Other good support for its sentry breaking ability are Takobi and Leech. Each point of strength that you lower is essentialy 2 saved, that is good value.

But the fact remain that for the install cost, it is seldom worth it to play (aside from the fact that it cost 1 influence).

Of note, Tāo Salonga: Telepresence Magician can create immense value out of this card, since the ice on which it has been installed can be placed in the most advantageous position.

Don't despair, there are plenty of support for that part.

For shaper, Compile and Test Run will let you use it for cheap. Compile is especially good here, since you need only a single copy of Femme Fatale to be able to bypass for cheap any ice and still be able to break a sentry. This give you something like Inside Job but without the influence cost.

For anarch (and other runner), Retrieval Run will allow you to install it for free. The value here is tremendous!

Fro criminal, there is Credit Kiting, allowing you to get great value out of it also.

As can be seen, using Femme Fatale require you to think more about your deckbuilding decision, since the card need support. But anytime it comes on the board, you'll see the corp eyes pop open and sweat start to drip.

Iconic art, iconic quote, just iconic to the game.