On first glance, it’s really easy to have your eyes glaze over this card and assume nothing more than that it’s a permanent citizen of Janktown. However, Jackpot! has the same value that a card like Dirty Laundry or Successful Demonstration has: it rewards you for doing what you wanted to do anyways as a runner – steal agendas. Given that it can trigger on cards like Notoriety/Fan Site as well, it can be flexible in many Shaper decks.

Through a lot of playtesting, I’ve found Jackpot! does really well keeping up runner tempo. It says – “Go ahead, make that big, expensive DDM run” or “Go ahead, plough through that taxing remote” and most important of all, it says “Don’t be scared of a Punitive Counterstrike threat, here’s some hard-earned dough for your troubles”.

As every card should, Jackpot! definitely has its downsides. I’ve had several games where I would lose 7-0 with a total of almost THIRTY s sitting on multiple Jackpots. Through cyberspace, I can basically hear them laughing at my pathetic and futile attempts to steal an agenda as I stare down credits that I desperately need. In that regard, Jackpot! isn’t like Stimhack where it can provide you the game-winning run – in fact Jackpot! is a dead card if you’re already at game point. Which means it has to be used as an x3 so that you can see it early and get it ticking which is troublesome because that takes up precious slots that could be going to other x1 tech slots – The Shadow Net, Dean Lister, Same Old Thing, etc.

In summary, this card is not worth the full x3 slots unless you live in a Punitive Counterstrike meta (I’m looking at you, limited cardpools) and even then this card should only be played over meat damage prevention when you’re tight on influence. This card might not look like it with its innocent 0 install cost but is quite high risk/reward so it won’t find itself in competitive decks soon. Still, it’s made several of my opponents sweat bullets through virtual space as they see my Jackpot! hit 20+ s. At any point, any single access on centrals feels like a game of Russian Roulette for the corp as they pray that the next card won’t be their last. And when you do hit that sweet, sweet agenda, don’t forget to yell the obligatory “Jackpot!” for the saltiest of tears.

It seems odd to me that there's no review for High-Profile Target yet, as it seems really strong to me in tag-heavy decks, such as when using any NBN deck, really. In my opinion, SYNC: Everything, Everywhere is the best choice here, though an argument can be made for NBN: Making News. All it takes is 3 tags to win the game with one use of HPT on regular hand size. Hard-Hitting News makes for an especially deadly combo, as it forces the Runner to pay 4 credits, or 6 when using SYNC to avoid the risk of certain death the next turn.

Your options for ICE are Thoth, Data Raven and Gutenberg for tagging. IP Block for dealing with pesky AIs and also to stop tagged Runners. Pachinko is an obvious choice, but Endless EULA is great, especially for economic reasons. Consider using Sub Boost to give your taggers the ability to end turns on top.

Escalate Vitriol, Quantum Predictive Model and Net Quarantine are good agenda options, with Fly on the Wall being a must-have, considering it's one of the few cards to allow you to tag without tracing during your turn.

A sleeper card in an absolutely stacked datapack, PAD Tap is drip economy with an interesting trigger: it pays you when your opponent gets paid. Flavourfully Criminal, this card’s best-case scenario is that it pays you 1 on your turn and 1 on your opponent’s turn. To top that scenario off, you’ve got enough Fall Guy installed to dissuade the corp from even thinking about trashing these (unfortunately PAD Tap does not combo with Wireless Net Pavilion).

However, we should never judge a card by its best-case scenario and instead judge it on what its expected results are. With that in mind, here’s a breakdown of cards that trigger PAD Tap that are ubiquitous in the meta:

Neutral:

Corp’s Turn: Hedge Fund / IPO / Rashida Jaheem/ PAD Campaign

Possible on both Turns: NGO Front

NBN:

Possible on both Turns: Pop-up Window, Azmari EdTech

Weyland:

Corp’s Turn: Commercial Bankers Group / Hostile Takeover/ Standoff / All The Transactions!

Possible on both Turns: Hortum

Jinteki:

Corp’s Turn: Celebrity Gift

Possible on both Turns: Pālanā Foods

HB:

Corp’s Turn: All The Clearances!

Possible on both Turns: Sportsmetal

As you can see, the above lists aren’t fully comprehensive but they cover quite a large majority of the popular economy options available today. At one influence, PAD Tap continues the blue trend of being under-influenced (see Aumakua) so you can splash for it with relative ease.

There’s one more consideration to be made though and that’s that it comes with a pre-built trashing option. Given that a smart corp player will trash PAD Tap knowing the potential money their deck could make the runner, PAD Tap has a great home in the economy denial archetype. One last thing: PAD Tap doesn’t trigger when the corp clicks for credits but if you’re at the point in a game where your opponent is forced to do that, you as a runner have probably already won.

A far more interesting and balanced decoder to its predecessor, Yog.0, Cradle is the newest Anarch fixed-strength decoder with a condition that can end up being quite the hindrance: modified icebreaker strength based on current grip-size. Shapers and Criminals have plenty of options at breaking code gates with Gordian Blade and/or Abagnale so I think I can safely say this won’t be seeing play outside of Red.

While cheap gearcheck ICE like Enigma or Thimblerig have been the bane of Black Orchestra for a long time, Cradle eats those two up for breakfast. Unfortunately, the presence of the big 3-subbed code gates: DNA Tracker, Fairchild 3.0, and Mausolus make Cradle a liability. Without strength modifiers, a runner would need an empty grip to break the latter two (after which they would commit neural suicide on a potential Kakugo) and suffers a painful facecheck against the former.

I see two potential options then to playing Cradle: using strength-modifiers and grip-size-managers like Dedicated Processor and Patchwork respectively or consistently maintaining a near-empty grip to keep up Cradle’s high base strength. It’s a high upkeep for a card that no longer says "0: Break code gate subroutine."

While previous Yog.0 decks only had to worry about boosting the decoder’s strength up, decks utilizing Cradle have to worry about that and keeping its base strength manageable through their grip. Outside of Gnat or Noble Path decks, I think this card’s strength-modifier keeps it from seeing any competitive play.

This card is basically just to tax the runner a bit more, preferably with an expensive piece of ice. If a breaker like Gordian Blade is breaking a DNA Tracker, then it would cost the runner 7 credits. Subtracting the card's rez cost equals a credit advantage of 5 credits in that scenario, better than a Hedge Fund, which gives a 4 credit advantage.

One synergy to mention is Komainu, which does not lose its subs until the run ends.