Most of the reviews for London Library are from way back in good old 2015, and honestly everything they've said is pretty spot on. However the card pool has expanded in a big way and there some new interactions kicking around for London Library! So a small update is in order!

The main combo I've noticed (there are most certainly many more) has to do with the 'Brid' breakers out of Criminal. So we are talking Peregrine, Saker and Golden. Alright so the key to this combo is the fact that the brid breakers uninstall themselves and move back to your grip when you use their ice derzing ability. That allows you to save the that you would normally need to use to recover them off of London Library.

Using London Library you avoid having to pay their stupid high install costs! Instead you can use those credits to break and de-rez ice! Depending on the ice you can do some serious economic damage to the corp! However the bird breakers are still kind of expensive just to operate. That's where Şifr comes in. It can lower the strength of a single piece of ice you encounter each turn to 0. This means once per turn you could derez pretty much any card in the game for an average of about 5 credits.

So how would that work exactly? Well amusing you have both London Library and Şifr installed, your turn would look some thing like this...

1 Install bird breaker of choice on London Library.

2 Install Femme Fatale on London Library to bypass a troublesome piece ice, like Tollbooth or Archer.

3 Run on the sever of your choice. Encounter the ice you wish to derez and lower it's strength to 0 with Şifr. Pay the break cost of the ice then pay 2 to de-rez target ice and add the bird back to your hand. Jack out or continue the run depending on remaining ice in sever.

4 Pick back up Femme Fatale.

Versus glacier decks this is a pretty legit tactic; here are some examples of de-rez costs.

DNA Tracker would cost 5 with both London Library and Şifr installed. It would cost 9 for Peregrine to break unaided and that's not counting it's install cost of 5! So that's 14 to de-rez normally or 5 with London Library and Şifr!

Tollbooth would cost 6 with London Library and Şifr. But they that's Tollbooth for you!

Assassin would cost 4 .

Curtain Wall would cost 5 .

However this tactic isn't super useful, versus ice that has low res costs.

For example Enigma would cost 4 but it only costs 3 to res, so your better off just breaking it for 2 credits with Şifr and Peregrine than de-rezing it.

Komainu is also another good example. Golden would cost 6 to break and then 2 to de-rez, however it only costs 5 to res...So that's not a huge value, especially considering it's only 3 to break with Mongoose

Any how that's all for now.

-Karl Vancouver Meta

Ask your self this, wouldn't it be nice if there was a Criminal event that installed onto a resource as a condition counter and that you could trash reactively to avoid three tags OR prevent up to three points of any type of damage? Also because it's an event it can be played from you heap (discard pile) with Same Old Thing?

Think about it, a card like that would allow you to shut down all kinds of tag based shenanigans. You can't get Scorched if you aren't tagged in the first place! You could use it to wipe the tags from Breaking News before NBN can Exchange of Information that Global Food Initiative in your score area with the Breaking News they just scored! That's pretty huge!

Furthermore that card could be used to avoid three points of any type of damage! So with one installed you can face check a triple advanced Project Junebug without flat lining. Or you can hit a Snare! and be totally fine, beside having to clear a tag that is. In fact the corporation will probably not fire the Snare! in the first place. It costs 4 credits (which is a lot) and if it's not going to do damage then why waste the credits?

That card ladies and gentlemen exists, and it's called On the Lam. In many ways it's a lot like a criminal version of I've Had Worse. It provides the criminal player with some really lovely flexibility. It allows them to avoid tags which is great in the current meta and and the ability to prevent damage is ideal for criminal players who don't want to have ANY of their cards end up in the trash if they can help it.

On top of all of that it is an Event, so it synergies with a bunch of weird cards like Prepaid VoicePAD and I guess Comet? I bet there are a bunch of synergies that I haven't though of and I cant wait to see what weird jank the community can think up!

In summary, with Plascrete Carapace rotating out at the start of the red sand cycle and with tag punishment more brutal than it's ever been, On the Lam gives Criminals a versatile answer to the current meta landscape that also functions as flat line protection.

The one downside is that the damage prevention isn't much use versus ice like Komainu, but hey you should have a Mongoose installed any ways!

Both of the other reviews are spot on for this card. It provides draw utility which is something criminals don't have much of in faction, and is something criminal decks desperately need to be aggressive. Most people either go with Mr. Li or Earthrise Hotel/ Career Fair to get the job done. Now we have another option in factoin!

Going beyond that, I think the most important aspect of this card (which also applies to Mr. Li) is that it's a connection and can be tutored and installed with Hostage. This means you can save deck slots by only running one blockade runner, and still have a good chance of getting it installed early game.

The nice thing about that strategy is that the deck slots opened up by it can be spent on other good one off (cheap) connections, like Kati Jones, Film Critic, John Masanori or even Political Operative. That gives you some really nice flexibility, draw a hostage early and you can pick which connection to bring onto the field with out putting duplicates into your deck. In most cases you'll go with Blockade Runner or Mr. Li to accelerate your game play, but if your in need of some cash early Kati Jones is right around the corner.

As a closing thought, Mr. Li and Kati Jones are both rotating out of tournament play in the near future. (The end of the Red Sand data pack cycle) Which is probably why Blockade Runner is getting printed in the first place. Fingers crossed they print a replacement for Kati Jones as with out her running hostage is less appealing.

Tri-maf Contact doesn't count.