The issue with silver bullets has long been that they are dead draws agains most match ups. This has even led some players to cut Plascrete Carapace from their decks, as the protection against a rarely played deck is just not enough to warrant inclusion. Another issue is that silver bullets often only bullet one matchup at a time. Enter Sports Hopper.

Coming in at a modest three cost and no influence, Sports Hopper looks underwhelming at first. After all, 3 creds and a click for a net of two cards seems pretty bad. And the link is no good if the hopper is in your discard pile. It could make some good filler in mini-faction decks, and in Geist, the efficiency can get pretty ridiculous really fast. But look again. The draw does not need a click to work.

What does this mean? It means that you can trigger it in between scorches. "Okay, that's seeming a little better," you might be thinking, "but it is still worse than Plascrete!" No, it isn't. There are only three common decks that Plascrete can help with. Haarp Shop, and Argus/SeaScorch.

Here's a list of some archetypes Sports Hopper stops or helps against:

Ronin Kill Haarp Shop Argus/SeaScorch Clickbait NBN IG to a lesser degree. Thousand Cuts PE to a lesser degree

In other words, it is good against tracer decks, net damage decks, scorch decks, in other words, anything that attacks the runner. Plus, it gives you a link while it is down on the table, whereas Plascrete just sits there.

It doesn't work against Mushin Junebug, unless you use it before accessing, so keep that in mind.

The final use is the clickless draw. At this time last year, nobody would care about this. Now we have Faust. Being able to get three extra cards for that run on a remote server is amazing, and any Faust player (in otherwords, any runner) should include 3 of these.

So while Sports Hopper doesn't really do anything too well, it has lots more versatility than Plascrete, so you should make the switch now.

I really don't see why nobody plays this card. Consider the following: Install refinery Dedication Ceremony Trash refinery Gain 12 credits. Not a bad economy engine. And Weyland has so few bluffs, it isn't even funny, so take them where you can get them. Maybe slap this behind your main scoring server, and force the runner into running a taxing server. Weyland has such bad asset economy and such good gear-checking ice that protecting this shouldn't be a problem. It even has a nice synergy with Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon, because it makes it all the more taxing to trash. Also try in a server with Simone Diego in a Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It deck for maximum profits!

It shocks me how little this card is played. Sure, Blue Sun: Powering the Future is a problem, but how many people are playing Blue Sun these days? I think it could work quite well slotted in a Faust deck, as a way to get through those troublesome high strength ice. That way you don't burn your entire hand on just one run. And if Blue Sun is played, it won't ruin your deck when you can't use this. It's going to rotate out soon, so we might as well take advantage of the (second) best AI in the game!