Just looking at the raw break cost this isn't a good card.

Beserker

Paperclip

Beserker - Paperclip

Since Beserker costs the same as paperclip both in install cost and influence and doesn't install from heap it's clearly inferior. Only in two places is it a whole credit cheaper than Paperclip: 4 strength 2 sub (Eli 1.0) and 6 strength 4 sub (no such ice exists).

This feels like a card to optimize your positional ice placement mid-game.

So let's first look at positional ice. FFG hasn't provided us with a nice positional subtype so we'll have to do this the old fashioned way, by searching in the text field of cards. Apologies in advance if I miss a card.

Affect next piece of ice (* means will rotate out once the first pack of the successor of the Red Sands cycle is released):

• Chum ()
• Inazuma ()
• Interrupt 0 ()
• Lockdown ()
• Marker () *
• Red Tape ()
• RSVP () *
• Sensei () *
• TL;DR ()
• Vikram 1.0 ()
• Wendigo ()
• Whirlpool () *

That's 1 , 2 , 3 and 6 . Disregarding the ice that will rotate soon we get 1 , 2 , 2 and 3 .

Once rotation hits that's 8 pieces of positional ice of which 3 in-faction for Jinteki. And these three (Chum, Inazuma, Lockdown) are unlikely to ever fire their subs aside from the early game. When properly positioned though they have good cost-to-break / cost-to-rez ratio.

Ok, so what else can we do with Mandatory Seed Replacement? It's good for undoing Escher and Inversificator (though Inversificator will soon mess things up again afterwards). You can reorganize your ice with it to protect the most heavy hit server, but really you should know which ones will be heavily hit at the time you place the ice.

And how about the competition? Are there better 4/2's for Jinteki? Nisei MK II (extremely powerful against run event based deep digs and assaults on scoring servers), Corporate Sales Team (10), House of Knives (death by a thousand paper cuts), Medical Breakthrough (next one is easier to score, even when stolen). Mandatory Seed Replacement has some stiff competition and its not holding up well against them.

To sum this review up: nope.

So people have been complaining about Metamorph being broken already. The theory is that you install an upgrade in HQ, install Off the Grid somewhere and have Metamorph fire. Presto, you can't run on HQ without successfully running on HQ and any extra Off the Grid locks out another server as well.

This works great, until Off the Grid rotates out and provided you can get Metamorph to fire.

Now since Metamorph is strength 4 ice most runners with a decoder will be able to break it. The main reason a runner will not be able to break it is that they don't have a decoder or AI installed and are going to run anyway. Like with all plays involving opponent mistakes: don't bet on it working. In order to make this trick work you need to both have Metamorph installed early enough for the runner to not have a decoder out, meaning you need to pack 3 copies, have Off the Grid installed early enough before the runner has a decoder out, 3 copies again and have some upgrade installed early.

Since both Metamorph and Off the Grid are 3 influence cards you need to spend at least 9 influence regardless of whether you play this combo in Jinteki or Weyland. That's more than half your influence even if you have a 17 influence ID and that's as high as influence goes on Jinteki and Weyland ID's. Realistically you're spending 9 out of 15 influence.

Even worse is the fact that you need a runner who will run with no ability to break 4 strength code gates when you have at least 3 credits. That's a runner who has never heard of Executive Functioning, Aiki, Yagura, Bloom. And that's assuming the chosen server has unrezzed piece of ice. With two pieces the runner also has to fear Chum and TL;DR.

Sure, it's possible a runner would go for it, especially if you're Weyland and put a nice juicy public agenda in a remote. But more likely the runner will be cautious. And the more credits you have the more cautious the runner will be.

Oh and then you need to get Off the Grid (6) rezzed in time before the runner runs on HQ. Which is harder than it sounds since you need to have a low credit count before the runner runs Metamorph in order to convince the runner that's safe.

That's a lot of pieces to pull off to have Metamorph fire. And that's why I don't think the Off the Grid combo can be pulled off reliably. If it's somehow possible to pull it off reliably runners will quickly learn to spot the distinctive pattern of an unrezzed card in a remote plus an upgrade in HQ and simply not run in such cases. But if you can't pull it off reliably you'll have invested so many influence in it that your deck will be weaker for it.

And even without the 9 influence investment the problem with making the runner actually run on Metamorph is why it's a weak card when you use it for the effect of the sub.

But there's another approach. Metamorph can be used as a taxing piece of ice. If the runner has reason to fear the effect this is 1 sub 4 strength must-break ice for 3 rez cost. However there is competition. Mind Game for example has the same subs and strength, no rez cost and a 2/3 chance (assuming both players have at least 2) to bounce the runner off the intended server and depending on the ice in the new server do some damage as well. Inazuma in front of a nasty or unrezzed piece of ice counts as at least 1 sub 5 strength ice (one of the subs could be left unbroken).

So how does Metamorph hold up to the competition? Looking solely at code gates that don't require influence in Jinteki I'd say it's difficult. Metamorph is reasonably taxing if the runner has to fear it but you need to make the runner fear its effect and I think that will be non-trivial in practice. A card like Inazuma or Chum, though positional, may be easier to use.

Metamorph is one of those cards that seems like it opens really cool combos but when looked at in the cold light of day is kind of underwhelming.

Rip Deal suffers from the same problem as all run events: you can't combine them with events or abilities that require you to make a run. This is a bigger problem for Rip Deal than most run events because there's one card you'd really like to combine it with Legwork.

The thing is, Rip Deal for 1 access is pretty inefficient. You pay 3 and a bunch more to get through ice just to recur a single card.

For multi access that works with Rip Deal there are only a few options:

• HQ Interface works well to recur 1 extra card per Rip Deal. Unfortunately it will rotate out very soon.
• Nerve Agent really well for potentially recurring large parts of your heap, provided you can afford to splash it. But it will rotate out very soon as well.
• Neutralize All Threats lets you access 1 extra card from HQ at the dangerous cost of having to trash the first card you can trash each turn. And beside being fairly expensive to splash (3 influence) it also has anti-synergy with Aeneas Informant.
• The Gauntlet can realistically net you 3 extra accesses (assuming 3 ice on the server and no bypass or letting subs fire). Its big downside is that you have to give up Desperado for it.
• The Turning Wheel gives you extra accesses and works well with a Account Siphon heavy playstyle.

Disregarding the cards that will rotate out in two packs (rotation hits when the first pack of the next cycle is released and there's one pack left to be released in Red Sands at the time of writing) and ignoring the weak and expensive Neutralize All Threats there are two major options: The Gauntlet and The Turning Wheel.

The Gauntlet is very powerful if you can afford to do a straight run through ice without bypass tricks or anything. Since it gives you 2 you should be able to build a rig with it in a kind of criminal-does-shaper style. But as said, being a console it takes away your option to use Desperado and that's a high price to pay for criminals used to running 3 Desperado's. For more casual players this is less of a problem since a core set only has 1 copy of Desperado so people with only one core are unlikely to run Desperado anyway, even with two cores it's doubtful whether it's the best console considering you can include 3 of any other.

The Turning Wheel is a card that's good for incidental multi-access if you do a lot of runs on HQ and R&D where you're not going to find agendas. Think Keyhole, Account Siphon, Security Testing. Those counters are valuable of course and you'll want to think very carefully about committing them to recur cards but often you'll advance your game plan more by recurring a high value card than by accessing an extra card, unless you have good reasons to believe there is a higher than normal chance that that access leads to an agenda steal.

I've been reviewing Rip Deal from a criminal perspective so far but it's a 1 influence card and thus is easily to import into other factions. Since The Gauntlet and The Turning Wheel are 1 influence as well a Gauntlet/Rip Deal or Turning Wheel/Rip Deal combo is fairly doable in every other faction. Anarchs probably won't go for it since they have pretty decent recursion themselves in Déjà Vu and Trope. For Shapers a Gaunlet/Rip Deal is interesting since the 2 on The Gauntlet combines well with big rig. Shapers also have little recursion for non-programs aside from shuffling everything into the stack with Levy AR Lab Access. In the mini factions Adam stands out since Neutralize All Threats is often installed at the start of the game and if you have that already the economics of Rip Deal start to make (a bit of) sense.

There's one little trick you can play with Rip Deal that, while janky and unreliable, deserves mention. Since the text says "you may instead add" (emphasis mine) you don't actually need to commit to recurring until you're at the server. Thus you could use Rip Deal as an expensive fake with the idea that if the corp thinks you're going to dig into your own heap they may not bother rezzing ice. I admit, it's a very long shot and I doubt corps would value recurring low enough to not make them rez ice, but if it works it's a sweet way to get past unrezzed ice.

Now to the conclusion. I see the value of Rip Deal and it's potentially very powerful. But at the same time you're paying quite a lot of credits to recur cards if you count the cost of breaking. Because of that I think it's ultimately a card that's too weak to see much actual play.

The problem with any card that requires you to make a run is that you can't use it in combination with a card that, well, requires you to make a run.

Here's a rough list of cards that make you run. You'll notice that it contains a lot of powerful cards. These are cards you cannot use in combination with Lean and Mean.

To make matters worse an icebreaker strength booster card like Lean and Mean is a tool for the runs that matter. But guess what, those are often the big multi-access runs initiated by things like The Maker's Eye or a board state altering run using cutlery like Knifed.

About the only time that you make a run that both matters enough to spend extra credits on it and isn't started by a run event or ability itself is when you run on a scoring server. And yes, in such a situation Lean and Mean can save you a few credits, potentially making the difference between win and loss.

And ok, Lean and Mean is slightly better than saving a few credits. Since it boosts ice breakers it can be used to make fixed strength breakers like Yog.0 work on heavier ice. Because it's an event that's not a trick you can pull off a lot though.

The major downside of Lean and Mean is that you can't have more than 3 programs installed. That means you need to run with either an AI setup or a classic three breaker setup and no support programs. Still, plenty of decks do that. I would recommend however just skipping Lean and Mean if you're worried about needing more than 3 programs, in all likelihood that extra program will have more effect than Lean and Mean.

So how much does 2 strength per icebreaker gain you? If we rate the cost of boosting an icebreaker at 1 per strength 2 strength wins you at most 2 times the number of ice in front of the targeted server in credits. If an icebreaker doesn't need the full 2 extra strength the savings go down, if an icebreaker needs more than 1 per strength the savings go up. But as a rule of thumb 2 times ice is good enough.

In my experience the really interesting servers have 3 pieces of ice. So 6 gross savings, 2 cost leaves 4 net savings. Certainly not bad.

Err, but wasn't there a card that gives you 4? Sure Gamble or something?

I don't think the credit savings argument is going to work well. Let's try the pumping fixed strength breakers argument. Oh? Nobody plays those anymore? Injection Attack is cheaper? The Personal Touch works better in the longer run?

I think I'm running out of positives to say. Let's just wrap this up with my summary:

The question is not "should I do it?", it's not "can I do it?", it's "do I want to do it?". And my answer is no.