USES:

Savoir-Faire is French for "expertise." She may only be Gabriel Santiago's second-favorite lady, but Haley Kaplan (and to a lesser extent Geist and Nasir) likes her rather better! She is a tempo accelerator for any deck that installs often. If you have 10+ cheap programs (especially trashable programs and cloud breakers) in your deck and want to run sooner and more often, the lady in blue may be right for you. Her secondary benefits include mid-run installs, off-turn installs, and information concealment, but if you only want to install stuff during runs or out of turn, SMC and Personal Workshop are better cards.

Likely runners include Geist or Kahn with a full set of B&E breakers, Noise with a ton of cheap viruses, or Haley running Chameleons or dropping a truckload of cheap programs (like SMC, Hyperdriver, Zu.13, etc). Kate and Valencia might initially seem like good choices because of their built-in cost reduction, but those IDs usually have little need for program spam.

Because Savoir Faire works well with many out-of-faction cards, has a high influence cost, and addresses a niche need from an unusual deck type, she's not a casual include for your deck. You'll only use her in highly specific decks that are built to exploit program spamming.

COSTS:

If you are using her in Anarch or Shaper, you probably want to mitigate costs. Cards that make her more user-friendly include Technical Writer (0-influence and stackable, A+ choice), Scheherezade, Multithreader, and Corporate Scandal. Avoid B-Listers like Sahasrara, Net Celebrity, and Chatterjee University.

If you are using her in Criminal, you are probably running your way to wealth with Account Siphon/Desperado/Temujin Contract/Security Testing/Bank Job. When you earn 3++ credits per run, 2 creds to install is a good trade, and helps you draw more while still running often and maintaining pressure.

FUN STUFF:

Now, let's talk about stuff that's fun to do with Savoir Faire!

You can machine-gun out programs just as fast as you can draw them.

Obviously you can (yawn) install an icebreaker. But the ideal install is the surprise game-changer. Cards that come to mind include Clot, Parasite, Hyperdriver, Crescentus, or Surfer. Panic-button cards like Deus X, Net Shield, and Sharpshooter are also good plays. You can hold these cards in hand, preserving your tempo and installing them only if you really need them.

Savoir Faire and an Autoscripter effectively grants you seven clicks per turn as long as you can keep installing. That's good until you run out of creds, programs, or mem.

The lady in blue can also buy you an extra run (and therefore an extra access) by clicklessly installing Equivocation, Medium, Nerve Agent, or Keyhole when you see an R&D vulnerability.

Delving into the Realm of Jank, the blue lady clicklessly reinstalls Golden or a program top-decked by Brahman. She offers quick recovery from Archangel and Hatchet Job. She enables quick recurring usage of a Chameleon rig. With Deep Red and Caissa programs, you can do fun, janky things installing and hosting Caissa programs in mid-run. You can stack Savoir Faire, Autoscripter, Rachel Beckman, Jak Sinclair, Doppelganger, and Beth Kilrain-Chang in a Haley deck and effectively take 13 clicks per turn. You can dust off cards like Disrupter, Copycat, and LLDS Energy Regulator. The cost-mitigation cards mentioned above are useful enablers of all such bad habits.

Current gameplay focuses on its role in kill combos, but 24/7 News Cycle has the potential to be a Swiss army knife type of card, like a Same Old Thing for agendas. With the right agenda mix, it becomes a multi-function tool in the mid-to-late-game that can break a siphon lock, tutor a crucial card, amputate the opponent's board position, or set up a fast-advance play.

If you have room to slot them, Domestic Sleepers, Project Kusanagi, and Clones are Not People make it cheaper to play. It obviously finds a better home in decks that slot numerous 1-point agendas, such as some current Jinteki PE, Argus Security, and NBN CMT styles.

24/7 COMBOS

DEADLY:

Resolve Breaking News to give the runner 2 tags

Resolve Posted Bounty to forfeit it, give the runner 1 tag and take 1 bad publicity

Resolve Vulcan Coverup for 2 meat damage; combine with other damage to taste/as needed

Resolve Philotic Entanglement for X net damage; combine with other damage to taste/as needed

POTENT:

Resolve Chronos Project to remove the runner's heap from the game

Resolve The Future is Now to search R&D for a card and add it to HQ

Resolve Astroscript Pilot Program to place 1 agenda counter on it (1 free agenda advancement)

Resolve Character Assassination to trash a resource (cannot be prevented)

Resolve License Acquisition to install Corporate Town or Ibrahim Salem (or perhaps an urgently needed Jackson Howard) from archives and rez without cost.

Resolve Profiteering to take up to 3 bad publicity and gain up to 15 credits

Resolve Geothermal Fracking to place 2 agenda counters (worth 14 credits)

Resolve High-Risk Investment to place 1 agenda counter (worth credits = runner's total)

JANKY:

Resolve Accelerated Beta Test to install and rez up to 3 ICE for free (obviously best if you can stack the deck)

Resolve Efficiency Committee to place 3 more agenda counters on it (worth 3 extra clicks)

Resolve Voting Machine Initiative to place 3 more agenda counters on it (costs runner 3 clicks)

Resolve Research Grant to score any installed copies of Research Grant (a net gain of 1-2 points if you sacrifice Domestic Sleepers and have 1-2 RGs installed)

Resolve Unorthodox Predictions to render an ICE type unbreakable for 1 turn

Resolve Nisei Mk II to put an additional agenda counter on it (stops 1 run)

Resolve Genetic Resequencing to put an agenda counter on a Nisei Mk II (stops 1 run)

Resolve House of Knives to place 3 more agenda counters on it (worth 3 net damage)

Resolve Executive Retreat to put an agenda counter on it (worth 5 cards) and shuffle HQ into R&D

Resolve Corporate Sales Team to place 10 more credits on it

Resolve Corporate War to gain 7 credits

Resolve Hostile Takeover to gain 7 credits and take one bad publicity

BAD:

Resolve Veteran's Program to remove two bad publicity

Resolve Clone Retirement to remove one bad publicity

Resolve Director Haas' Pet Project to set up a server (essentially duplicating Shipment from Mirrormorph)

Resolve Project Wotan to place 3 more agenda counters on it (worth 3 ETR subroutines)

Resolve Labyrinthine Servers to place 2 more power counters on it (prevent 2 jackouts)

Resolve Encrypted Portals to gain 1 credit for each rezzed code gate

Resolve Superior Cyberwalls to gain 1 credit for each rezzed barrier

Resolve Helium-3 Deposit to place 2 power counters on a card

Resolve Firmware Updates to place 3 more agenda counters on it (worth 3 ICE advancements)

Resolve Market Research to put an agenda counter on it if the runner is tagged (worth 1 agenda point)

Resolve Priority Requisition to rez Archer or Enforcer without cost

TURKEY PRIZE:

Resolve Improved Protein Source to force the runner to gain 4 credits

To have any value, Akshara needs to be played with cards that block the corp's ability to FA and cards that multiply what the runner can do with a 5th click. Clot, The Source, The Black File, or a Vamp/Account Siphon lock can shut down corp advancing strategies, She can mean an extra card milled with Keyhole, Data Leak Reversal, or Wanton Destruction, an extra access with Quest Completed, Medium, or DDOS. She can enable an extra point or two scored with Notoriety or Liberated Chela, or allow the runner to use a 5th click to chain Duggar's, Day Job, or Investigative Journalism into a combo. She likes Apocalype, Fear the Masses, and even Three Steps Ahead (when's the last time someone mentioned that card?) as well.

Akshara might also find a home with Adam, where she fits in well with Always Be Running.

Akshara is definitely not a card to be slotted in casually, but can augment a strategy that relies on making mega turns to powerful effect. In particular, I think she finds a home enabling some potential anarch and shaper combos.

As I look at this card, I'm thinking it finds natural synergy with some of the things people are doing with Kit and Haley right now.

Sadyojata makes sense in a Haley/Panchatantra-based rig that's cycling Sharpshooter and/or Deus X but doesn't have the influence to include Gingerbread (perhaps because it's burning influence on other cards like Spy Camera, Tech Trader, and Clone Chip). Using Sady against low-strength ice with 2+ subtypes (ex. Rototurret, Brainstorm, Yagura, Resistor, Cobra, Shadow) lets you save your trashable breakers for serious obstacles. This makes it possible for you to make more exploratory runs against face-down cards, and to run through a deep glacier without hemorrhaging all of your trashable cards on a single run. Again Gingerbread is better for this (except for ice with exactly 2 strength), but for a shaper who can't spare the influence for Gingerbread, Sady is your second-best friend.

Sady has a friend in Kit's ID ability, which is not true of Gingerbread. She also combos well with Tinkering and Paintbrush, which likewise are tools that offer more benefit to Kit than to most other runners.

The devas in general are friendly towards a lot of 2nd- and 3rd-tier shaper tricks. Exile can trigger his card draw with a Test Run of a deva from the heap, then swap it with another from the grip. Spending credits during a run to swap devas sounds like something Nasir would like to do. The Professor can include one each of Aghora and Vamadeva at no influence cost. Installing a deva onto London Library and then swapping it with another one allows you to cheat out any of the devas for 2 credits each. None of these tricks are particularly powerful, but they're all the kind of fun stuff that people associate with shaper and will fit well into a casual deck.

I could maybe see Ronald finding a place in an NBN: Controlling the Message deck. Runners who trash an asset on the third or fourth click will be unable to remove the tag inflicted by the ID before ending turn, which significantly restricts the runner's options. However, the three-influence cost is horribly painful for CMT. Adding two of R5 will force you to forgo three of something like Clone Suffrage Movement, Bio-Ethics Association, or Commercial Bankers Group.

There is perhaps some mild synergy with cards like Prisec, Snare!, and Enhanced Login Protocol. In a best-case scenario, an opponent might run your R&D with clicks 1 and 2, trip a snare, trash it and lose a click, then spend the last click to remove a tag. For six credits to rez R5 and pay for snare, you've cost the opponent 3 cards, 2 credits, and one whole turn. But that's a seriously unlikely scenario.

I'd like Ronald a lot more if his credit and influence costs were both two lower.