By itself, this is a reverse Hedge Fund, and could be justified on that basis. But it is wildly more effective than Hedge Fund for setting up trace operations, usually Hard-Hitting News. A Hedge Fund allows you to spend up to $4 more to seal a trace, but any money spent then evaporates. Economic Warfare saves you up to $4 on what you need to spend to seal the trace, and the runner takes a $4 loss which does NOT evaporate. The credit swing of Economic Warfare on a HHN turn is usually $8, which is excellent.

Tactics: Hard-Hitting News players will probably hold this card ~exclusively for a HHN turn. If your deck doesn't have HHN, Economic Warfare should usually be played on first opportunity. (Early losses compound and make it harder for the runner to play economic cards like Daily Casts and Sure Gamble. Draining their credits early may even force several clicks-for-credits which is more impactful than a later $4 loss on a runner that's already set up).

Not usually very good. At a glance, it vaguely looks like Hostile Infrastructure, a card which could convert large amounts of money into nearly impenetrable prisons. This isn't that. Outside of maybe Ob, it's a minor tempo hit. Assuming Hostile Architecture triggers only once, you're spending $5 to do 2 meat damage and up to $4 of their money. Draining $4 of their money is an effect worthy of a $0-cost card. If your deck gets enough value out of 2 meat damage and a semi-forced run to spend another $5 on this, you will love Architecture.

In Ob, you're already throwing around a slew of fast-paced threats and are more dangerous than normal on low credit totals. If there is life for this card, it's probably in an Ob deck on 3x Urban Renewals than in a more traditional horizontal-play deck trying to get a lot of value over time by installing too many assets for the runner to deal with.

Unlike its predecessor, Architecture only fires once a turn, only protects installed cards, can't stack with multiple copies, and is ~useless* against Apocalypse (which wrecks most of the decks which would want to use Hostile Architecture). Also, while a $4 trash cost might have been draining for runners back when Hostile Infrastructure was available, trash costs have been weakened as a tempo hit by cards like Miss Bones. I don't expect a card with this little upside to see much use outside of Weyland, 3 influence feels like a lot for this. In most non-Weyland horizontal decks, I'd pass on this for the same reason I'd pass on the (probably better) Urban Renewal: defending it for several turns usually isn't feasible, and 2-4 meat damage usually isn't enough value in an asset-oriented deck to justify spending a significant chunk of influence on it. If you're just looking for short-term value with more game-winning potential, for $4 a Snare causes an unpredictable 3 net damage and a tag, which is probably better value than you'd get from a Hostile Infrastructure (unless you're somehow keeping it alive several turns but I don't think that's a plausible scenario in most identities).

Additionally, it also has a trash-cost $1 less than Hostile Infrastructure, but I don't think that you'll notice the $1 as much as "I guess Miss Bones wrecks this either way." (Note, please accept "Ob is pretty good" as a disclaimer on every sentence in this review).

...

*Hostile Architecture vs. Apocalypse: if Architecture fires for 2 meat damage after the Apocalypse hits, you have probably lost the game as corp. (If you care enough about installed cards to play Hostile Architecture, surviving an Apocalypse looks grim except for maybe Ob). However... if you have a must-trash card like Crisium Grid or an early Urban Renewal, maybe you get lucky and Hostile Architecture snipes Apocalypse with 2 meat damage BEFORE the Apocalypse hits.

Not very good. Unless you're letting multiple subroutines fire -- which probably means you're losing -- this is worse than Dirty Laundry and harder to deploy. Dirty Laundry pays you to take safe runs you wanted to make anyway, which is great. Bravado pays you to run on ice when they probably can't rez it (or when you can beat it), another great time to run. RCS pays you to risk runs where you DON'T expect to be able to break the ice, which is probably the worst time to be running. It also doesn't pay enough that I'd want to lean into runs where I expect subroutines might fire. For this card to be playable, you have to expect unusually low-impact subroutines, which are not very common. RCS matches up well against a handful of rezzed ice like IP Block, possibly Mausolus, possibly Border Control, and a bankrupt run on an Afshar. It fares poorly against unknown ice. But... at the point where +$2 and 1-2 card draws would be most meaningful (early game), most ice will be unknown and you're the least able to deal with an ice if it turns out to be a sucker-punch like Fairchild 3 or Ansel or Saisentan. :-/

Separately, the card's effect is poorly explained in its text. There's a lot of room for confusion on whether RCS is supposed to give you $3 "for each hosted counter" or just a flat $3 once. Unfortunately, it's just a single $3, which makes the card quite bad. (In Standard, at least. In Startup ice are significantly less dangerous).

What about Bankhar?

If you have Bankhar out, your two-card combo can KIND OF break even getting through the first ice in a run by risking a lot of net damage and draws. But using RCS (a run event) means you're NOT using a run event like Chastushka, so your upside on the run is rather limited. Bankhar is risky/painful and I wouldn't want to use him unless the run has a lot of upside. PS: whether or not you're using RCS, on a Bankhar run you still might need to break the first ice because several ice can deal 5-6 net damage (Anansi, Endless EULA, or a fresh Envelopment). Taking 6 net damage now so you can draw 6 cards later is either fatal or the worst Moshing of all time.

Hush has several great theoretical targets -- it theoretically could save you a close game against a Border Control or Anemone or save ~$3 each time you encounter a Tollbooth or Funhouse or Anansi.

This might be enough value for a $1 card to be occasionally playable, like Hunting Grounds. But it's not enough value for 1 MU. Will this be as cost-effective or create as much value as a Fermenter or Botulus or K2CP Turbine or Cezve or even a 0-MU Hunting Grounds? Unless you are losing a lot to Border Controls, no. Hush isn't even 100% reliable against Border Control (an unrezzed ice takes some guesswork). Like... if you take a Tollbooth for example, a Hush would save $3 on an encounter, but a Botulus would save $6 for most Anarchs, and a Botulus is much easier to deploy blindly.

Playing corp, rezzing a Botulus'ed ice is HARD and it feels bad. Hush doesn't make life nearly that hard for most corp ice. Assuming you're Anarch, I think the only two ice which Hush makes way less appealing to rez are Anemone, Funhouse and situationally Border Control. (Stavka can reasonably be rezzed against an MKUltra player without using Stavka's ability. $4 rez cost vs. $3 to break is not terrible).

Several ice get stronger when blindly Hushed. Unlike Hush, some of these anti-targets are cards people actually play: Hagen, Fairchild 3, Ansel, Bran. You've heard they're pretty good, and you're not wrong. If you blindly Hush an unrezzed ice hoping to prevent an on-rez effect like Anemone or Magnet, most likely your attempt creates 0 short-term impact or even negative short-term impact. Click order matters on turns with runs, and I generally don't recommend spending clicks before a run which probably won't help the run. (Spending a click pre-run increases the risk that you get surprised by a clickable bioroid with not enough clicks available, or incur a tag that you can't clear this turn, or that you skip over a different pre-run action like drawing).

If you see yourself running enough that Hush might produce more value than Fermenter, in-faction I'd prefer the rarely used Mining Accident to Hush. If you really need to shut down on-encounter effects and can spare an influence, Hunting Grounds is much more flexible and doesn't take any MU.

Hopefully Null Signal will allow us to report spam comments for deletion

Junk-tier, but really fun to play and to play against.

In power level, it is worse than the already lousy Nova. The "one copy only" restriction hits Ampere harder than Nova. The most important runner imports are often breakers, consoles and maybe other programs which could function well on a single copy. Second and third copies of these cards can help ensure you draw a copy quickly but are otherwise dead draws in most matchups. In contrast, the marginal value of some corp cards increases with additional copies. If you have multiple copies of Spin Doctor, it's not a major setback if one gets trashed because Doctor #2 or #3 can recur it. Cards which require planning/support like AR-Enhanced Security might be hard to justify on a single copy. Draining cards like Obokata get more taxing with additional copies. If Jinteki could, they would probably want to slot 7 Obokatas. (Or 20 Stings, heh).

What corps don't have is a ton of high-influence cards like Paperclip or Bukhgalter or Endurance that are clearly superior and would be used widely if influence were not an issue. And most of the clearly superior corp cards are either ice or economic assets, neither one of which work as well on a single copy.

So, what does this mean for Ampere?

  • Ampere is extraordinarily inconsistent and vulnerable to RND. If they trash your one Spin Doctor, you likely have no other good recursion in your deck.
  • Your long-term economic situation is dire. Your economy options likely consist of like 4 high-value assets (Rashida, Daily Quest, Wall to Wall, Regolith Mining License) and a slew of low/medium impact operations. If you can't find one of your ~4 key economic cards your first several turns will be grim but remember, they don't know right away if your nuclear silos are loaded and most runners will take unrezzed ice/upgrades from Ampere very seriously. (They will not, however, generally respect unguarded servers. You don't have a defensive identity ability like CTM and can't build well around post-run punishment like Hard-Hitting News).
  • Deckbuilding: your pool of ice is unusually strong at low numbers. You can put together 8-10 elite ice easily. If you're thinking like 13-15 ice, you either have to look at mediocre ice like Eli 1.0 (which feels like not enough deckbuilding value in most cases) or exotic sucker-punches like Saisentan and Tyr which are inefficient but could gut a runner that can't know what to expect.
  • Your upgrade game is elite. A ton of runner value comes from planning and executing run events, which is much harder for a runner that doesn't know what the defensive upgrades look like and is scared to spend the money to find out. If the corp is poor, the worst-case scenario for an unknown upgrade is short-term usually worse for the runner than for an unknown ice. Whatever the runner is planning for this turn, it's hard to work around an upgrade which could be Anoetic Void or Mamegarm or Ganked or some exotic blast like Mwanza or NATO City.
  • Your tag-and-bag game is extraordinarily weak. One copy of Boom plus weak recursion, 0-1 copies of kill-supporting agendas, rough. The worse it is, the harder it is to see coming and the more I'm compelled to try it. Tag and bag is the ultimate Champere move. If you land a kill with Meteor Mining, please let me know.
  • Horizontal play is not viable without a supporting identity ability. Ampere will never have a shot at doing this well because any card pool where Ampere *could* be good at wide play would make identities like NEH or CTM wildly powerful. (Also, these factions can run 3x copies of key assets and multiple copies of AR-Enhanced Security).
  • Your agendas are high-value but unlikely to work effectively with each other or most of the cards in your deck. Obokata is great in a Jinteki deck where most of their cards pile on net damage or benefit from a low hand size. It's still a tempo hit to the runner and a good defensive agenda in Ampere but it probably won't be vastly better than a Degree Mill. I am experimenting with sucker-punch agendas like Regenesis and Meteor Mining and they are WILD in Champere.
  • Your fast-advance game is weaker than Weyland's, but Ampere is probably the closest to viable in fast-advance. You'll miss having multiple copies of Hostile Takeover and Audacity but at least you can substitute with inferior 2/1s. Outside of 2/1s, your agendas won't be much *worse* than Weyland's but they will be *bigger*. A 40-card Weyland identity only needs to run one agenda outside of 3/2s and 2/1s. In Ampere, assuming you're slotting exclusively 3/2s and at least two 2/1s from the major factions, you will have 6 points of neutral agendas which all come in awkward sizes. Getting forced to slot like a third of your agenda points in hard-to-score sizes is probably not ideal for FA. You'll miss having an identity ability, but it might not matter as much in FA as it does elsewhere. Your "ability" to pull out strange and unexpected cards might produce early-game value before the runner has an idea what your opening ice look like. Embrace sucker punches like Saisentan and go for it.