This is a high-impact deck slot. 7 clicks to net $13 adds roughly +$6 to your economy more than you would have gotten clicking for credits. In contrast, Hedge Fund is ~2 clicks to net $4, which adds roughly +$2 to your economy more than clicking. If your gameplay can spare a lot of clicks for earning money, this is a really really good card.

You could have this card take your scoring server a few turns, but the trash card on this card is high enough that it does a reasonable job protecting a naked install in a new server. If you install this card naked and they run on it, you're probably winning on the exchange. (You've spent a click and a card, and they've lost $3 and a click). If you install it naked and immediately collect $6 from it, you're definitely winning on the exchange against an unassisted run. (You spend 3 clicks and a card to net +$4, and they lose a click and -$3... spending 2 net clicks and a card to cause a credit swing of $7 is fantastic, this is better than a Diversion of Funds/Boomerang play).

Even if the runner has a Dirty Laundry, installing this card naked breaks even on the play (both players spend 1 click and a card, and no money changes hands) if no other card support is available.

A $2 rez cost makes it one of the easiest options for bouncing back from a cash crunch.

She called Dr Odunga and 9 months later 419 was born. BAN ODUNGA

I agree. BAN ODUNGA

This is mainly for people that want to trash their own cards, but don't need this as a recurring effect. If you're in Ob, Svyatogor Excavator is probably more reliable long-term value.

Some situations for Extract:

  1. You're on Regenesis and need to get a stale agenda into Archives without making them suspicious enough to check archives. Convince yourself that it's really a Snare you're putting back in Archives so you can recur it later. It's more believable if it had been in a server with upgrades. It just looks like you want that server open for an eventual agenda.
  2. You have gearcheck ice or rez-effect ice or other ice which produce short-term value but relatively little long-term value. Once they've found a fracter, an ice like Wraparound only costs $1 to break. If you were thinking of installing over it anyway, you might as well get paid to get rid of it.
  3. You're on Ob and you may need to immediately search the deck for a card rather than install an Excavator and wait a turn, or can't count on an Excavator surviving the turn.
  4. You're on Nanisibirisk Grid and need to get an ice facedown into Archives without making them suspicious enough to check archives. Hansei Review is usually better for this (HR doesn't announce what kind of card gets discarded, doesn't require an install, and costs less influence).

Drago is the most reliable way to land a tag on the corp's turn. The runner's cards for surviving tags on the corp's turn like No Free Lunch help temporarily but the runner still needs a plan to immediately deal with him. Drago is probably the highest-priority target for emergency tools like Pinhole Threading.

In Reality+, he's a cashflow-neutral way to drip tags. With La Costa Grid, a Reality Plus player gains money giving the runner a tag each turn. In Ob, an Urban Renewal does 4 meat damage and trashes itself at the start of the corp's turn, allowing an Ob player to clicklessly install Drago. The turn typically ends in the runner's fiery death.

If a NBN or Weyland player is suspiciously light on central ice and slow to score agendas, a heavily guarded remote server suggests Drago is coming. Along with Dr. Keeling, Drago is probably the leading tool for decks that don't plan on scoring out.

A demon in yoga pants

The art is genius and wildly fitting. Everything's slightly off. The lady's wrist and arm appear to be melting, nobody holds their arms that high except screaming hostages, Drago's right shoe might be a sock and his spandex pants have so little slack they will explode crotch-first if he attempts a jumping jack. Ivanov's job is to induce terror and break minds. He has no use for comforting bourgeois illusions like "objective reality" and "human anatomy" and "not wearing like six sets of underwear to yoga class". This isn't an office, it's an eldritch cult, and everyone's invited.

Update: Drago is banned in Standard as of March 2023. No more yoga pants, no more cult, for now.

"Expensive? Not when you're protecting a fortune as large as ours."

I don't care who you are or what you're protecting, hiring Rick Sanchez and Sagat for your rolling hitsquad is not cheap. Plus whatever tag support they need.

Sir/bot, the $7 you lost from the cryptocrash is unrecoverable. The $4 you lost from every yogurt store in the universe opening up next to yours, uncoverable. The $3 installing Daily Cast, eventually recoverable but not right now, it's value-over-time you maniac.

Besides Fairchild 3, this is probably the most effective brain-damage ice yet printed. It’s a 5-strength sentry with 3 high-impact subroutines and an effective rez cost of around $5. It does require you to commit deck slots to weaker harmonic ice though. Contrast to Anansi: $8 and you have to commit deck slots to being Jinteki.

Bloop's biggest drawback is that you have to slot a few other harmonic ice, but maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. Bloop only needs 1 other harmonic ice rezzed, which can reasonably be delivered with maybe ~4 other harmonic slots. In contrast, NEXT ice required a ton of other NEXT ice slotted and rezzed, so going NEXT jammed your deck with like 10+ slow, inefficient ice. Bloop is semi-terrifying on a single harmonic rez, it gets started much more quickly and allows you much more flexibility in which ices your deck uses and how many.

I don't really understand your complete insistence on using old terms.

https://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/06058