When you think of Weyland 5/3’s, they’re often very specialized and require building around:

High-Risk Investment barely sees play outside of Titan and Hollywood Renovation the same treatment outside of SSO. City Works Project generally does not require being built around and synergizes well with common green cards Punitive Counterstrike and Dedication Ceremony but it does have the Public subtype downside and is blank in centrals.

So for a Weyland 5/3 to see play alongside GFI and SSL, what will it need?

• On-score/on-steal ability like SSL? Check.

• No influence or unicorn unlike GFI? Check.

• Throwback to now-rotated flavourful Weyland card? Check.

SDS Drone Deployment is nasty and is the program-trashing Weyland card that might keep runners honest again. Sure Clone Chip is back in full force and yes, the conspiracy breakers are everywhere but icebreakers are bigger and more expensive than ever these days.

Unfortunately, SDS has one big weakness and that is on-steal, it allows the Runner to choose which program to trash. Whether that be a Rezeki, a Datasucker, or maybe even a Bankroll, the flexibility is huge and I wish this had specified “icebreaker” instead.

Overall, I don’t see this agenda seeing too much play over SSL or GFI. It’s just as weak to Film Critic or Whistleblower, provides flexibility to the Runner, and it has additional hate in popular cards Clone Chip, Dummy Box (on-score), or the conspiracy breakers. It’s disappointing that this is the case though as this card screams Weyland.

CSR Campaign is the first known Advertisement that doesn’t directly print money for the Corp. Instead, it can be compared to Illegal Arms Factory in that it helps speed up rush decks (such as green Supermodernism decks). Unlike IAF though, CSR has a few distinct differences:

• It’s free of bad publicity and cheaper to rez but a trash cost that is 4 lower than IAF.

• It has a “may” clause allowing you to choose and pick when you want to trigger it.

• It’s an advertisement (Spark / Ad Blitz come to mind first)

• Zero influence!

What’s the one thing holding CSR back? That measly trash cost of 2. If you’re playing this, you need to find a way to keep it around long enough for it to make a difference – either using your ID ability (IG / CtM), some support cards (Hostile Infrastructure), or by placing it in your scoring remote.

Clickless draw can be very beneficial for Corps that can take full advantage of it and downright frightening for those who cannot. If you plan to play this, make the most of it using high-powered operations, Jinja City Grid, or other draw filters.

On first glance, it’s really easy to have your eyes glaze over this card and assume nothing more than that it’s a permanent citizen of Janktown. However, Jackpot! has the same value that a card like Dirty Laundry or Successful Demonstration has: it rewards you for doing what you wanted to do anyways as a runner – steal agendas. Given that it can trigger on cards like Notoriety/Fan Site as well, it can be flexible in many Shaper decks.

Through a lot of playtesting, I’ve found Jackpot! does really well keeping up runner tempo. It says – “Go ahead, make that big, expensive DDM run” or “Go ahead, plough through that taxing remote” and most important of all, it says “Don’t be scared of a Punitive Counterstrike threat, here’s some hard-earned dough for your troubles”.

As every card should, Jackpot! definitely has its downsides. I’ve had several games where I would lose 7-0 with a total of almost THIRTY s sitting on multiple Jackpots. Through cyberspace, I can basically hear them laughing at my pathetic and futile attempts to steal an agenda as I stare down credits that I desperately need. In that regard, Jackpot! isn’t like Stimhack where it can provide you the game-winning run – in fact Jackpot! is a dead card if you’re already at game point. Which means it has to be used as an x3 so that you can see it early and get it ticking which is troublesome because that takes up precious slots that could be going to other x1 tech slots – The Shadow Net, Dean Lister, Same Old Thing, etc.

In summary, this card is not worth the full x3 slots unless you live in a Punitive Counterstrike meta (I’m looking at you, limited cardpools) and even then this card should only be played over meat damage prevention when you’re tight on influence. This card might not look like it with its innocent 0 install cost but is quite high risk/reward so it won’t find itself in competitive decks soon. Still, it’s made several of my opponents sweat bullets through virtual space as they see my Jackpot! hit 20+ s. At any point, any single access on centrals feels like a game of Russian Roulette for the corp as they pray that the next card won’t be their last. And when you do hit that sweet, sweet agenda, don’t forget to yell the obligatory “Jackpot!” for the saltiest of tears.

A sleeper card in an absolutely stacked datapack, PAD Tap is drip economy with an interesting trigger: it pays you when your opponent gets paid. Flavourfully Criminal, this card’s best-case scenario is that it pays you 1 on your turn and 1 on your opponent’s turn. To top that scenario off, you’ve got enough Fall Guy installed to dissuade the corp from even thinking about trashing these (unfortunately PAD Tap does not combo with Wireless Net Pavilion).

However, we should never judge a card by its best-case scenario and instead judge it on what its expected results are. With that in mind, here’s a breakdown of cards that trigger PAD Tap that are ubiquitous in the meta:

Neutral:

Corp’s Turn: Hedge Fund / IPO / Rashida Jaheem/ PAD Campaign

Possible on both Turns: NGO Front

NBN:

Possible on both Turns: Pop-up Window, Azmari EdTech

Weyland:

Corp’s Turn: Commercial Bankers Group / Hostile Takeover/ Standoff / All The Transactions!

Possible on both Turns: Hortum

Jinteki:

Corp’s Turn: Celebrity Gift

Possible on both Turns: Pālanā Foods

HB:

Corp’s Turn: All The Clearances!

Possible on both Turns: Sportsmetal

As you can see, the above lists aren’t fully comprehensive but they cover quite a large majority of the popular economy options available today. At one influence, PAD Tap continues the blue trend of being under-influenced (see Aumakua) so you can splash for it with relative ease.

There’s one more consideration to be made though and that’s that it comes with a pre-built trashing option. Given that a smart corp player will trash PAD Tap knowing the potential money their deck could make the runner, PAD Tap has a great home in the economy denial archetype. One last thing: PAD Tap doesn’t trigger when the corp clicks for credits but if you’re at the point in a game where your opponent is forced to do that, you as a runner have probably already won.

A far more interesting and balanced decoder to its predecessor, Yog.0, Cradle is the newest Anarch fixed-strength decoder with a condition that can end up being quite the hindrance: modified icebreaker strength based on current grip-size. Shapers and Criminals have plenty of options at breaking code gates with Gordian Blade and/or Abagnale so I think I can safely say this won’t be seeing play outside of Red.

While cheap gearcheck ICE like Enigma or Thimblerig have been the bane of Black Orchestra for a long time, Cradle eats those two up for breakfast. Unfortunately, the presence of the big 3-subbed code gates: DNA Tracker, Fairchild 3.0, and Mausolus make Cradle a liability. Without strength modifiers, a runner would need an empty grip to break the latter two (after which they would commit neural suicide on a potential Kakugo) and suffers a painful facecheck against the former.

I see two potential options then to playing Cradle: using strength-modifiers and grip-size-managers like Dedicated Processor and Patchwork respectively or consistently maintaining a near-empty grip to keep up Cradle’s high base strength. It’s a high upkeep for a card that no longer says "0: Break code gate subroutine."

While previous Yog.0 decks only had to worry about boosting the decoder’s strength up, decks utilizing Cradle have to worry about that and keeping its base strength manageable through their grip. Outside of Gnat or Noble Path decks, I think this card’s strength-modifier keeps it from seeing any competitive play.