Sure, it's not strong as a pure econ card, but it's worth noting that it's paying you for something you'd do anyway, so drawing it is like clicking for 2 with a delayed reaction. Two other factions have similar econ cards; Beanstalk Royalties pays you 2 extra the next time you want to click for a credit. Green Level Clearance pays out when you want a card.

Additionally, there are shenanigans. Using it to fast advance with Efficiency Committee counters is one, but there are others. This lets you advance even when you're broke, so you can still Fast Advance with Astro counters or a rezzed SanSan City Grid even after an Account Siphon or other econ denial attack. It also offers a sneaky way to beat Clone Chipped Clots because you can play this and immediately score before the runner's paid ability window.

Finally, this finds its way into some Power Shutdown combo decks as Accelerated Diagnostics can play it out for two advancement tokens without spending an extra .

Wow, loads of reviews of Sacrificial Construct! I'm actually running it at the moment in a janky but reasonably successful deck, so there's a couple of things I think I can add.

Lynx Kurenko mentions SacCon's utility as double resource fodder in Hayley. I think that observation should go hand in hand with a mention of the fact that Aesop's Pawnshop drastically reduces the opportunity cost of playing such fodder cards. Don't need SacCon this game? No problem. It's an Easy Mark.

I'm not a big fan of using this to recur Faerie. In that case the same influence and slot could be used for Mimic, which supports Faerie really well on a permanent basis. I also agree that it's no replacement for Sharpshooter given the number of commonly played multi sub destroyers. But if you've got it in your deck, then sometimes it will be better than either of those cards all on its own. If you're playing against Blue Sun: Powering the Future for instance, you can use this to face check without fear of Nebula, Grim or even a sneaky Wormhole piggybacking a trash routine from somewhere else. That's not nothing.

Against Power Shutdown it's fine, but then practically anything cheap and disposable does that job. Shapers commonly have Clone Chips and SModCodes lying around, so they have some natural protection anyway (although if you do get a SacCon out, you don't hate protecting those options). Protecting Clot is obviously good, but again Clone Chips do that job for you without you having to slot a card purely for that purpose. One argument in favour of SacCon for Clot is the timing of the Corp's turn. Because they choose the order of simultaneous effects they can trash an installed Cyberdex Virus Suite to create a window for scoring fast advanced agendas that beats a clone chipped clot. In the same situation, SacCon offers no such window.

I think the card that really makes SacCon worth considering right now is Marcus bloody Batty (that's his technical name). He's common at the moment and he will ruin your day in a way that no breaker can answer. SacCon counters one of his strong options, and for that I am profoundly grateful to it.

Overall, I think SacCon is good enough as a marginal utility/silver bullet card in a deck that's mostly planning to sell it to Aesop's a solid 60% of the time.

It's an interesting time for Lotus Field. Once the best ice for improving a deck's match-up against anarchs in general and Yog.0 specifically, there are now a couple of solid solutions to it. Net-Ready Eyes will get your Yog up to the correct strength, but unlike its cousin The Personal Touch will also support other breakers, elevating it above 'silver bullet' status. It also has the advantage that it's not hosted. In faction, Faust breaks Lotus Field for a couple of cards - a totally reasonable cost for a runner with a bit of redundancy in their deck, like the WyldCakes combo for instance.

Given the existence of these new tools, is Lotus field still a good card? I'd say yes. Both of the solutions mentioned above require installing another card to be able to get in. An extra gear check is still a valuable effect, even if the gear has improved. Immunity to Parasite is also a giant upside that shouldn't be underestimated. Its numbers look very similar to Bastion, a mediocre but playable ice. It costs an extra , but then its a code gate, so it will often cost more to break (If you compare breakers with similar costs, like ZU.13 Key Master to Corroder or Gordian Blade to Cerberus "Lady" H1).

Lastly, at a low, low cost of one influence Lotus Field is an easy splash. This is especially important for Weyland, who infamously lack decent in-faction code gates. It's cost makes it the middle of the road option between neutral codegates like Enigma and monsters like Tollbooth. Crucially, it demands the installation of a breaker (Enigma and its cousins are parasite fodder). Blue Sun: Powering the Future particularly likes it, because Wormhole is worthless when you don't have any other ice rezzed.

In conclusion, I think Lotus Field will continue to be a big deal in most metas. It's a good thing that anarchs won't have to swear quite as much when they see it, but it was strong enough in the first place that it's still a solid choice, despite having been weakened.

Two credits each turn

and yet deck space is so tight -

this sees little play

The credits are not

used every turn and also

three to trash is few

Maybe Gagarin

with Executive Boot Camp

Could use this - but the Weyland Corporation has no sense of aesthetics.

This is an interesting card, mechanically as well as thematically. Before addressing the various elephants in the room, it's worth thinking about the big upside the Little Engine has to offer. Against Gordian Blade and ZU.13 it's a respectable net cost to break: 2 with Gord, 3 with Zu. It also comes with a powerful kicker in the form of a large up-front cost to break. Although the runner gets most of their money back they still have to have a bunch of it to get up the hill. This means that the Engine's natural home is as the innermost ice on a server - you want to tax them a before they hit it. It also means the Engine can create scoring windows - when the runner is poor it will punch above its weight to keep them out.

The other breaker that the Engine excels against is Yog.0. Net-Ready Eyes will not help them. On the other hand, if the runner has Yog, they almost certainly have a separate answer to the Engine. D4v1d pays for itself with a profit of 2 and a power counter to spare when fighting this particular Goliath, while Knight pays the runner 1 each time they pass. Against this sort of breaker suite, the Engine is a gear check. Not useless, but more taxing on the corp than on the runner in the long run.

That's only the start of the Engine's troubles. Cyber-Cypher and Torch both break it for free providing the runner has 5, so effectively the corp is just reminding runners who use those breakers to keep enough money on hand to steal NAPD. Refractor pays a tidy profit, converting the runner's ephemeral stealth credits into hard cash. Stimhack runs enjoy a similar temporary-money-into-permanent-money boon, which is a big issue considering the common inclusion of that card in the dominant Prepaid Kate archetype. Lastly, Grappling Hook makes the Engine very sad. That's not a big issue now, but Geist might run it.

So is the Engine good enough? Given all of its problems and the obvious negative comparison with Tollbooth it's tempting to say no. It's considerably cheaper than Tollbooth though, and has a couple of admittedly minor advantages over it (Like being outside the practical range of 4tman with Datasucker). That makes it worth considering on its own merits. The fact is that not every deck will be packing the answers I've discussed. Some will just have Gordian or Zu. Some will have to break the Engine with Passport, Rex or Eater. Those decks will be unhappy to see it.

In conclusion due to its many deeply unfortunate problems the Little Engine will never be the centre piece of a codegate suite, but that doesn't make it worthless. As a one-of it has the potential to do good work in some match-ups. Sometimes you will discard it if you know or suspect the runner has a strong answer to it, but sometimes you will be glad to see it.