Shiv

Shiv

I struggle to see the draw of this card over Faerie. Faerie costs the same, starts with 2 strength, and breaks any number of subroutines in exchange for trash. As a breaker, Faerie is better in almost every way.

I do see a few edge cases where Shiv has an advantage:

Are those advantages worth giving up the ability to pump strength for 1 and break >3 subroutines? In my opinion - no.

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In the cloud deck I'm running it's purely a memory thing. I'm running Data Folding and only the precise amount of memory I need to keep it going. (Thanks Desperado - the memory I need AND cash? Can't argue!) But generally I don't disagree. If you've got enough memory and / or are running Geist - Faerie just comes out on top every time. —
You play this WITH Faerie. Shiv can break lower strength sentries, Faerie (even backed up by #Sacrificial Construct) breaks the high strength ones, and both boost the strength of the criminal cloud breakers. —
At least with Geist the card had draw, ba-doom-ching. —
If you have three or more Icebreakers installed, this is also cheaper to break with. —
Tech Trader now gives it some extra legs over Faerie. —
Capital Investors

Capital Investors

The key advantage of this card over something like Melange is flexibility. Melange forces you to give up your entire turn doing nothing but getting credits. Capital Investors allows you to get some credits and then do something else.

This is particularly useful when you've got 6 cards in hand and would like to play or install one/some of them rather than toss them away. If you've got influence to spare in ETF or NEH, it also allows you to get 4 credits AND trigger your ID ability each turn.

That being said, you have to carefully weigh up the influence cost of splashing this outside of Weyland. Still, it's not unheard of for people to run GRNDL Refineries out of faction, and this is a strong alternative as a credit-making machine that allows you flexibility.

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