A solid little 2/1 agenda. The first one in Jinteki since Clone Retirement! And a much better one too - Jinteki decks seldom ran with much bad publicity, and Clone Retirement was not a reliable way of removing it. (Since if stolen, it just made the problem worse!) Hybrid Release is a much better agenda overall, that doesn't have a downside in the same way Clone Retirement did.

So first off, it's a 2/1. This is nice just for scoring reasons - it's only one point, but you can fast-advance it out of your hand with no other tools. The effect is solid also - Installing cards from archives is both very handy, and very in-theme for Jinteki. (Although note that you still have to pay for the install. No cheap ice towers for you!) It does have one other limit though - you can only install cards from archives that are facedown. So you can't install anything that the runner has already trashed, for example. But that's fine - it's still a great way to pull out failed traps or agendas that you have stashed! (Or just useful cards that you have discarded.)

I also really like the design of this card. Every startup-legal Jinteki identity synergizes with it in a different way:

• Jinteki: Personal Evolution loves 1-point agendas, and ones that are safe to score are basically just free net damage.
• Jinteki: Restoring Humanity likes having facedown cards in the archives anyway, (and tends to have at least some defense on their archives) so will very likely have something to target with the agenda ability.
• Issuaq Adaptics: Sustaining Diversity can play it facedown on the board, unadvanced, and if the runner doesn't check it, next turn they can Seamless Launch it to score and trigger their identity, making it effectively worth two points.

Other synergies are mostly just things that put things into the archives facedown for it to target. Hansei Review is a classic. Moon Pool can leave things in archives facedown, if you already have an agenda in archives when you trigger it. And the new card, Simulation Reset is a fantastic way to both recur useful cards, while leaving some facedown cards in archives.

So yeah. It's not a terribly exciting agenda. It's not going to break the game, or be the final piece in some ridiculous janky combo. (Issuaq nonsense notwithstanding) It's just a very solid agenda with good numbers, clean design, and a useful effect, that can fit right into almost any Jinteki deck and be useful. Give it a whirl next time you are deckbuilding, and you will probably find it useful!

This card disappointed me when it was spoiled. 7 is a lot for a piece of ice, and I just wanted it somehow to do... more. Higher strength. More impactful subroutines. Cost a little less. Something. It doesn't even end the run! It's like someone just took a bunch of the "annoyance" subs from ice like Maskirovka or Ivik and threw them in a box!

But hey, I was making a Jinteki deck anyway, so I figured I'd give it a spin and see what I thought of it in action. I fully expected to end the game having rezed exactly zero of them.

I could not have been more wrong! This ice is actually pretty great. I just didn't appreciate why until I saw it on the board.

I mean - it's clearly taxing ice. It's not going to keep someone out who is determined, but it will definitely make them pay in the process, one way or another! But it might be enough to keep someone from running every turn, so I slapped it in front of R&D. And it did work.

None of the subs are super-threatening by themselves, but each one represents a swing in resources worth around 1-2 clicks. If all four subs fire, I usually figure that's about a 6-click swing. (I count the credit subs as only each, because most players can convert into 2 one way or another) That's actually a pretty significant swing!

Of course, the runner probably doesn't want to let them all fire. But here's where it gets interesting - There aren't actually that many efficient ways to bulk-break codegate subroutines. Even with a good breaker, getting past this is going to cost some money. A Hyperbaric, charged up to 4 strength, can do it for 4. Basically everything else is worse, especially in startup format. In a surprise upset, Buzzsaw does okay, leveraging it's multi-sub breaking for a total cost of 5. (And you can get it down to 2 if you have support from something like Leech or K2CP Turbine, which is probably the best-case scenario.) Cat's Cradle takes 7 to break everything. And Unity is in the middle of the pack at 5 - 7, depending on board state.

"But wait!", I hear you say. "The current meta has a lot of ways to break ice that don't require icebreakers!" Well, here is where it starts getting interesting. Any corp deck right now has take into account the existence of the three Bs: Botulus, Boomerang, and Boat. They're the bane of a lot of expensive ice. But none of these are terribly great at breaking Vampyronassa.

Endurance requires four power tokens to get through. That's not sustainable for long, even with Captain Padma Isbister frantically refilling it. Botulus has to wait four turns to break everything, which is a long time to wait. And poor Boomerang can only get through two! (Although the new card Poison Vial helps a lot in all of these cases. We'll have to see how much that one starts showing up...)

So even with the three Bs on the job, this is still costly ice to get through. Also, in startup at least, Devil Charm has just rotated, so ice destruction is less less common, and investing expensive pieces of ice is less risky these days. Derez is still a possibility - Emergency Shutdown and Tranquilizer are still around, so it's worth being cautious of criminal. But overall, this is a good environment for Vampyronassa to appear in.

So yeah! I went in pretty unenthusiastic, but after using it in a few games, I'm feeling like this is actually a pretty solid piece of ice! The 3-influence cost means it may not see much play in other factions, but there are a lot of different Jinteki decks that would love cut down on digs into R&D or make a scoring remote more expensive to peek at. And this card does all of that magnificently!

One final thought: I'm always really nervous about ice that forces card draws. It can sometimes be abused by the runner, either by overloading the corp's hand, or just removing the top card of R&D so they can see what's beneath it. So a big thank you to Null Signal Games, for making the card-draw optional! If the last sub was just "Corp draws 2 cards", this would be a bit worse. Well done, NSG!

In a world where Archived Memories and Preemptive Action were (as of this writing) recently banned for allowing too much corp recursion, this card came as quite a surprise. Especially in light of the collection of strong recursion options that Jinteki has already accumulated.

And make no mistake. At this point, Jinteki is really good at bringing back cards from archives. They've never been bad at it, but it feels like it has been kicked into overdrive recently. Maybe the difference between these and Archived Memories is that these are mostly either high-influence, or agendas, making them difficult for other factions to make use of? Not sure. But whatever the reason, they're here, and worth taking notice of!

So. We're here to talk about Simulation Reset in particular, so let's get to it. On the face of it, it's a good way to cycle up to five cards back into your deck, if you don't like what you're holding. And that's assuming you just take the boring route, and reshuffle everything that you just discarded. What makes this card neat is that you don't have to reshuffle what you tossed - you can reshuffle whatever you want. So you can drop 3 Ice Walls, once the runner has their fracter down, and bring back 3 Hedge Fundss or something, that you know you can still use. Or bring back 3 assets that the runner has already trashed. Or whatever you want. With the ability to reshuffle up to 5(!) cards back into R&D, I think this may well be the most powerful recursion option available to the corp at the moment. (It certainly is in Startup format!)

So this already makes it a noteworthy card in my book. But wait! There's even more!

Because this card gets you another resource as well. One that is quickly becoming very important in modern Jinteki decks: Facedown cards in archives. This is key! I mean, obviously Jinteki: Restoring Humanity likes to have at least one for their drip econ, but whatever. That's old news. I'm talking about some of the newer toys:

• Nanisivik Grid lets you fire off guaranteed subroutines, from facedown ice in archives.
• Hybrid Release lets you install stuff out of archives as long as it is facedown.
• Moon Pool lets you use facedown agendas in archives as fast-advance tokens. (And reshuffles them back in as a bonus!)
• Regenesis lets you score agendas that are in archives. (Okay, this one doesn't strictly care if they are facedown, but there are very few ways to ever have an agenda faceup in archives...)

All of these really benefit from something that dumps up to five cards of your choice in archives as a side effect.

As a broader trend, I really like the way that Null Signal Games is leaning into Jinteki's historic connection to archives. They've done a really good job of making the runner actually care what's in there, beyond just fishing for stashed agendas. Letting the corp keep archives facedown is starting to open up a lot of potential for chicanery! But as archives have gotten more attention from runners, it has sometimes been hard for corp players to keep the mystery alive. This card is great for that.

As well as, you know, also happening to be the single most powerful corp recursion card I've ever seen. :P

Happy running.

At first blush, this card looks like it is designed for jank. Figure out some way to see (or pick) what's on top of your deck, and then install it cheaply.

The problem though, is that most of the ways to control what's on top of your deck (i. e. Test Run) cost enough to make the discount somewhat questionable. (Test Run + Rejig is probably a better combo. Although Rejig did just rotate out of startup...) I guess you could check the Prognostic Q-Loop every turn to see if something expensive is on top, but that feels kind of clunky. (And it just rotated out of startup.)

After playing around with this card though, I think I was evaluating it wrong. It's not a jank piece. It's just a really efficient installation tool and deck thinner.

For 3, it gets you a program draw and a free install.

The downside is that you don't get to choose what gets installed. But the upside is that you pay 3 for it, whatever it is. So if all the programs in your deck cost at least 3, it will always be worth it.

The other downside of course, is that you might get something redundant. If you have more than one copy of each breaker, you might get the same breaker twice. So it might be worth pairing this with cards that let you sacrifice unneeded programs for profit. (Spec Work or Aesop's Pawnshop, for example.) Or just only including one copy of each breaker, if you have decent recursion. (Which you probably do if you're playing shaper!)

And I want to make it clear - even if you install something useless or redundant, that's still useful, even if you just end up selling it to Aesop. Because you're thinning out your deck and removing the cards that you don't need, so you won't draw them later. (I mean, don't get me wrong, you'd still RATHER hit things that directly advance your board state. Just saying that it's not all bad.)

Two final thoughts:

• Why did they limit the discount to 10? As of this writing, there are exactly zero programs that cost more than 10. Is something huge coming in a later set???
• When you get it to install Orca, it feels better than just about anything else I've done as a runner in the past year.

TL;DR: Probably worse than Diesel if you don't have cards that can recharge her. Significantly better if you do. A good alternative to Earthrise Hotel for decks that can recharge.

Longer version:

So let's compare some numbers.

Diesel costs you to draw, to play, and nets you 3 cards. That's one more than you'd get if you just clicked normally.

Dr. Nuka Vrolyck costs you to draw, and 1 to play, and to use, and draws you 6 cards. So that's two more than you'd get if you clicked to draw normally, but at the cost of 1.

So if you can't charge her up, she's juuuust slightly more efficient than Diesel. She nets you one extra card, that you pay 1 for. On the other hand, this improvement comes at the cost of having to commit to spending 4 clicks on card draw, instead of Diesel's 2. In practice, Diesel's instant payout and ease of use is almost always going to be better.

Unless, of course, you can give the doctor more power counters. Because once she's going, she's basically just a Diesel dispenser, except that you don't have to actually draw the Diesels. So they're basically double efficiency. So the more times you can actually activate her ability, the better she is. If you get to use her 4 times, (instead of the default 2) then you've spent 6 clicks, but drawn 12 cards, which is great. If you get to use her 6 times, then you've spent 8 clicks to draw 18 cards, which is even better. And so on.

For Captain Padma Isbister decks, the main competition for this space is Earthrise Hotel, which also converts power tokens into card draws, at roughly the same rate. (2:1, once you take into account the click required to activate Dr. Nuka)

Earthrise Hotel is actually probably more efficient over time - not having to spend clicks to trigger the card draw is really nice! - but Dr. Nuka has two important things in her favor: First, the upfront install cost is significantly cheaper: 1 vs 4 is a major difference. (Nothing worse than spending all your money installing Earthrise, and being unable to play the cards that you draw with it!) But also, the fact that you can control the rate that Dr. Nuka dispenses cards is a big help as well.

I've had a lot of games with Captain Padma where Earthrise Hotel made me overdraw on turns where I needed to spend all of my clicks on running. And lots of games where Earthrise Hotel blew itself up because it ran itself out of tokens before I could refresh it. Dr. Nuka is really nice this way, because you can always just wait to click her until you're ready.

So anyway, bottom line: I like Dr. Nuka Vrolyck a lot. I've been testing her in my power counter boat deck, and I think she's a viable replacement for Earthrise Hotel. I don't think she's a strict upgrade to Earthrise, but she's definitely an interesting sidegrade. It will probably come down to personal preference and playstyle for most people, but even the fact that we have multiple options is pretty cool in my book.