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To me, what this card does is this:

"Sneakdoor" into R&D. This should help you get to 3+ points. When you or the corp enter the midgame, this card accelerates, allowing you to get even more agendas. This means that the more you steal, the more you get.

However, you have to remove the tag or else the corp will trash it. However, there are advantages to taking the tag, assuming you're using Sebastiao. Now you can slam “Pretty” Mary da Silva onto the table and then remove the tag. This should be a game-closing situation.

In summary, I think this is a really insane card that looks like a hybrid between Medium and Sneakdoor Beta.

My rating: 6/10? 7/10? can't tell how to rate it because it's hard to tell unless you play it.

I don't know about this, but it looks a little OP to me. Maybe it should cost 2? since it only triggers when you access at least 2 cards during the run, you always get 3+ accesses. Take for example R&D Interface, which costs 4 to install. that one is perfectly balanced. This on the other hand, costs only 1 provided you are already getting extra accesses. Also it's only 1 influence, meaning you can import it into other decks easily. R&D Interface is 2 influence and is balanced.

In my opinion, this would be fine at 2 install cost and MAYBE 2 influence.

D4v1d-Gr43b3r's excellent review talks about the functionality of Physarum, so I'll stick to its impact. Put simply, Physarum is the best single card answer to nearly every non-barrier ICE in the game. You'd think this would make it a strong contender in Criminal lists, but no, it's awkward and mostly a worse Boomerang because you can't blindly put this onto ICE for fear of it being a Barrier and getting blanked or getting purged out.

Of course, it's not Criminals that are playing Physarum, it's Shapers. At 3 influence, it does strain deckbuilding slightly, but you only need one copy to tutor/recur with cards like Self-modifying Code, Simulchip or Muse at potentially instant speed, meaning you can avoid its downside of potentially putting it down blind and discovering it was a barrier all along. If you're Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist, it's a Trojan you can slap on from hand too and break any non barrier for (usually) 2-3c. The fact that it bypasses on when encounter begins means, as D4v1d-Gr43b3r points out, that it skips many of the "on encounter" triggers that lots of taxing ICE such as Tollbooth rely on. Basically, if a Shaper has SMC down and ~5c (or a Simulchip with it in heap), they can face check nearly anything without consequence (the only favourable interaction for the Corp is Anansi, as seen by the ruling above this page).

The effects of this on Corp deckbuilding, just due to this card's existence, are extremely severe. Since Shapers have been the clear dominant force of the RWR meta and Physarum is a common one of in almost every one (except Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman), playing strong face check Sentries or punishing Code Gates is strongly discouraged (not entirely out, Jinteki and HB have enough scary face checks that the one Physarum can't hit them all with cards like Saisentan or Gatekeeper) as a Physarum Entangler will break them for pennies. Large and expensive Sentries/Code Gates like Cloud Eater, despite being strong from a strength/subs/facecheck point of view are completely unviable when "rez for 10, break for 3" is the standing. I won't deny the weakness to Mavirus; if the Corp has an upgrade on the table it can be risky to use a Physarum to break, and currently we do see Mavirus in Rush PD and Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel. decks).

Ultimately, though, Physarum Entangler is one of the strongest Shaper cards to ever be printed in Criminal. Sadly, it's not even the only Criminal card Shapers found more reliable use for (Cupellation). As you can probably tell, I really don't like this card; it lacks so many of the downsides of other ICE cheating methods NSG has printed (Botulus is slow, Boomerang and Slap Vandal lose to certain ICE and S-Dobrado and Inside Job can be played around via positionality and need to be hard drawn) by being an immediate and fast solution to too many ICE in the game, and has only further strengthened the "ICE doesn't matter" endgame lots of Runners end up in. I would not be against seeing the card go on the banlist, just because the strain it puts on Corps and efficiency at which it cheats ICE on encounter effects compared to something like Femme Fatale is absurd to me.

As of 2023, with the printings of Strike Fund and Steelskin Scarring, patchwork has seen a resurgence in popularity and many new headaches. This document I have written up contains answers and questions that maybe don't show up in the rulings for the card.