A bit of lore: "Nfr" is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph meaning "good", "pleasant", "well", or "beautiful" depending on context. The pronunciation is something like "Nefer" or "Nafer"--in fact, it's the first part of the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Enough flavor, let's talk mechanics. In general, icebreakers fall into two categories: boost-to-break, and fixed strength. Corroder is boost-to-break, while Mimic and Yog.0 are fixed strength.

The tradeoff between these two types of breakers is power versus reliability. For any piece of ice strength 3 or below, Mimic is one of the most efficient killers in the game, and Yog.0 is literally free to use. But, there's a catch--getting through any high-strength piece of ice becomes impossible without additional support, and even with Datasuckers and the like it can be difficult. As such, these breakers encourage an aggressive playstyle--try to win by chewing through weak early-game ice over the central servers, before the corp manages to get a Wormhole or Archer rezzed. At the very least, you can use this to rack up Datasucker tokens.

But there wasn't a fixed-strength barrier breaker that fit with this approach. Sure, Morning Star existed, but it was extremely expensive, preventing the runner from using it to fuel their early game. Once in a while you'd see it played in a MaxX/Retrieval Run deck to cheat it into play, but outside that pretty much never.

Nfr is an attempt to fill that gap. But does it?

Let's start with the big weakness. It only starts at 1 strength. That's a huge problem, when you consider that barriers tend to be taxing based on strength. If the corp manages to get a Wall of Static on all their central servers and purges your Datasucker tokens, you are locked out if you haven't managed to break a couple weak barriers yet.

This is a worst-case scenario, though. If Nfr is your only fracter, you're probably playing Null and/or Injection Attack. By using these cards, you can break a Wall of Static once; and if you can get break it twice, then you're set for life. Even if the corp plays a bigger barrier like Hadrian's Wall, you can still get up to strength by using the smaller barriers as a punching bag.

But here we hit upon an issue. See, corps can use barriers in either a "fast" or "slow" context. A fast corp deck will use the cheapest barriers available to them--Wraparound, Vanilla, Ice Wall, things of that sort. The logic here is that, for a runner without a fracter, all barriers are equivalently powerful but not equivalently costly, so why spend more than you have to? The challenge here is "can you find your fracter?"

Other corps, though, have a slower gameplan. They will have some medium-sized barriers (Eli 1.0 is common even with the MWL cost), and some larger barriers (Fire Wall or larger). This archetype assumes that you will get your fracter quickly enough that the gearcheck ice isn't valuable. Instead they just want to make servers that the runner cannot afford to get into.

Nfr, though, isn't effective against either strategy in isolation. If the corp is playing fast, then Nfr is no better than a Corroder, and costs an extra credit to install. But if the corp is playing slow, then it will be immensely difficult to get up to strength. And how often do you see a deck install both cheap AND expensive barriers over the course of a game?

Nfr is just too inconsistent to rise out of the jank designation. And with the amazing Paperclip right next to it, I really don't see a reason to play it seriously.

I'm sorry, @CactusJack, but this card is not better than Kati. It's substantially worse. In fact, I find this card to be unplayably bad.

But I don't think Kati is the right comparison anyway. Kati is persistent clicked economy--spaced out over several turns, sure, but ultimately you're trading clicks for credits at a more efficient rate. Algo Trading is more along the lines of Daily Casts: a card that pays off a set amount every turn, and eventually goes away.

And in that comparison, Algo Trading is simply untenably bad.

Let's look at Daily Casts in detail first to get a baseline. The turn you install it, you've spent a click and 3 for no gain. Valuing clicks and credits equally, that's a tempo hit of 4. Your next turn, you get 2 back; you're still in the hole, but only by half as much. Two turns after install, you break even. Then the following turns you go up to +2 and finally +4 before the card finished off, for a total economic value of 4.

We can then describe the payout structure over time as {-4,-2,0,+2,+4,+4,+4...}. I've repeated the +4 payout at the end to show that, once it's gone, it's gone and will neither cost you anything nor return you anything extra.

What does Algo Trading's payout structure looks like? Well the first three turns are pretty clear. The turn you install it, you're down a click, which is a credit, so that's -1. The next turn, you have to funnel in another 3, lowering you to a -4 payout. The turn after, you do it again, putting you to -7. So far, that's pretty dang terrible--a Daily Casts would have already broken even and you're 7 credits in the red.

"Now hold on," you might say. "You aren't technically spending these credits--how is that fair?" True, you aren't spending them, per se, but any credits hosted on Algo Trading can't be spent installing icebreakers, playing other economy cards, or spent making runs. And if you get tagged, they're toast. For all intents and purposes, you're spending them, and then regaining them when (and if) you cash in.

So when do you cash in? Well, since it will take you a click to install and a click to cash in, there's no point in doing so for a 2 net gain--that's no better than clicking for credits. Waiting one more turn (to get two 2 gains) isn't much better--you could have gotten the same benefit from playing an Easy Mark and clicking for credits without all the waiting.

Even waiting three additional turns, for a 6 gain, isn't good enough-- the pattern of returns then looks like {-1,-4,-7,-7,-7,+4}. Even though it does, eventually, hit the total net return as Daily Casts, it takes an extra turn to get there, and you're going to be strapped for cash until then. That's simply not good enough.

So you would need to wait a minimum of 4 turns beyond the initial stock-up rounds. This puts the payout structure as {-1,-4,-7,-7,-7,-7,+6}.

Now, an economic value of +6 is pretty okay. But that gain is happening so fair in the future--six turns into the future, in fact, so really you're only making 1 credit a turn. I repeat, though--this isn't the same as a steady drip of one real credit a turn (like Underworld Contact or Data Folding) because you can't spend it. You're tying up your assets in a non-liquid state. And by doing so, the corp is going to either punish you for being broke, or force you to cash in too early and take a sub-optimal payout.

Maybe it could work in Nasir.Nasir is the only runner who gets value from offshoring his money, because it gives him a higher return potential when he facechecks ice. Nasir might even want to store MORE than the startup capital of 6 on Algo Trading, just so that it's cleared away when he hits ice. And then, once all the ice is rezzed, he can take it back, plus interest. But Nasir is not, has never been, and is unlikely to ever be even remotely competitive; we're throwing two bad cards together to get a mediocre outcome.

If you're truly desperate for some clickless drip, then I would recommend Zona Sul Shipping over Algo Trading in a heartbeat. The cost to set it up is so much lower, and you can use it more than once. Yeah, it dies if you're tagged, but if you think a corp wouldn't tag you and kill an Algo Trading with 14+ credits on it, then you're wrong.

So, between this card, Rumor Mill, and the officially spoiled Preemptive Action, the FFG dev team is giving us a pretty clear message: "Jackson Howard is eventually going to rotate, prepare your butts".

See, Jackson provides a number of important functions for the corp. He provides accelerated draw, recursion, and a way to vent off agendas if you get flooded, along with an on-demand shuffle.

Special Report fills the agenda venting and on-demand shuffle aspects of Jackson, and goes a decent way towards helping you draw to find what you need, but it only affect cards in HQ. Anything in Archives will need a different card to recover.

So in that respect, Special Report is worse than Jackson. It also requires a credit to play. And it's two influence instead of one. With all that in mind, is it playable?

I think the answer comes down entirely to how popular Rumor Mill becomes, and how much importance people place on being able to reliably avoid agenda flood.

One scenario is that Rumor Mill becomes common--maybe not in every deck, but in enough that dumping agendas in Archives with a Jackson on the table is a liability. If this happens, I expect the meta to shift strongly away from glacier, and more towards shell-game, rush, or kill decks. This is because Glacier relied heavily on not only Jackson, but also Ash 2X3ZB9CY or Caprice Nisei (and occasionally Sandburg) to close out games, and Rumor Mill is effective against these as well.

If this happens, I expect that NBN will trade out their three Jacksons for three Special Reports and call it good. Other factions will have a trickier choice. Playing Jacksons is less expensive influence-wise, and a better card if Rumor Mill isn't in play...but relying on him too heavily is a disaster. On the other hand, a playset of 3x Special Reports is a whopping 6 influence, which is a problem. Most decks, I imagine, would drop down to two flood-management cards, either 1x Jackson Howard+1x Special Report or 2x Special Report, depending on how much influence they had.

But this might not happen. Just like Clot weakened but did not kill Fast Advance, perhaps Rumor Mill will weaken but not kill Jackson Howard. There might be ways to play around Rumor Mill that remove a lot of its bite. And Rumor Mill is two influence a copy, so most Shapers and Criminals won't run a full playset (Fisk probably would, though.) If this shakes out, and Rumor Mill doesn't become a meta-shaping force, then I expect people will just keep playing Jackson up until the last possible moment.

The only corp that would say should definitely use Special Report over Jackson is Cerebral Imaging. See, Special Report lets you throw back as many agendas as you have in your hand, compared to Jackson's three. On top of that, Jackson requires that you overdraw and discard, but being at max hand size is risky for CI; one bad Account Siphon and you might lose a lot of options. For this corp, it's Special Report or nothing.

So how good is Special Report? I guess we'll find out.

Ban this sick filth.

I mean, the card itself isn't broken, mechanically speaking. It's a way to punish runners with resources. If the runner has six credits and three installed resouces, they have to choose between going broke or sacrificing what could be a major part of the strategy. It's a meta call, depending solely upon the relative prevalence of event economy vs. resource economy vs. program economy in runner decks.

No, this card needs to die because it's soooooo sad. Chaos Theory has always been the most adorable of the runners. She has a stuffed animal as her console and they are best friends. They go on Exploratory Romps together. They audition for movies together. Even when the big meanies at Weyland get their hands on Dinosaurus, she sticks with him and fixes him because she's just such a nice person. (Note the band-aid in the card art for Financial Collapse.)

I like the world of Android Netrunner because it's exciting and dramatic and thrilling. I'm okay with blowing up entire city blocks, with political fraud, with self-murder, with martyrdom, with the systematic exploitation of both sentient AI and human clones, with violence marketed to children, with scapegoating, with conflicts of interest...all fine and good.

But I am NOT okay with this card. It is wholly and completely unacceptable to introduce her family (look how happy they are in that family photo!) and then show her crying over money issues. It's too goddamn real. All I want is for her dads to take CT in their arms and tell her that everything is going to be okay, but that can't happen because it's a lie, because some asshole runner hacked some corporation and now nothing is ever going to be okay again and oh god I'm actually tearing up.

In all seriousness, mad props to FFG and to Matt Zellinger for the emotional sucker punch of this card. Also, respect for having not just one but two stable, happy homosexual marriages with kids. For all the darkness and fear in the Android universe, there are a few moments that suggest that maybe things aren't as bleak as they seem.

Blood Money is a perplexing pack. Half the cards are meta-shifting, strategy-defining good. And the other half...are things like this.

What is this card supposed to do? Well, it lets you trash a card at no cost, even if it's not normally trashable.

This is useful for one of two reasons: either you can trash a card that you normally couldn't (like ice or an operation), or you can trash an asset or upgrade for cheaper than it normally would.

Except that the corp can stop it by paying the play or rez cost. This is a major flaw. This means that you can't effectively Credit Crash a PAD Campaign, because the corp would gladly spend 2 to keep it alive. Same thing if you hit an Exchange of Information out of HQ, only this time it's free.

And that's assuming that you even make it into the server and hit the thing you want. Most things you might want to Crash will be protected by ice. If something isn't in an iced server, then usually it either has a high trash-to-rez ratio (like a PAD Campaign) or the corp doesn't mind if you trash it. As for ice/operations, if they're held in HQ or R&D there's no guarantee you'll hit them anyway, or that the corp won't just keep alive by paying the rez/play cost.

The final nail in the coffin for this card is Demolition Run. Do you remember that card? Maybe just barely. No one has played it for ages. It was only ever used for massive Medium glory runs, and only rarely then. Demo run just didn't have enough impact in enough games to justify its inclusion in most decks.

So when Credit Crash is almost a strictly worse card, I struggle to imagine a deck that would want to play it. Yeah, Credit Crash is a credit cheaper and one less influence, but even if it were free on both counts I don't see why it would be worth the card slot. Especially out of Anarch, who already have tools like Imp and Edward Kim for trashing the untrashable, and Whizzard and Scrubber for trashing the trashable.

So...yeah. Don't play this one. I appreciate the attempt to tie an effect to the flavor of the cycle, but I wish the mechanics of the card had the same level of attention.