Riddle me this: when is a Quandary not a Quandary?

The answer is, "when it's the same goddamn Tollbooth that you've had to hit three times to get into this blasted server because of Mumbad City Grid."

Let's be very clear about what happens when you have Mumbad City Grid on a server:

• The runner approaches the outermost piece of ice. The corp chooses to rez or not as normal. If they rez, the runner encounters the ice (triggering "on encounter" effects like Tollbooth, Data Raven, Quicksand, or Komainu). If an "end the run" effect happens during this encounter, the run is over and Mumbad City Grid does not fire.
• If the corp doesn't rez, OR if the runner breaks the subroutines, OR if the subroutines fire but don't end the run, the runner has now passed a piece of ice. The Grid fires: the corp must immediately decide whether or not to swap the ice. The rezzed/unrezzed state of both pieces of ice is irrelevant. (This is also the trigger point for The Twins, provided the ice they just passed was rezzed.)
• The runner may now jack out or continue the run, from their position one ice deep into the server. Swapping ice does not move their location.
• If they continue the run, and there is another piece of ice, repeat.

What this means is that if you have a server with two unrezzed pieces of ice, and a rezzed Tollbooth on the outside, you can do this: runner encounters Tollbooth, breaks it, swap with next piece of ice, runner hits Tollbooth again, breaks it, swap with last piece of ice, runner hits Tollbooth a third time, breaks it, and you put the Tollbooth back on the outside of the server.

That's just cruel. Just pure meanness. A triple-Tollbooth server is the closest thing to impenetrable the game currently has, and you don't even need to rez more than one. A triple-Komainu can easily get up to 10+ subroutines before they make it in--remember, it's the same piece of ICE being encountered again during the same run. Quicksand accumulates counters at triple the normal rate.

Of course, if the runner breaks the Tollbooth once and jacks out, you now have the Tollbooth as the middle piece of ice; then, the next time they run the server, they only have to deal with Tollbooth twice (plus the chump piece of ice on the outside). Unless, of course, you happen to be running Tenma Line, a criminally undervalued card.

Mumbad City Grid is the first piece towards a new kind of Jinteki glacier; when the economic ID of Pālanā Foods comes out in the next pack, we might see a rival a to the legacy of Replicating Perfection arrive in the meta.

When you're measuring the value of economy assets, one of the most important metrics is the break-even time: how many turns does this need to survive to pay off?

Here are some examples. Assuming you rez them at the end of the runner's turn, PAD Campaign and Adonis Campaign both put you one credit down. The next turn, you've recovered the rez cost of the PAD and are 2 up with the Adonis. In contrast, Eve Campaign puts you three credits down, and takes another two turns to over the rez cost. If they don't immediately trash it, Sundew breaks even on the first turn it's out. And so on.

In practice, most economy assets don't pay out unless the runner leaves them alone for at least a turn or two. The cards which do offer positive returns immediately (Mental Health Clinic, Launch Campaign, and Expo Grid) tend to have notable disadvantages: increasing hand size, low trash cost, or an additional trigger requirement.

But then there is Mumba Temple. The very first time you rez it, you're one credit up. No tempo hit, no drawback, no tricky trigger requirement. And then, if it stays rezzed, you effectively get another 2 a turn forever, as you rez ice, assets, and upgrades. You can even use it to reduce the tempo hit on PAD or Adonis Campaigns.

Of course, you have to decide between paying 2 influence for each copy, or capping yourself at 15 ice. Fifteen ice is not quite enough for a heavy glacier build, but for any sort of horizontal deck (Whitetree, NEH, Gagarin) that's more than enough. And honestly, this card is good enough that it's worth 2 influence apiece anyway.

I expect to see this card in most asset-spam decks for the next little bit. Maybe I'll dust off Whizzard again...

Netrunner, at its cold, black center, is a game of economics. Runners are trying to turn credits into accesses into steals. Corps are trying to turn their credits into ice into scoring windows into scored agendas. And in this brutal, capitalist wasteland, you need to be able to eke every credit you can out of your economic engine.

Chatterjee University is a new, single-card economic engine. And its simple surface belies an unbelievable amount of mathematical complexity.

(Here's a quick review for the math-phobic: it's probably not as good as Armitage Codebusting in your deck. Play that one instead. Review over, stop reading.)

Now that they're gone, lets take a look here. If you install the University, click it X times, and then use it to install a program that costs X or more, you have done no better than simply clicking for credits. Worse, since it cost you a click to install the University, and worse still because it's unique, filling your deck with dead draws.

But, when you install that first card, you are left with X-1 counters. This could potentially save you up to another X-1 credits, for no additional investment. Suddenly you've spent X clicks charging up, and saved 2X-1 credits. That's a pretty good payout; but Armitage Codebusting offers you an even 2X credits for X clicks (so long as X is six or less), and those credits can be used for anything, not just installing programs.

So for Chatterjee to have a greater payout, you need to either be installing at least two REALLY BIG programs (Femme Fatale, Garrote, Torch, Morning Star, Alpha, or Omega), or you need to install at least three programs.

But as you start increasing the number of programs you intend to use it for, we run into a problem. Sure, if you click it to 5, and then install Shrike, followed by Striker, followed by Sherman, you're getting a return of 12 credits on your 5-click chargeup, which is slightly better than the 10 credits you would have gotten on Armitage. But order matters. If you click to five, and then install Sherman then Striker then Shrike, you're only saving 3+4+3=10 credits, meaning you're back into Armitage range.

Suppose, however, that you do it. You click it up X times, and you then install X programs of descending install cost, making sure that you get the full value every time. That means, for X = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...} your total return increases according to the so-called "triangle numbers", that is, Y= {1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28...}. Converting that into credits per click you get Y/X = {1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4 ...}

Your best case scenario starts to look really, REALLY good. Getting 4 credits per click, for seven clicks, on an initial investment of only a 1 resource, is disgustingly efficient. It makes Liberated Account look foolish, and Magnum Opus cries a little. But too pull that off, you need to install seven programs, with your most expensive programs being played first and your cheap programs being played last.

Most decks don't want to play seven programs. Even fewer decks want to be playing giant programs like Torch. Even fewer decks want to spend the first 2 or 3 turns of the game doing nothing but clicking up the University. Chatterjee U also doesn't synergize with either Modded or Self-modifying Code, two staples in the Shaper arsenal. And on top of that, the mental energy required to pilot a CU deck will burn out most players as they fight through three or more rounds of Swiss.

So, in conclusion: Armitage Codebusting is easier to include, more versatile, gives roughly equivalent returns, and won't fry your brain like an egg. But for the truly ambitious, Chatterjee University will be waiting, with promises of untold riches in its eyes.

I have a personal fondness for cards which force your opponent to choose their punishment. The most similar comparison to Run Amok is Bribery out of criminal. That card is pretty bad, though. Is Run Amok any better?

When you play Run Amok, the corp is essentially given two options. The first is to rez one or more pieces of ice, taxing the runner or ending the run as needed. But if they do that, then Run Amok has a target: and because the card doesn't specify a successful run, bouncing off a barrier or jacking out still allows you to trash the card that just got rezzed.

If this happens, the card is essentially the fourth Cutlery (Forked, Knifed, or Spooned), as an ice-trashing run event. It's slightly better in the fact that a) you don't need to have the right tool for the job. you can Run Amok on anything, and b) you don't have to be able to break it, meaning you can threaten ice destruction with 0 programs installed. However, the catch is that it only works on unrezzed ice, so sometimes you might end up destroying an Ice Wall or a Pop-up Window.

Losing ice is bad for the corp, though. If they stand to lose something important, the corp might just decide not to rez. In this case, it acts like a more versatile Blackmail, since it doesn't require bad publicity to trigger. Now every Anarch can share in Valencia's fun, and Val herself can double up to have six no-rez runs per game, or nine with Same Old Thing. That hurts, a lot.

So whichever choice the corp makes, something good for the runner happens. But the catch is that the decision of which option it is is given to the corp, not the runner. And so you have to assume that you're always going to get the worse of the two options.

So it's not a particularly consistent card, and it's never going to be an MVP of a deck. You can, however, pack things to make it better. Going heavy on ice destruction with Parasite, Cutlery, Immolation Script, and possibly Kraken will increase the pressure on the corp to not lose ice, giving you more free accesses with Run Amok. On the other hand, using rez-detterent tricks like Blackmail, Cyber Threat, or Running Interference will make the corp reluctant to hand off free runs, and will thin their ice out to do so.

All told, it's a very solidly designed card, fitting nicely in the Anarch faction. As a strong run event, it might see play in Ken Tenma, although the three influence makes it somewhat difficult to justify.

A notoriously terrible piece of ice, TMI has been given new life by the introduction of Surveillance Sweep.

Let's consider TMI without the Sweep first. Single-sub barriers have a pretty clear cost-to-strength ratio: Ice Wall, Wall of Static, Bastion, Fire Wall, and the upcoming Vanilla all have the same rez cost as their strength.

So if your combined rez and trace cost is 5 credits or less, you're doing well as a corp. So imagine that you're Making News and you rez a TMI. You spend 3 on the rez, 2 from your ID, and 2 out-of-pocket. The runner then would have to pay through a trace strength of six to derez the TMI.

But here's the thing: Every runner will do that, if able. Even if they have no link, spending 6 to force the corp to waste 5 is a pretty good deal: and it would take you at least 4 to get through TMI with Corroder anyway, so it's not even that much extra effort on the runner's part.

The only reason to run TMI instead of Bastion would be if you could guarantee that the trace would succeed every time for no extra money, or if are layering on trace attempts for ChiLo City Grid. Neither of those has ever been viable, so TMI has always been terrible.

But all that changes when you have a Surveillance Sweep in play. Suddenly, the cost is put on the runner. The corp only has to put three credits up front, and then ask the runner--how much are you willing to spend on this?

If the runner has zero link, then they have to pay 2 just to match the strength of the trace, at which point you can throw in a single credit. The result would be that you spend 4 rezing a barrier that's worth 5, and taxing the runner 2 at the same time, which is an amazing play.

If the runner spends more than that, then the corp has two options. They can either match the runner credit-for-credit: rezzing a TMI for 7 is still pretty okay if you tax the runner 5 at the same time. But there's an even nastier play. Let the runner win the trace: you've lost the 3 you spent rezzing, and the runner has lost more than that. Then, immediately re-rez TMI--you're still in the same timing window.

It gets even better if you have recurring credits from NBN: Making News or Primary Transmission Dish, or have boosted the strength with Rutherford Grid. (Sadly, Improved Tracers doesn't work, since TMI lacks the appropriate subtype.) You won't even have to spend the credits: the runner will just see the mountain they have to climb over and will surrender without a fight.

If your deck already relies on Surveillance Sweep, put in TMI. I guarantee you won't regret it.