I wish this card had been in Mala Tempora instead. Then we wouldn't have to worry about it anymore, and we could have some nice Latin jokes.

But the fact is, here we are.

Bad Times (in Latin: mala tempora) is an overpriced, underwhelming operation that indirectly taxes the Runner by effectively taking up space on their rig. Much like the GOODTIMES virus of old, Bad Times presumably fills up as much memory as possible while emailing itself to all the Runner's friends. This squishy skull friend was obviously designed as a way for the Corp to bite back at the Runner, forcing them to discard valuable programs that took significant investment in and to install.

...or did it? The fact remains that the Runner chooses what they want to trash, and that's never a good thing for the Corp. You can bet those icebreakers giving you trouble aren't going in the bin - or absolutely are if they're the conspiracy breakers. At worst, you just sent Sahasrara, a dead Imp or Cache, maybe even Tapwrm to the bin. Runners have plenty of support programs that are easy come and easy go - a savvy Runner could even pop Self-modifying Code to free up one MU, tutoring another program along the way!

Not to mention that the cost of this tag also includes the cost of tagging the Runner, which, as has been mentioned in other reviews, has a lot of other use cases. I mean, maybe if you were going up against tag-me Alice Merchant with God of War oh wait that's an AI and one ; you're fucked.

tl;dr - even in this new meta, Bad Times are just... bad. There's just no getting around it. This isn't 46th card syndrome, it's 0th card syndrome. Leave it in the binder. Take it out of the binder. Eat it.

Along with GRNDL Refinery, which has been saved from rotation by our benevolent Boggsverlord, Reversed Accounts is an advanceable asset that massively swings tempo in favor of the Corp - but requires a decent amount of setup to be worth it. However, Reversed Accounts gets outperformed by GRNDL in terms of extensibility; there's no hard limit on the number of you can earn, whereas the Runner can never go into debt (which makes them approximately 999% more fortunate than most of the world). To pay off for this, Reversed Accounts is pricier to trash at 3 versus 2, and takes one less pip of influence to slot out of faction. This makes Reversed Accounts a good partner for GRNDL Refinery in Weyland decks as tempo control, and as an advanceable asset in native NBN decks.

Unfortunately, this card definitely suffers from 46th card syndrome. Closed Accounts is capable of doing much more in fewer clicks, despite the tag requirement. If you're reversing accounts in NBN, there's not a lot of use cases where you wouldn't get more mileage out of closing them instead.

Reversed Accounts is an asset, which means it takes 1 to install, 1 and 1 to advance, and 1 to activate. Compared to Closed Accounts, that's a 300% cost in clicks for a 4 swing vs an all- swing. Alas, the click to makes this much like our good friend Alix T4LB07 - it removes the chance of popping this on the Runner's turn as a surprise, which severely limits its functionality

This doesn't mean Reversed Accounts is useless, however. It definitely has a place with Dedication Ceremony for a 12 tax that can be done in a single turn (install, rez, dedicate, fuck up the Runner). Other cards like Mumbad Construction Co. or Hollywood Renovation can make this tax even heftier.

In short, this card has few good use cases, but it has value in, say, a Gagarin asset spam deck where tagging the Runner is not to be expected, and where robbing them of the critical needed to access a server can be game-changing.

So the question that is on all our minds is:

How the fuck do we pronounce Pālanā?

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration defines the symbol ā as equivalent to the IPA phoneme /ɑ/ - as in "bath" (Received Pronounciation). There are many differing orthographic interpretations involved in what ā represents, including some English interpretations using it as a substitute for the IPA /eɪ/ - as in "pay" (RP). However, as Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and is used primarily in India, the Sanskrit interpretation of Pālanā is probably the intended pronunciation here. Besides, "pay-la-nay?" Ew.

Trickier is the /a/ in the center. The symbol "a" has at least seven different vowel sounds in English and let's not even consider that we aren't supposed to approach this from an Anglocentric perspective. For my part I'm considering that since this /a/ is distinct from /ɑ/, it can't be the same sound or they'd use ā all the way through. The best interpretation I can give for this middle a is to define it as /æ/ - as in "hat" (RP). Thus, Pālanā can be pronounced /pɑ'lænɑ/ (pah-LA-nah).

tl;dr - Kind of like banana.

Pālanā is a real place

What's That Song Called?

I like to think of Sand Storm as completing part of a deflector suite of ice, which includes Susanoo-no-Mikoto, Bullfrog, Mirāju, and Mind Game. Let's run down what these deflectors do:

1. Susanoo-no-Mikoto moves the Runner to Archives upon firing its subroutine. As an additional cost to jack out, the Runner must encounter a piece of ICE.
2. Bullfrog moves the Runner to a server of your choice upon firing its subroutine, but requires you to win a psi game. It also physically moves (or jumps, if you prefer) to the server being deflected to.
3. Mirāju moves the Runner to Archives if the Runner breaks its subroutine. If this happens, Mirāju is derezzed.
4. Mind Game moves the Runner to a server of your choice upon firing its subroutine, but requires you to win a psi game. As an additional cost to jack out, the Runner must add 1 installed card to the bottom of their stack.

All right. So putting aside various rez costs and strengths for the moment, you can see that each of these deflectors perform different versions of the same job: getting the Runner off the server they're running. So how does Darude ahem Sand Storm compare?

Subroutines

Sand Storm's subroutine combines Bullfrog's and Mind Game's server of choice option with Susanoo's and Mirāju's lack of a psi game. However, as a downside, Sand Storm is a Trap-type ICE and therefore trashes itself upon firing, leaving the server open like with Bullfrog. As an upside to the downside, as a Trap, Sand Storm is much more likely to fire against any Runner that isn't running AI.

Since you can choose the server Sand Storm redirects the Runner to, the obvious play is to shoot them to a server with a trap in it. But since Sand Storm has no penalty for jacking out, unlike Mind Game or Susanoo, the Runner can just do that - though if you really want to play mind games, you can send them to a server with an agenda and have them think it's a trap. Whirlpool, Ancestral Imager or Labyrinthine Servers can help dissuade them if you need to, but not having a jack-out penalty built in is a distinct disadvantage.

Costs and Strengths

Sand Storm is a 2-to-rez, 5-strength Trap ICE. That's a great rez-to-strength ratio and pretty on-par with most Trap ICE, which benefit from being cheap to rez and hard to break, with the downside of being one-use. When you compare this to the rest of the ICE in the Jinteki deflector suite, Sand Storm comes out pretty favorably:

• Susanoo-no-Mikoto: 9:7 -- 1.28
• Bullfrog: 3:4 -- 0.75
• Mirāju: 2:0 -- NaN
• Mind Game: 0:4 -- 0
• Sand Storm: 2:5 -- 0.4

On rez-to-strength ratio alone, Sand Storm comes in second, just under Mind Game and above Bullfrog.

So Why Play This Song?

Mind Game is obviously the Big Cheese of deflector ICE, outshining essentially every other piece in the suite. So what we should ask is: why play Sand Storm over Mind Game?

1. Sand Storm is a Trap, which is unbreakable without an AI
2. Sand Storm doesn't have the uncertainty of a psi game
3. Sand Storm is Mars-themed and therefore awesome
4. Sand Storm lets you start humming when you rez it (dodododo... dodododo.... dodododoDODODODO)

And conversely, why should you play other deflectors instead of Sand Storm?

1. Mind Game is free to rez
2. Mirāju has a beneficial subroutine that the Runner will be reluctant to break
3. Susanoo is expensive but unexpected, and is a Sentry instead of a Code Gate
4. Bullfrog doesn't trash itself so it can boost cards like Seidr Adaptive Barrier

Solar Panels At 85%

So having discussed Sand Storm's strengths and weaknesses, there's one final question: How should you play Sand Storm?

• Against Shaper archetypes that don't rely on AI (or any other faction really, but with God of War and Aumakua rising in the meta I'd be a little more careful there)
• As an emergency deflector alongside Mind Game - bounce the Runner everywhere!
• As a scary facedown piece of ICE that can scare the Runner off (or bounce the Runner off if they take the bait)
• In a quiet room, with hidden speakers under the table quietly going dodododo
• As part of an awesome card castle
• Practice card throwing

tl;dr - Sand Storm has some advantages but loses out to Mind Game in most respects. Would work if you slotted it alongside Mind Game to have more deflectors on hand.

Fantasy Flight have gone insane. That's the only reasonable explanation for this card.

One of the most restrictive things about advanceable ICE is the investment in and that makes them good. Even the free provided by Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It doesn't serve to justify the it takes to bring an Ice Wall up to strength or a Mausolus up to run-ending range, when those would be better spent setting up agendas or assets. Advanceable ICE has a better home in glacier decks, but then there's the additional costs of installing ICE in positions >0, which already hurts without having to invest more into the ICE itself.

But now, we have Priority Construction, since those Martian domes aren't gonna build themselves. Sure, it's a double. Sure, it costs a already. But look! What's that in the middle of the text? It's the holy trio of card words: "ignoring all costs".

/(o ∆ o)\ !!!

Ignoring. All. Costs.

(~ o w o)~

fig.1: come here you 4 deep server

The closest comparison I can draw here is to Replanting, which also has the magic words in it. Priority Construction is a boon to Weyland glacier decks, which can now spam out space ICE like Wormhole for essentially free. Of course there's the extra click to consider, or the upfront costs, but the important bit here is that those costs are more than halved with this card. If you were to install a piece of ICE and advance it three times, that would cost you 3 and 4. With Priority Construction, that cost has been reduced to 1 and 2 - not even counting additional savings for putting ice in positions 1 or greater.

But let's leave glaciers behind for a moment. What about Weyland Fast-Advance? What can the dome-builders do for them?

Well, why don't we consider Red Planet Couriers? Say you've gotten your Wormholes or your Asteroid Belts out, and don't need those credits anymore. Maybe you've got the shape-shifting suite out, with a pile of credits that are just lying there dead. Sure, you could move them with Constellation Protocol or Trick of Light or some other shenanigans. Or you could plaster a Project Atlas with enough tutoring tokens to drown a cow (or murder a Runner). Hell, dare I say it? There's enough credits there to, I don't know, take over a government?

But aside from all of that, what can the average Corp do with this sort of shenanigan? Obviously benefits the most from this card. But it's 1 influence to splash, so it's not out of the question to have Trick of Light in play with this in . Alternatively there's always the choice to just import the occasional Ice Wall into another faction. Even Weyland's suite of incredibly shitty early cycle ICE can benefit from three advancement tokens.

tl;dr - FFG should really be more careful what they print "ignoring all costs" on. Priority Requisition is a versatile operation that greatly reduces costs involved in several strategies both in and out of Weyland. It's good for glaciers, it's good for FA, and it's good for mucking about trying to make ridiculous jank plays. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go and try to score Government Takeover.

tl;dr the tl;dr - it's Mushin for ice.