This Trojan has some great synergies !

First, the most obvious one is Poison Vial. With both, you can break any 3-sub, Strength 6 Ice for 1 cred and 1 counter. If you have a Flux Capacitor, this combo can keep on forever. If you have Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist and Urban Art Vernissage to move it and install it for free (while making a profit) (and LilyPAD to draw a card while you're at it), it gets really silly, really fast.

A second combo resides in the fact that this card is an Icebreaker, which means it supports both Echelon and Unity, which makes for a great rig.

However, this card is an AI, and a fixed-strength breaker. It is, for instance, incapable of breaking an Advanced Pharos, and AI hate (like Swordsman ) both resist it, and destroy it.

It is one of the core breakers every Arissana deck should field, in my opinion. Without her flexibility and the trojan support ( Urban Art Vernissage), it loses a lot of its utility, so i don't think it's going to see wide play outside of Arissana.

I heavily disagree, and think this ID is very powerful (and one of the dominant IDs in startup).

The question isn't "Is 1 click and 2 credits a heavy tax ?". It's "will you be able to pay for that tax after paying for everything else ?".

Manegarm Skunkworks is still a staple. Mr. Hendrik, all the bioroid Ice, Pulse. There are many, many in-faction ways to make the runner count their clicks. The psychological impact of this ID is quite strong as well. Just like Jinteki: Personal Evolution, it makes the runner slower and more cautious in their runs. It makes the runner jack-out mid-run because you rezzed a Pulse, and they no longer have any clicks remaining for the tax.

It's also worth mentionning that this ID fires every time a steal is made. This is especially important in, say, an Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist match-up. Once agendas begin pilling in Archives, running that server becomes very dangerous, because if you don't win instantely, you are at risk of taking several core damage (including from Nightmare Archive).

I think Thule's popularity is the reason you barely see any Deepdive decks (because Deepdive was guaranteed to get core damage from this ID). Which is, in itself, a sign of its impact, considering how popular Deep Dive was in the first half of Borealis.

Urtica Cipher is a card that defines a playstyle. Basically, in Netrunner, you have several ways to score agendas. You can do the obvious, and stick them being Ice. You can Fast Advance them (with Biotic Labor), you can drop them with no protection, and hope they go unchecked because they look like your next PAD Campaign... or you can play them unprotected, and pretend they are Urtica Cipher.

This strategy is known as the "shell game" Jinteki (usually played with Jinteki: Personal Evolution, even though it can provide interesting results with Issuaq Adaptics: Sustaining Diversity. All your cards are played them same way : Install-Advance-Advance (or Mitosis), and left for the runner to check them out. You basically ask the runner, over and over again, "Is this an Urtica Cipher" ?

But is that all Urtica Cipher can do ? I don't think so. First, it has found a very useful spot in most Pravdivost Consulting: Political Solutions decks. This ID allows you to drop Urtica Cipher for free, and place a counter on it seconds before the runner accesses it. With this combo, every single card you install could be a cost-less, 3 damage trap. You can, also, add Vladisibirsk City Grid in the equation. Install both in the same remote. If the runner leaves it alone, you have the Grid for Fast Advance. If the runner checks it, you transfer the counters from Vladisibirsk to Urtica Cipher, add the free ID counter, and you have a 5 damage trap. Nasty stuff.

Then you have the infamous Clearinghouse combo. Install a card, and start stacking the counters. The runner has to make a call. If it is Clearing House, then have to run it before it reaches 6 counters, otherwise you can flatline. If it is Urtica Cipher, running it will result in the discarding of their entire hand, if it doesn't flatline them. It's one of the simplest, yet most aggravating, combos in the game.

There are, however, some ways to mitigate such strategies. The best option, for me, comes from Light the Fire!, which disables Urtica Cipher and trashes it for free.

This card is in the System Gateway, and for good reasons. It teaches, by itself, that accessing cards can be dangerous, or even lethal. It puts a welcome emphasis on the bluffing part of Netrunner, and strongly enables a completely unique playstyle that, without it, would struggle to see play.

This isn't a draw card, it's a deck shortener. You have to think about it this way : for every Moshing you include in your deck, your deck size is 3 cards shorter. That's already beautiful in itself. Then you consider this is an Anarch card, and you can use it to set-up shenanigans, like dropping cards in the heap to install them for free with Retrieval Run, trashing Steelskin Scarring to draw a ridiculous amount of cards back, etc. Overall a very solid card, with a thrilling art and flavour text.

I am going to differ from other reviews : this card is an early-game monster. It fits into the Anarch philosophy : "I am getting in, no matter the cost".

And it does exactly that. When you install this Resource, you send a clear message to corp : any server covered by 1 Ice is basically free. While it becomes less and less impactful as the game progresses, it's in my opinion the best opening card you can have for an agressive anarch deck.

For instance, this allows you to land Chastushka and Time Bomb very easily, threatens early agendas that can no longer be safe behind a Palissade. There is also the very powerful combo with Raindrops Cut Stone that refunds the cards you burned through, and the obvious Steelskin Scarring.

Of course, it has counters and weaknesses. Small ice like Pop-up or Tithe make this a very bad option, and big ice like Vampyronassa can flat you if you aren't careful. But overall, this is a card that gives immense range to your early game, at a VERY low cost, and can allow you to bully corp into an easy win.