Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

It can be difficult to give good constructive feedback because I love this game, these cards and everything I'm about to say comes from a place of love and wanting to help the designers. This card... sucks. It's probably one of the worst cards released in Liberation and sees a proportional amount of play to that power level.

Just Ignore It

The runner can just run through this, like, without breakers... with very minimal drawbacks. If you're wondering how here are some options:

• click 1: draw, click 2: draw, click 3: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• click 1: use Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
• click 1: play Diesel or modernly Ritual, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
• click 1: play Steelskin Scarring, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
• click 1: use Verbal Plasticity, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• start of turn: Earthrise Hotel (rotated) triggers, click 1: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• last turn: play The Class Act, click 1: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• Lat triggers, click 1: draw, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• Hoshiko triggers, click 1: draw, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• MuslihaT triggers, click 1: draw, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• Magdalene + LilyPAD triggers, click 1: draw, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• better yet, have a Stoneship Chart Room installed and you can face-check this ICE and still get through it

(You can also use a Botulus or Boomerang or Physarum Entangler or almost any other form of ICE cheating if you don't want to take any damage and all these options will get you in without any problems.

This is absolutely hilarious, this card is Diviner (which is already a very weak card), yet more than twice as expensive and somehow even less consistent at ending the run. Just to be kind, the Corp then gifts the Runner a Bad Publicity to help them run through all the rest of their ICE more cheaply because why not?

This card does less damage than an Anemone, draws the Corp a card as though that's somehow worth the cost and then sits around twiddling its thumbs as the Runner moves past it, I don't know how you could have designed a less scary version of Piranhas.

Break Numbers

• 5 credits for Unity even with 3 Icebreakers installed (even if you somehow have 4 Icebreakers installed it still costs 4 credits to break fully)
• 5 credits for Buzzsaw, and that's with K2CP Turbine support (Turbine has recently banned and you'll need to spend several leech triggers for the same privilege)
• 5 credits for Lobisomem (which is the most expensive Decoder in Standard at the time of writing)
• 4 / 8 credits for Euler (depending on if this is the turn it was installed)
• 7/9 credits for Shibboleth (depending on the threat level)
• 8 credits for Cat's Cradle
• 5 credits for Sang Kancil during a run event or 9 credits otherwise

AI:

• Audrey v2 can break it for 2 cards and 2 virus counters, or only 1 virus counter if you only need to break the pseudo-ETR sub and don't care about the corp getting a little money
• Slap Vandal interfaces neatly and can get away with only breaking the pseudo-ETR sub
• Aumakua does the worst of the 3, requiring 6 virus counters and still needing to pay up to 3 credits to fully break

Comparison to Valentão

Its sister program, Valentão (keep in mind the numbers are identical only the subroutine text differs), at least makes some sense, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a Weyland player would have more money than the Runner (though some Shapers will give the Corp a run for it's money, no pun intended). Even without the first two subroutines firing, the third has a legitimate threat of ending the run anyway. Let all the subroutines fire and Valentão triggers a 4-credit swing and probably bounces the runner out. If they want to get in, they have to break it, and if they are already going to interface, they might as well fully break it, and that's where these two cards shine.

That being said, against a wide variety of breaker suites, these two pieces of ICE will cost the runner a hefty sum, or require quite a bit of set-up to deal with, thanks to their amazing rez cost-to-strength ratio. The only problem is that while the runner often needs to break Valentão to get in, you'd have to mind control the Runner to convince them they're locked out by a Piranhas.

The fatal flaw of this card, of course, is to assume that credits and cards are comparable, in many ways, they are for purposes of card draw or economy calculations (i.e. Wildcat Strike or Predictive Planogram), but where credits can be stacked unlimitedly, cards usually top out at 5 in hand. This makes getting yourself as many cards as the Corp, substantially easier than getting as many credits because the Corp can't generate a hand-size lead in the same way they can create a credit lead. To achieve a hand-size lead in Faction you'd either have to play Superconducting Hub, which is a pretty bad 3/1 agenda on its own, or use something like Spin Doctor to trigger card draw mid-run, which, is hardly the best use for such a powerful card.

NBN? Really?

It would have made so much more sense for this card to be put in literally any other faction too, put it in Weyland and they can try and synergize it with The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated and Regulatory Capture without needing to pay 3 influence per copy to import it.

Put it in Haas-Bioroid and they can synergize it with Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design to make it much easier to have a higher number of cards in hand, or with Thule Subsea: Safety Below, which can also make it easier though in the opposite direction by decreasing the maximum hand size of the runner rather than increasing your own.

And of course, there's Jinteki, by combining this card with additional forms of damage you can more reliably keep the runner out, if you put this card at the root of a server with other net-damage cards on top of it, then there is an inherent synergy. Piranhas is made harder to cheat through by the net damage on top of it, and the net damage dealing ICE on top of it are made less porous by the fact there's a Piranhas after them.

But NBN has almost no way to fully utilize this card, perhaps you can generate an extra credit from Your Digital Life, but is that really enough? And pricing it at 3 Influence just makes it so much more cumbersome to import this card into any other faction who might try and do something cool with it.

Overarching Design Principles

The idea of Code Gates having "conditional" end-the-run effects while Barriers have "hard" end-the-run effects helps differentiate Code Gates from just seeming like a "Barrier+" (like Quandary, Enigma or Hortum for example) and makes them more fascinating and complex to play around on the part of both players and I'm interested to see more cards designed in this space. But, Piranhas is just a swing and a miss that is not worth its price.

The Problem with Illicit ICE

The fact that Piranhas gives the Corporation Bad-Publicity is really strange and I'm not even sure Valentão warrants the bad publicity considering how potentially porous these ICE can be in the wrong situation. Illicit ICE is usually meant to be terrifying and incredibly threatening to runner, hence the stigma associated with it, compare Trebuchet which can trash any installed runner card, including expensive programs or pieces of hardware that would otherwise be hard to trash. Even older now rotated cards like Bulwark end the run dramatically, and take out a program while it's at it. Shinobi has a real chance of killing the runner off of a bad face-check, and Fenris does core damage, which used to be a rarity.

I find the current design philosophy regarding bad publicity confounding, HB ICE like Hákarl 1.0 or Jaguarundi can do core damage off of a bad face check and while Bloop or Tyr have more warning or counterplay (needing a pre-rezzed Harmonic or being able to click-through it) they can still do lasting damage to the runner yet are not illicit. Similarly, Saisentan is infamous for its ability to flatline the runner out of nowhere and while a Cloud Eater won't flatline the runner it can do a heap of damage, wreck the runners board state and bury them in tags if it fires yet both seem to fly under the radar while two conditional ETR Code Gates that do a grand total of 1 net damage are apparently intolerable to the public. Something doesn't add up here.

More than this I believe the existance of The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated and Regulatory Capture having been warping the design space of Bad Publicity for years. These stratergies treat Bad Pub not as a mere downside but often an upside, and the additional value these decks generate from Bad Pub ice has forced the design of said ice to be weaker in compensation, pushing it out of viability for any "normal" Corp deck. Similar to how ice like Starlit Knight or Funhouse had to be designed with NBN: Reality Plus in mind, and thus became overcosted for Corps who did not enjoy the rebate off the facecheck.

Remove a tag to avoid the Bad Pub?

The tag sub-condition is even stranger, usually, you'll have gone to great lengths to land a tag, and want to use it for something valuable like Hypoxia or End of the Line, at minimum with runner will have to spend resources clearing the tags if they took them on their own turn, simply rezzing a moderately powerful piece of ICE is hardly the peak potential a tag has to offer. So letting you remove a tag instead of taking a bad-publicity usually only matters in the odd game against a tag-me runner. But tag-me is rare, and once again, the potential ways to punish a tag-me runner are far more serious than this. Frankly, if you are playing this piece of ICE, you should be ready, willing and arguably even eager to take the Bad Publicity, so why they bothered to add this extra condition confuses me.

Thematic

Beyond these practical mechanics considerations, this wasn't quite what I was expecting for such an iconic cultural icon as Piranhas are. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but perhaps something that did more damage the fewer cards you had in hand, like an ICE version of Blood in the Water that's used as a finisher. Something that starts with 7 "do 1 net damage" subroutines and has one fewer subroutines for each card in hand for example. Or maybe some kind of ICE, where you can include 6 copies in the deck and it tutors other copies of itself out onto the board when you do net damage with it, so that the first Piranhas draws blood and then that attracts the rest. Or something that represents attracting other Piranhas by allowing you to rearrange your ICE behind the Piranhas if it does damage, allowing you to move Piranhas behind another piece of ICE when that ICE does damage, or enabling you to force the runner to encounter Piranhas after they take net damage or so many other cool possibilities that represent these deadly little fish eating the runner alive once the first cut is made.

Nebula?

I've seen a handful of Nebula Talent Management: Making Stars decks including Piranhas floating around and you might be wondering how to explain that. These decks play Superconducting Hub, not because they actually want to score it, but because they want to use it to turn Kingmaking into Fast Advanceable 4/3s. This is the one, very, very niche context in which this card might actually make sense because these Nebula decks often spend much of the game on 7 hand-size, incidentally reinforcing Piranhas in the process. Even then, I imagine it only sees play because of the pitifully porous state of NBN ice at large and I doubt, even in those archetypes, it's really all that good.

TLDR: A rather weak card that sees very little play in the current meta because it can be so easily circumvented and provides very little actual stopping power despite its superficially large numbers.

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

Isaac Liberdade is a mobile Sysop, sometimes called a "nomadic" Sysop. This means that, unlike most upgrades, Isaac can move himself around, allowing the benefits of a single, unique card to potentially affect multiple servers across multiple turns. He's one of 4 such mobile Sysops released in the Liberation Cycle, one for each Corp, alongside The Holo Man, Vovô Ozetti and Adrian Seis, the collective of them bring a new mechanic to the game, something that is both refreshing and fascinating. Used correctly, protected, and moved around to where they are most needed these cards can provide incredible value.

At the end of your turn, you may move Isaac to a different server and whenever you do move him, he can place an advancement counter on an unadvanced piece of ICE, note: it does not specify that the ICE itself must be "advanceable" so even though you would gain additional value from advancing a piece of ICE which gains benefits from being advanced, you can advance other pieces of ICE, purely to allow Isaac to set himself up and give himself more targets to increase the strength of.

That being said, Isaac synergizes well with advanceable ICE, since placing an advancement counter on an advanceable piece of ICE is more valuable than placing it on a random piece of ICE and if you already have advanced ICE, Isaac can start increasing their strength immediately. Advanceable ICE is an almost uniquely Weyland mechanic (if we ignore Mestnichestvo) that has gone through multiple iterations throughout the game. Back from Lunar, we can see cards like Tyrant or Woodcutter which could be advanced and gained additional subroutines for each advancement counter, or the set of "space ICE" like Asteroid Belt or Wormhole that gets cheaper when advanced, or ICE that gained additional strength when advanced like Fire Wall or Ice Wall as well as the "7 wonders" archetype that gained special bonuses once they have at least 3 advancement counters like Hortum or Pharos. And, it's a mechanic still going strong today with two new pieces of advanceable ICE released in Liberation Tree Line and Logjam.

Pros / When to Use

Isaac is best played not only with lots of advanceable ICE but also with very large, vertical servers. The more pieces of ICE he can increase the strength of at once, the more value he can generate. In such a situation, he can be bounced back and forth between HQ and R&D or between centrals and the scoring remote, both to stack up advancement counters and to adapt in real-time to where you think you could most benefit from increasing the strength of the ICE to tax or dissuade the runner.

Cons

Unfortunately for Isaac, the metagame in the standard format does not favour glacial, the prevalence of Orca/Lobisomem Kit, K2CP Turbine/Takobi Lat and Arruaceiras Crew ICE destruction Anarchs hasn't been kind to glacial and most people seem to prefer playing assets spam R+ or kill based PE or Thule or just rushing the runner out with PD or Asa, plus whatever AgInfusion: New Miracles for a New World is doing. Building lots of big servers just isn't as actually taxing as you might think.

Beyond that he's expensive to rez and cheap to trash which is never a good combination, you have to try and keep him alive for at least a little while to get him to pay for himself, let alone turn a profit, and that can be hard when the whole point of his ability is that you want to put him on the server you think the runner is most likely to run.

Additionally, the identity you probably think you want to include him with Weyland Consortium: Built to Last, because they both like advanceable ICE, is a bit of a red herring, no pun intended because BTL likes to be the one placing the first advancement counter and so does Isaac. If you didn't already know, BTL has a weird piece of wording that essentially means you only get the credits if you advance it with the basic action, it doesn't give you credits if you "place an advancement counter" such as through Isaac, Wall to Wall or Priority Construction. This makes Isaac clunky to use in BTL at the best of times and actively anti-synergistic at the worst, where either Isaac places the first advancement counter and you miss out on the bonus credits or you place the first advancement counter and Isaac is left without anything to advance. Neither of which allows you to get the most value from Isaac or your identity. Perhaps he is better suited for some kind of glacial Nuvem SA: Law of the Land deck but most Nuvems I see are usually just trying to do some kind of kill combo with End of the Line or Punitive Counterstrike.

This is usually the part where I write a thematic review but since Isaac Liberdade seems to be a fictional character who is not based on anyone in real life and since we don't really have much lore to go off of (unlike The Holo Man for example) I'm just kinda going to spitball here. We know he's a bioroid in Brazil, which means he's freed, which means he's not property... which means he's been hired by and is voluntarily working for Weyland, one of the megacorporations who are secretly trying to enslave his kind all over again... which... is honestly really fascinating, but again, without even any flavour text to work with we don't know much more than that. We can see him yelling or barking orders in his art but that doesn't really tell us all that much about his philosophical standpoint, his reasons for working with Weyland or how much he actually knows.

Beyond that I decided to track down the etymology of his name, Isaac comes from Hebrew (like many Western names, think Jonathan, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, David, Adam, Benjamin, Daniel, Elijah, Gabriel, Micheal, Noah, Samuel and so on and so forth) and literally means "(he) will laugh" or perhaps in context "he who laughs." From the art alone this couldn't be further from the truth, but it's hard to say if this is intentional irony or if the designers just didn't know and don't care about etymology. Liberdade obviously means freedom, compare liberty, liberate, liberation or even Libertador (Mercury: Chrome Libertador) but once again, it's unclear if this is meant to have a deeper meaning or if someone just thought Liberdade sounded cool. Do all freed bioroids have the surname Liberdade, did Isaac choose his name for himself, did someone else give him this name and if so who? These are questions we may never know the answer to, but it's fun to speculate.

TLDR: One of 4 new nomadic Sysops, it has potential in glacial, advanced ICE decks but is somewhat finicky to integrate with the leading advanced ICE ID Weyland Consortium: Built to Last. Among the 4 Sysops, he's arguably on the lower end of the power spectrum, alongside Vovo and Adrian, which, is all to say that the Holo Man looks like the big brother who bullies all of his younger siblings, (seriously that card is powerful, and will probably be considered even more potent once SanSan City Grid rotates with Dawn)

Cluedrew has already added an exceptional flavour review above, so I wanted to provide a more logistical overview of what this card does and when to use it.

If you're unfamiliar, Netrunner is an expandable card game with a continuously updated ban list and regular set rotations. This does a lot of important things regarding balance, staleness, creative opportunities and accessibility but one of the smaller things it does is open up opportunities for what are commonly referred to as "near-prints." Cards that closely resemble prior cards that have been banned or rotated but with some critical details changed. This allows one to attempt to keep the best and most interesting parts of a card's identity while trying to fix its most problematic elements.

Some notable examples include cards like Spin Doctor which closely resembles Jackson Howard but has a limited use card draw effect, recurs 2 instead of 3 cards and costs 2 instead of 3 to trash, limiting its strength and making it cheaper for the runner to trash it. Or Diversion of Funds which closely resembles Account Siphon with the additional cost of a click and a credit to play as well as reducing the amount gained so that it represents a 10 credit swing instead of 15 should it succeed (though it no longer gives the runner tags either).

Ashen Epilogue is a "near-print" of Levy AR Lab Access, a potent card that allowed you to recur the entirety of your heap back into your stack, essentially refreshing you back to the game start (while allowing you to keep all your installed cards, credits and agenda points of course). Since cards almost invariably get trashed, be that simply from playing events or from using trashable resourses, hardware or programs cards will end up in the heap. And, since those cards have value and uses, it can be important to get them all back.

And that's saying nothing about rigshooting or Net Damage, Meat Damage or Core Damage removing key cards either.

In a more abstract sense, if you were worried about running out of cards, you could simply make a larger deck, including more cards to last you longer in a more protracted game, however, due to most cards being limited to a playset of 3, this runs you into the problems of consistency and efficiency as you are forced to gradually bloat your deck with unnecessary and inferior cards to avoid running out of them. Levy Ar Access solved that problem by letting you make a tight, efficient deck with all the best cards and then just recurring them once you've gone through your whole deck. Giving you most of the potential upsides of a much larger deck, without any of the drawbacks.

Ashen Epilogue tries to preserve the potential of such a card while limiting its universal safety with one major change "remove the top 5 cards of your stack from the game." Put simply, if your goal was to try and use Ashen Epilogue as a safety blanket against key icebreakers or combo pieces getting trashed then you run the even bigger risk of accidentally removing those cards from the game, putting them even further out of reach.

A smaller change from Levy to Ashen is that Ashen is a 2 influence neutral while Levy was a 3 influence Shaper card, this change makes the card slightly more accessible for non-Shaper factions and slightly less accessible for Shapers.

When to Use

This card is ideal if your economy is particularly dependent on finite cards, event-heavy econ like Sure Gamble, Creative Commission, Dirty Laundry, or Bravado all come to mind. As well as decks that trash their own cards for money through Aesop’s Pawnshop, Spec Work or Isolation. But is markedly less useful in decks with self-sustainable econ like drip or the old Magnum Opus.

It's particularly valuable in Anarch decks where self-trashing is common Steelskin Scarring, Strike Fund, Moshing, The Price, Eye for an Eye, Audrey v2, Lago Paranoá Shelter and many many more. It's practically a must-include for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist decks where without it you would probably mill yourself before you mill the corp.

It also has applications in event heavy Criminal decks, the aforementioned Bravado, Dirty Laundry and Carpe Diem all being common parts of the Criminal econ suite. Or even in a high card draw Shaper deck where you'll regularly see Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, Diesel, Aniccam and Lat get through the entirety of your deck before the end of the game.

In terms of timing, this card is best used when your deck is empty to maximise the potential number of cards recurred, but it's also best used when you have fewer cards in hand, an empty grip would be ideal. Remember, spending 5 credits to draw 5 cards is a solid upside, instead of just going from one 5 card hand to another...

When Not to Use

As mentioned previously, if you need to recur specific, highly-valuable cards more safely and reliably, there are other better options, Harmony AR Therapy is one of the most common at the time of writing alongside Simulchip in Shaper while Anarchs have Labor Rights and Privileged Access, all of which are quite good. There are also Katorga Breakout, Rip Deal and Test Run though they see relatively little play comparative. All of these cards can more precisely and reliably recur a single card you need, allowing you to recover that one lost breaker or combo piece without risking it being removed from the game and without having to recur everything else in your Heap at the same time and sort through your deck all over again.

Edit: Something I forgot to add is that you should almost always run this as a 1 of. Since the ideal time to use this card is once you've gone through your entire deck, you're guaranteed to draw it by the time you want to use it and you almost never need to cycle through your entire deck 3 times over. Thus including multiple copies brings nothing but drawbacks, namely, that you double the odds of drawing it early in the game when it's a dead draw that will clog your hand, as well as the extra two influence cost.

TLDR: A "near-print" of Levy AR Lab Access that allows you to recur almost all cards from your Heap back into your Stack, best used in self-trashing Anarch decks but not particularly safe or reliable for recurring any specific card in your Heap.

I don't normally write hate reviews because there's a lot I love about this game, and there are a lot of good, interesting and fascinating cards, so it feels like a shame to focus on the negative, but I feel this is needed, and I hope I can provide nuanced and educational insights into this card.

Strength Shredding

Strength shredding has often been a staple of the Anarch roster, with cards like Wyrm, Parasite, Datasucker and Ice Carver originating in the ANR core set to modern staples like Devil Charm, Leech and this card right here.

The underlying premise is fascinating, it revolves around the idea of Anarchs eroding and chipping away at the Corps defences themselves, cutting them down to size and forcing them to play your game rather than playing theirs.

Each of the sources of strength shredding are interesting and serve their own niches, the aforementioned Leech (and it's progenitor Datasucker) generates Virus counters through central runs, something the Runner already wants to do and is blocked by protecting centrals, something the Corp already wants to do, while simultaneously playing into the theme of "defend your Archives" that Anarchs often have going on. The counters are expended when used too, which means that from the Corps perspective, even if your ICE isn't directly taxing the runner credits, it's never the less taxing them on a finite and valuable resource. It's also always vulnerable to purges (and by extension Mavirus) should the Corp decide it's worth it to do so.

Ice Carver is consistent and universal but it's expensive to install and unique, limiting it's efficacy to only shredding a single strength it's useful at making everything slightly weaker but doesn't provide as much value when dealing with any specific problematic piece of ICE.

Devil Charm is incredibly strong, shredding six strength in one go but so emphatically "single-use" that it removes itself from the game, helping the runner in a pinch, but making it clear to the Corp that Devil Charms are a finite resource in and of themselves.

Arruaceiras Crew's strength shredding effect is relatively tame on its own, reducing an ICE's strength by 2 is useful but limited and taking a tag is a hefty investment that costs a click and 2 credits to clear, while going tag-me is actively anti-synergistic with keeping this card alive since it's a resource. To make the most of it, you probably need to play Seb and Valentina to offset the cost of the tag, something that makes a lot of sense within the overarching design of Rebellion Without Rehearsal.

A key use of strength shredding is supporting fixed strength breakers like Mimic, Yog.0, Cleaver and Buzzsaw as well as just generally increasing the efficiency of normal breakers like Corroder by reducing how much they need to pay in pump costs. In this way, strength shredding exists partially as an indispensable part of the breaker rig and partially as a piece of soft-economy, saving you money in pump costs throughout the game. I have no problem with this style of strength shredding (so long as it is appropriately balanced, see Şifr) as it has healthy strategy and counter play, with fixed strength breakers having meaningful limitations and struggling against large ICE when not supported by strength shredding.

However, ICE breakers are not the only application of strength shredding...

ICE Destruction

ICE destruction has had a long and varied history within the Anarch faction too, also originating in the Core set, and also still being seen today, it's had it's fair share of ups and down. Occasionally being nothing more than a gimmicky add on that you "could" pursue and occasionally being so meta dominant that it warranted bans. Some would argue that ICE destruction is the natural end-game of the Anarch philosophy, eroding the Corporations defences to the point that they are utterly destroyed and at times, I do see the appeal, but ICE is such a fundamental part of the game that any ICE destruction needs to be very carefully monitored for balance.

Broadly speaking, ICE destruction can be divided into 3 camps, the kind that requires you to fully break ICE, such as Knifed, Forked, Spooned, Hippo and on the corps side of the table, Oversight AI. This strategy usually relied on powerful AI like Faust or Eater or ICE warping breakers like Engolo or Laamb to give you a very consistent way to break and thus destroy a wide range of ICE without needing to establish a full breaker suite.

The second type doesn't greatly interact with the ICE itself, instead just establishing a set of conditions which if met can trash ICE, or even give the Corp the choice to trash their own ICE, such as Trypano, Kraken or Climactic Showdown. These are arguably the weakest and have seen little play so I won't go into great detail about them.

The third type, to which Arruaceiras Crew belongs, and thus the one I'll focus on here, is the type that destroys the ICE when it reaches 0 or lower strength. Aside from serving as a counter to difficult to deal with yet low strength ICE such as Endless EULA, Gold Farmer, Kakugo etc. it generally works on the premise that high-strength ICE should be harder to destroy.

The progenitor of this archetype is Parasite, which, in isolation, presented a mounting threat with the ability to destroy any piece of ICE given sufficient time, or required a continual investment of purges by the Corp if they wished to keep their ICE. The amount of time it would take destroy the ICE, and by extension the frequency of purges required to protect it would be directly proportional to the strength of the ICE.

However, players caught onto the fact that by pairing it with other source of strength shredding like Datasucker, Wyrm or Şifr they could greatly accelerate the destruction process in what would become known as "ice bombing," destroying the ICE in the same turn the Parasite was installed and thus cheating around the time constraint and denying the Corporation any opportunity to purge it. By combining Parasite with paid-ability speed installs like Self-modifying Code or recursion like Clone Chip it was possible to clicklessly install the Parasite during a run as you encountered a newly rezzed piece of ICE. It's for this reason that the strategy of ICE bombing even became popular in Shaper for a time.

In my opinion, Chisel tries to solve these problems, it still uses virus counters to strength shred and still destroys the ICE once it's strength reaches 0 but it only generates viruses counters on encounter, rather than at the beginning of the turn, thus requiring greater interaction and investment from the runner. And, since it checks the ICE strength on encounter it's a nonbo with Leech, thus removing one of the major avenues for ICE bombing.

Both of these cards also theoretically have a number of counters to them, such as purges, virus hate and trojan hate (Magnet, Tithonium and more modernly Bumi 1.0) which give the corporation some much needed counterplay for this highly destructive playstyle.

The Problem with Crew

If Chisel is a step in the right direction then Crew is two steps back, rather than try to limit ICE bombing it goes all in on encouraging it. It isn't installed on a specific piece of ICE, it's a resource that can target any piece of ICE during the encounter, functionally rolling the jobs of SMC and Parasite all into one package and sidestepping any and all Trojan hate and virus hate in the format at the same time. Allowing you to threaten any piece of ICE on the table, rezzed or unrezzed and causing many runners to just install a Crew, install a Devil Charm and start running without fear.

Even once the initial Devil Charms are gone, Crew itself isn't removed from the game, thus making it one of perfect targets for Anarchs ocean of recursion, allowing them to play half a dozen or more Crews throughout the course of a game. Since you can use the first wave of Crews and Devil Charms to crack open the Corporations wall of defences, it makes it all but impossible to keep Leeches out of centrals and gives the runner an oppressive chokehold over the game where by they constantly have tools to destroy any serious piece of ICE they are presented with, robbing the Corporation of any ability to build a scoring window once they're setup.

The Solutions

Ban Arruaceiras Crew - This card should never have been printed in my opinion and the simplest and cleanest solution is to ban it

Ban Devil Charm - If you don't want to ban Crew itself, the next best targets are the strength shredding support it often relies on, due to the limited reach of it's own strength shredding ability. Leech is used in a wide range of different Anarch decks (including non-ice destruction) but Devil Charm is used almost exclusively for ICE destruction meaning it would be a relatively low-impact ban on non-ice destruction decks while taking a lot of the power out of Crew.

Print a Tech Card - The existing ICE that cannot be destroyed through strength shredding like Self-Adapting Code Wall and Lotus Field are frankly pathetic, since the runner can just bounce right of them and come back with a breaker, thus buying the Corp painfully little time. A better tech would probably have to be some kind of big scary Sentry that can't be destroyed, thus punishing runners for face checking aggressively with just a Crew and some strength shredding. But I consider this the least ideal option, since not all Corp decks want or can afford to include such a tech card.

Addendum

Edit #1: Belatedly realising this whole review is a long-winded recap of the history of strength shredding, fixed strength breakers and ICE destruction when all I really want to say can be summed up in a TLDR so I've added that.

Edit #2: Rewrote, reworded and added headers for added clarity, readability and accuracy as I missed crucial details on my first write up.

Edit #3: For those thinking this is just an annoying "jank" card I'm just getting worked up over because I lost to it a couple times it is, as I write, currently sweeping through the meta game, with decks relying on the Arruaceiras Crew/Leech/Devil Charm combo winning the 2025 CBI and performing well across a large number of districts with a large number of different particular variants. This is, without question, one of the strongest archetypes in the game at the time of writing.

TLDR: This card is ICE destruction without almost any of the limitations, conditions, weaknesses or counterplay that defined prior iterations of ICE destruction and designing cards with game-warping effects without drawbacks is bad actually.

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

Malandragem is another bypass card released in the Liberation Cycle, one of many such tools primarily designed for Mercury: Chrome Libertador, such as S-Dobrado, Alarm Clock, Laser Pointer or even Physarum Entangler. Though it's worth saying that Criminals have always had a penchant for disposable forms of bypass, Lustig, Demara and Abagnale all come to mind. While Inside Job originates from the Core Set itself and cards like Spear Phishing and Always Have a Backup Plan build off the same archetype.

Criminals are the kings of bypass. The only non-criminal bypass cards in the game's history are the one-off mini-faction cards Security Nexus and Logic Bomb, as well as the neutral run event Rigged Results. So it's not surprising that if Malandragem were to show up anywhere, it would be in Criminals. A very fitting addition to the line-up, both mechanically and thematically.

But just how good is this card, well, I figure the simplest and best comparison is probably Inside Job itself, much in the same way Sure Gamble is the classic gold standard of Econ that all other Econ cards must be compared to so too Inside Job is the classic and gold standard bypass card, originating in the Core Set, having been reprinted 3 times in the Revised Core Set, the System Core 2019 and the System Update 2021 this card is a staple by design and still sees regular play to this day.

Well, Inside Job offers you one bypass for a draw, a click to play and 2 credits while Malandrgem offers you a maximum of 2 bypasses for a draw, a click to install and 4 credits. Which averages each Malandragem bypass at about half a draw, half a click and two credits. If you account for the fact that Inside Job is a run event and by extension click compression while Malandragem needs you to spend two more clicks running to gain the full benefit (but at the same time those two runs were probably runs you wanted to make at some point anyway) then the two bypasses are roughly equivalent in value.

Malandragem is also a program that takes up precious MU, but since you'll probably dispose of it relatively quickly it shouldn't be a long-term intrusion either. Additionally, Criminals have some of the weakest recursion out of any Runner faction (Shapers have Harmony AR Therapy, Simulchip and Test Run, Anarchs have Retrieval Run and Katorga Breakout while Criminals are limited to the rather mediocre Rip Deal) so the distinction between trashing and removing Malandragem from the game is minor and we'll assume the Runner wants to use the Threat 4 Bypass if able to.

From here there are 3 different situations Bypass is useful in:

1. Early game aggression, as a way to get around gear check ICE, pressure the Corp, get some accesses and touch some cards nice and early before you find your breakers.
2. Late game efficiency, for a set price of around 2 credits and a non-fungible card you get to avoid one piece of ICE altogether, no matter its strength or subroutines, allowing you to avoid even the largest, scariest and most-taxing pieces of ICE for a convenient pre-set price (think Tyr, Bran, a late game Boto, or an advanced Logjam, Pharos or Colossus), something you could break conventionally but would cost you a substantial amount of credits, making it harder for you to run as often, something Criminals especially want to avoid due to their high speed, low to the ground econ.
3. Full break-less Crim, i.e. using Mercury: Chrome Libertador to get around ICE without technically breaking any subroutines to get her additional central accesses.

For the first one Malandragem does well as much of the early game gear check ICE the corp has the credits to rez are going to also have quite low strength, Thimblerig, Tatu-Bola, Border Control, Ping and Ablative Barrier are all weak gear checks that see common play that you can bypass for a single power counter and even against some mid-tier scarier ICE like Anemone, Unsmiling Tsarevna, Jaguarundi or Saisentan that bypass can still come in handy to prevent some damage.

Malandragem can't help against an early Bran or Tree Line though and only works against Gatekeeper after the first turn (by which point Gatekeeper has already done its job) which limits some of your early possibilities depending on the corps Faction and early econ. By contrast, Inside Job works against any single piece of ICE, regardless of strength and double stacking ICE, letting alone rezzing multiple pieces of ICE on one server in the first few turns is a risky move that can bankrupt the Corp if they're not careful and can leave other servers open to attack. While Malandragem can work early, it lacks the same universal consistency that Inside Job offers.

By contrast, in late-game board states, especially against Glacial, Malandragem is arguably favoured, with Spear Phishing rotated, a lot of Bypass comes from the outside in, not only Inside Job but also the aforementioned S-Dobrado and Alarm Clock, in this way, stacking big ICE on the inside of servers and following up with cheap ICE on the edge to eat the Bypass effects is a good idea but Malandragem can avoid this once you reach Threat 4, by allowing you to bypass anything, regardless of positioning.

In this situation Backstitching is arguably a better comparison, coming in a similar price point of 2 credits, on par with Inside Job, S-Dobrado and half a Malandragem it's very comparable and can also ignore positioning. To choose between them, consider the circumstances, Backstitching can only target central servers and even then you can't choose which central on any given turn, while Malandragem offers the more reliable option to choose and can target the scoring remote but requires Threat 4 before it can bypass anything over 3.

For Mercury, you want as much bypass as possible and some decks I see run Inside Job, S-Drobrado, Backstitching and Malandragem, though heuristically, Malandragem does seem to be the least common of the four at the time of writing.

The other limitation of Malandragem is more intangible, for a runner who starts the game with 5 credits, spending 4 of those on installing a Malandragem that may not fully pay itself off until Threat 4 is a heavy investment to leave just sitting around. It's a tempo hit, to put it simply, even if the breaks are roughly on par with Inside Job, having to invest the 4 credits upfront can be brutal for Criminals who might often prefer the speed and low price point of cards like Inside Job, S-Dobrado and Backstitching.

It will be interesting to see what will happen with Dawn arriving early next year as Inside Job itself rotates. Will another re-print/near print be issued to fill the hole, or will Criminals reappraise Malandragem with new eyes?

A somewhat tangential consideration I was theory crafting for a while was using Captain Padma Isbister: Intrepid Explorer and her associated "Charge" cards to continually refill Malandragem while using strength shredding effects like Ice Carver, Leech or Devil Charm to stretch the definition of "3-strength" and create a kind of ongoing bypass engine, rather than treating it as disposable. But it never really went anywhere due to influence and consistency problems, especially after the World Tree ban and it's just generally more efficient to use conventional breakers. But maybe someone else can cook up something interesting...

(Disclaimer: I am not Brazilian, nor do I live in Brazil, everything below is based on what I quickly found online, any clarification, corrections, context or additions from those more familiar with Brazilian culture would be much appreciated!)

Thematically, Malandragem is a Portuguese term that refers to the lifestyle of petty crime embraced by "malandros," which roughly translates to English as "bad boys," literally, mal- + -andro. Malandros like to live fast, dress well and shirk responsibilities in favour of easy living, often being synonymous with a rogue, scoundrel or hustler. They've become significant in Brazilian folklore as a kind of archetypal anti-hero who sheds society's expectations and lives as he pleases and has become significant in Brazilian literature, cinema and music, traditionally samba. If I had to extrapolate, I'd say that the Malandragem program outsmarts, outmaneuvers and cheats its way around the "petty challenges" of small ICE, but struggles with the responsibility of dealing with large powerful ICE. Why it gains the ability to bypass anything at Threat 4 is somewhat unclear, in American cinema, it's not uncommon for anti-heroes to avoid responsibility and do their own thing until a true problem comes along, when, at the final hour, they step up to the challenge and sacrifice themselves for a worthy cause, but I'm unsure how well this translates to the Brazilian conceptualisation of an anti-hero/malandro. It also seems Malandragem is related to the Brazilian concept of Jeitinho, which doesn't translate well into English but seems to refer to something akin to street-smarts, creativity or finding unconventional or perhaps even illicit means to achieve one's goals, being pragmatic, opportunistic and even cunning, to find your own way do something, so to speak, instead of just following the rules.

The art shows a Malandro shuffling a deck, though why is open to interpretation, is he engaging in gambling as a vice, is he preparing to pull a con to make a quick dollar or is he simply stacking the deck in his favour in a more abstract sense?

As a somewhat contemplative finish to this review, I can't help but wonder about the thematic dissonance between Mercury the character, her ability and the other cards in her set. She's a Liberator, her title says it plainly, a freed Bioroid who pursues the goals of bringing down the whole corrupt system, see The Powers That Be and Jeitinho and yet her faction, and the cards it contains, espouse a much less grand goal. Criminals are scrappy and sly and cunning and they use their tools to get in, get out and get paid, Malandragem suits them perfectly, I can easily imagine a world where this set included a Criminal identity who could be considered a Malandro, someone who gets in by bending the rules to his favour and simply outmaneuvering problems he doesn't want to have to deal with. Mercury honestly seems like she would be more at home in Anarch, as someone with a grand mission, someone disillusioned with the system, someone who wants to bring it all down, and someone who's willing to resort to murder to root out the corruption within the government. But she does not strike me as someone who lives their life by the principles of Malandragem, skirting responsibility in favour of an easy life.

TLDR: A cool card thematically that is very fitting for the Faction and the setting of the Cycle it was released in but struggles to find a place in Criminal decks due to the high up-front investment, tempo hit, conditionality around strength and need to wait for Threat 4 for the full power. Also very difficult to export because of the very high Influence cost.