One of those methods for rearranging ICE that is needed for the Whirlpool and Cell Portal style decks, and is great with Jinteki having a lot of positional ICE. The problem is that instead of playing cards that are good all the time, playing this card means cards are being played that are only good some of the time, and additional card slots are being used up to shore up those cards, making more cards that are only good some of the time. That is why it hasn’t seen any play, and likely won’t.

Positional (ish) ICE that is really the key to any ICE Kill server style deck. Not that those decks are very effective, or even have a winning percentage, but if the concept is going to be explored, Whirlpool is the key to doing so. As a Trap it is far more likely to fire, as long as those pesky AI breakers aren’t in position to break it. It really needs to be on the outermost bit of the server, and it would need a lot of combination with other pieces of ICE set up in just the right places, some cost reduction for rezzing those ICE, and a way to get the runner to run on it when the corp is ready for them. So many moving pieces make it difficult to pull off.

Whirlpool could be used in combination with traps of course, forcing the runner down a server they don’t want to be going down. End the Run would have to be non existent then; the runner could just let that subroutine fire when they want to get out. That in turn reduces the ability for ICE in general to keep the runner out, which is a bad proposition for most corp strategies. It could make an interesting surprise, a one off in a deck that makes the runner pause and think, step back, have to really consider what is going on down there, but it would only work once, and deckslots are allways tight.

Out of all the Psi ICE, Snowflake is possibly the best of the lot. It is cheap to rez, which is good because spending money on the Psi game is an additional cost, and it simply ends the run. A good combination that may be often overlooked.

The drawback is of course that it is Psi. The cost to keep the runner out can add up very quickly, and it is not a guarantee that it will do so even if there are no breakers on the table for it. The cost is reduced out of Nisei Division, but that ID hasn’t seen enough reason to be run yet.

Positional ICE is always difficult to make use of. See it too early, and it is useless without support cards to move ICE. See it late and it is nice, but did it really do its job then? Sensei is at least a piece of ICE that is not only difficult to break at five strength, but also adds subroutines to all other pieces of ICE after it. That adds the tax factor up really quickly. Given also that token breakers are becoming more popular (such as Cerberus "Lady" H1) an additional subroutine could run those kinds of breakers out faster, opening up scoring windows for the corp.

It is positional, and that is its greatest drawback for certain. It is an average of three of four credits to break though, which can be good - more so the more ICE that it is in front of. On average it probably is only going to be an additional two credits to break those subroutines it adds to the ICE behind it (assuming it averages out most often as the third ICE on a server), meaning its high tax to break will never be paid in favor of the smaller addition to further ICE.

Bullfrog has seen pretty much no play at all, due to its very strange nature. Once Susanoo-No-Mikoto came out, while a more focused deflector, Bullfrog dropped off whatever little bit of use it might have had. The Psi game requirement makes it not a guarantee to fire, as a four strength code gate it may be slightly more difficult for Yog.0 to break, but not really - there are lots of ways to get -1 strength for Yog’s benefit. It really could not be relied on to fire more than once, and even if it did, it meant that it was no longer on the server originally, making it easier for the runner to get into that server on the next attempt. Outside of a combo heavy ICE trap kill deck, where Bullfrog might be used to put the runner into that server after it is setup (but without other cards, the run doesn’t even have to continue) it is unlike Bullfrog will ever see much use.