WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ

♦ WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ 1[credit]

Hardware: Cybernetic
Influence: 3

When you install this hardware, suffer 1 meat damage.

Whenever you make a successful run on HQ, place 1 power counter on this hardware.

Whenever you breach R&D, you may remove up to 3 hosted power counters to access that many additional cards.

Illustrated by Zefanya Langkan Maega
Decklists with this card

Parhelion (ph)

#78 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Parhelion
Rulings
Reviews

One of the developers at NSG said on Discord that they had written some flavor text for this card, but it had to be cut due to space constraints once the effect was finalized. However, the text they wrote is good enough that it should at least be preserved in this review.

Nyusha slotted the card into her WAKE, and the memories of home came pouring back.
Theyʼd be gone the instant she removed it, but it was safer this way.

(Parhelion era)

TT_TT

I love this design. This is such a neat way to make multi-access effects work. The power counters can be charged either by these new "charge" effects or by doing what criminals do: running HQ, but the effect only benefits you when breaching RnD. That's really interesting, and combine that with "marks" will lead to some fascinating game-states. Also, more cybernetics! For a cyberpunk game you'd think we'd see more of them by now, but for the most part it was Net-Ready Eyes and Severnius Stim Implant that got played, and even then I remember Severinus was more of a trendy thing with cards in the Red Sand Cycle than a lasting addition. (I also fell off of Netrunner around the time of its release, so that could be my memory being faulty). It's almost wasteful to have so much thematic potential, to say nothing of gameplay potential, and just leave it there. I'm really psyched to see if more cybernetics make their way to the cardpool, especially if they're as mechanically interesting as this one.

That being said, as long as the boat is a big deal, and I see no reason yet to assume it won't be, I just don't know how much this card will get played. I know this is about accessing and not breaking like the boat, but you need to break before you can access, unless there's some hot new suicidal corp strategy where you don't ice your servers at all. At three influence I can also see this mostly staying in criminal decks, maybe a 1-of in anarch decks. Shaper has enough great effects with RnD that I think they'll be least likely to pick this up.

Overall, I want to see more cards like this, I welcome this to the cardpool with open arms, and I really hope the design team keeps making cards like this!

(Midnight Sun era)

This hardware goes well with Captain Padma, who can recharge it faster to get to drill R&D much better than by using The Twinning. In any shaper decks, it could be boosted by Flux Capacitor and Stoneship Chart Room.