It's the Economy Stupid

This card doesn't look like much, however Gila Hands Arcology is an economy card, not shiny, or dazzling, just faithful & sure. It's the tortoise rather than the hare. Since often the difference between victory & defeat is a single this card certainly has a place.

Combos

Economy combos with everything

Snare! - the requirement to hold onto 4 at all times is made attainable since the minimum the corp could now generate per turn (if fully spent on generation) is now 4 instead of 3 or use Gila Hands Arcology often to maintain 9 minimum if you suspect runner is packing Account Siphon

Trick of Light along with advancement counters on some other card can get Gila Hands Arcology scored out of hand in one turn.

(Did I miss something obvious, I'd appreciate suggestions in the comments below, I may add it to this review)

Pros

Creates perpetual 1.5 per economy for the rest of the game after scored

Only 1 agenda point so damage is minimal if stolen by the runner

Can allow corp to quickly recover from Account Siphon and still allow corp.

Cons

requirement takes 2/3 of corp's turn limiting

Single agenda point comes at cost to card/agenda compression ratio

Summary

A number of winning decks say they ONLY lose when Gila Hands Arcology is buried in R&D. The earlier it is scored obviously the better. As a faithful econ card at no influence cost, this card can find home in many decks. It's ability is flexible and doesn't require any combos to use it successfully.

--It just saddens me when I see cards with no reviews. If you appreciated this review, please give a heart and I'll be encouraged to write more.

Arcology is a concept imagined by the Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri, as an utopian structure mixing architecture and ecology, hence the name. He tried to apply this somewhere in Arizona as an ensemble of quite open building in the middle of the desert, where still leave a bunch of people, the kind of idealist ones, I suppose.

In case you wonder why you see my name on so many reviews these last days, it’s because I go chronologically through unreviewed card to give those forgotten children a few words.

Most of the time, they are bad cards, and I can figure why even if I didn’t play them, and it can be fun to analyze. More rarely they are good card with obvious effect and it becomes hard to not just say "well, that card does what it tells on the textbox and it’s nice in some deck."

Gila Hands Arcology is such a card. It’s a 3/1 agenda which effect is to earn 3 with , which is a nice econ support and shows useful in never-advance shell-game deck (Jinteki: Personal Evolution likes it well) but hardly in decks that want to minimize their agenda density, neither in deck which factions commands the agenda composition.

That is.

So science-fiction, especially cyberpunk, took the word arcology and applied it to some large closed sky-scrapper, as the one showed on the illustration. What makes it special is that they’re supposed to be self-sufficient (which is the only thing it has to do with the original concept) but cyberpunk being cyberpunk, they tend to be quasi-totalitarian corporate-controlled space.

Think about it, next time you .