It is worth pointing out here that Stim Dealer is NOT unique. If you have two installed, you can get 6 click turns! ...followed by 2 brain damage. All three installed at once means you can get a whopping 7 clicks!...followed by losing half your hand.

Is this useful? Maybe. I've seen it work in a Data Leak Reversal deck to deck out the corp. 5, 6, or 7 cards trashed form the top of R&D per turn is VERY powerful. Make sure you pack ways to deal with the brain damage, or all the clicks in the world won't save you from death. Also, when installing multiples, how you sync them up matters. Would you rather spread out the brain damage, or have two damage less turns followed by one splitting headache?

How do you deal with all that brain damage?

Increase your handsize! Some hospital time will help. Or maybe you prefer paper cranes. If you can spare the influence, moving your brain into your chest is another good idea.

Choose what you lose! Becoming a cyborg or some kind of sliced up freak should help.

Kick the habit! Everyone's favorite doctor can help you stave off an overdose long enough find another buyer or join a DARE program.

Stim Dealer is an Anarch Resource that gives you the ability to take five clicks worth of actions for a couple of turns in a row, at the cost of taking a brain damage on the third turn, before starting the cycle over again. As a Resource, it is more permanent and less conditional than Event-based click gaining (e.g. Early Bird), although still vulnerable to trashing by the Corp through tagging, Character Assassination, Hellion Alpha Test, etc. Modelled on the Lucidrine Drip Feed card from ONR's Proteus expansion, Stim Dealer costs four credits less than it's precursor's eight bits to install.

Pros:

• Every first and second turn after you tap into the Stim Dealer's network, you gain an additional click.

• Extra clicks come without the cost of tagging from Joshua B. No tag pressure means no fear of Closed Accounts, Scorched Earth, or Bad Times.

• Extra clicks are useful for everything you might want to do.

Cons:

• Every third turn after you start on the stims, you take an (unpreventable) brain damage. If unchecked, this will eventually reduce your hand size to -1 and force a flatline (in eighteen turns).

• Doesn't synergise as well with Data Leak Reversal as Joshua B.

• Three influence makes it a hard-to-splash card (but not impossible) outside of Anarch.

Combos:

• Those adverse to the brain damage can include Aesop's Pawnshop to sell it at a loss of 1[credit] on the third turn, before the brain damage kicks in.

• Public Sympathy, Borrowed Satellite and BOX-E increase hand size, offsetting the reduction from brain damage.

• With extra clicks you can:

  • run more (more virus counters on Medium, Nerve Agent, Datasucker, etc.);

  • install more viruses as Noise;

  • install and empty Liberated Accounts in a single turn;

  • make 10[credits] off a Magnum Opus;

  • having a single click to do something with all the cards you draw from Duggars (selling some excess programs with Freelance Coding Contract, for example).

One of the most powerful combos to increase hand size is on it's way in Anarch already. Origami + Ekomind. 3 Origami alone can give you enough hand size to have a Duggar's go off and still have room to hold onto all of the cards.

Runners in H&P and the Lunar cycle recently received a bunch of cards that increase hand size and/or draw a lot of cards. Especially Anarch, but Box-E and Theophilus Bagbiter come to mind in Criminal.

Stim Dealer provides a cheaper, safer alternative to Rachel Beckman, and provides a real benefit to having larger hand size.

I suspect this is the first of a line of powerful cards that will benefit from increased hand size, because currently, as of Up and Over, the benefit of playing 'shield' type damage protection is much, much more efficient than increasing hand size.