WOW WHAT A GOOD CARD.

"Now Gerrark," you are surely saying to yourself, "You must be joking. You're paying two clicks for two cards, so you're not getting ahead at all. In fact, if you count the original credit and click from installing this card, you literally cannot come out ahead efficiency-wise with this card."

All true, I'll admit. But this card is not about efficiency. It's about flexibility.

More than anyone else, Crims are reliant on their events. Account Siphon, Inside Job, High-Stakes Job, Drive By, Legwork, and so forth. These events are all extremely powerful, and are absolutely worth the one time usage. But they all have a major drawback: what if you can't use them right now? What if the corp has 1 cred, making an Account Siphon pointless, or no unrezzed ice, making High-Stakes Job impossible to use? These aren't hardware or programs, that, if worse comes to worse, you can just plop them on the table and let your opponent know what's coming. Events are use it or lose it. Which is where this card comes in.

Got an Account Siphon that you can't use right now? Shuffle it back in! Got an Inside Job but no servers worth running? Shuffle it back in! Just drew a Rumor Mill and you know it'll be ages before it's needed, if at all? Shuffle it back in! No longer will Runners have to fear that their event based econ or running game plan will end in their hand getting clogged up with a bunch of cards that are extremely powerful, but just can't do anything at this exact moment. In fact, say you're down to your last five cards or so in your deck; with Blockade Runner, your stack is almost like a second grip for you!

At 1 cred and 1 influence, this card can easily make an appearance in Shaper, Anarch, or mini faction decks that use a lot of events. Which isn't to say that I think this card will see a lot of use, even in Criminal. I'm guessing that it won't, because as strong as events are, a ton of decks don't rely on them to the point where a card like this is all that necessary. Still, if you've got a crapton of events and often find yourself with three in hand and nothing to do with them, go ahead and slot this card. It'll help.

Pros: Cheap to install Splashable at 1 influence Card filtering.

Cons: For a bigger up front investment, you can have the various Shaper options for efficient clicks. No actual raw card advantage over basic clicking.

You know who would really like to draw cards AND wouldn't mind shuffling some of them back into their library?

Kabonesa Wu: Netspace Thrillseeker

When your entire deck is your grip, you actually WANT to shuffle 1-of toolbox cards back in while drawing your economy/SMCs/Scavenges/utility events.

Whether the tempo friendly nature of this card is enough to make up for the opportunity cost of just having the in-faction Professional Contacts or Laguna Velasco District remains to be seen. But since any Wu deck will obviously be using Magnum Opus for raw money (since you can have Opus installed turn one in 100% of games if you want), going for pure card draw/selection seems like a good compliment. And the influence cost is right. Excited to try this out.

Both of the other reviews are spot on for this card. It provides draw utility which is something criminals don't have much of in faction, and is something criminal decks desperately need to be aggressive. Most people either go with Mr. Li or Earthrise Hotel/ Career Fair to get the job done. Now we have another option in factoin!

Going beyond that, I think the most important aspect of this card (which also applies to Mr. Li) is that it's a connection and can be tutored and installed with Hostage. This means you can save deck slots by only running one blockade runner, and still have a good chance of getting it installed early game.

The nice thing about that strategy is that the deck slots opened up by it can be spent on other good one off (cheap) connections, like Kati Jones, Film Critic, John Masanori or even Political Operative. That gives you some really nice flexibility, draw a hostage early and you can pick which connection to bring onto the field with out putting duplicates into your deck. In most cases you'll go with Blockade Runner or Mr. Li to accelerate your game play, but if your in need of some cash early Kati Jones is right around the corner.

As a closing thought, Mr. Li and Kati Jones are both rotating out of tournament play in the near future. (The end of the Red Sand data pack cycle) Which is probably why Blockade Runner is getting printed in the first place. Fingers crossed they print a replacement for Kati Jones as with out her running hostage is less appealing.

Tri-maf Contact doesn't count.

I agree with Gerrark's review, but wanted to add some notes on the obvious comparison with Mr. Li.

This card is awesome! I basically see it as Mr. Li on steroids. It's 2 credits cheaper to install, and draws more at the cost of an extra click. You can loosely summarise it as a dirt-cheap Mr. Li that you have to use twice.

The biggest advantage over Mr. Li is that the card you throw back into your deck doesn't have to be one of the drawn cards. With Mr. Li it really sucks pulling two perfect cards and having to condemn one of them to the bottom of your deck. Blockade Runner lets you choose anything from your entire grip, making it much more forgiving.

However, if you compare the digging power of them per click, Mr. Li pulls 4 cards from your deck for two clicks, while Blockade Runner pulls only 3. So if you really want to steamroll through your deck to find that one perfect card, Mr. Li is probably superior, whereas Blockade Runner makes for a more flexible draw engine.