Clean your rig! Get paid!! For cheap!!!

Aesop's Pawnshop may not seem like a particularly flashy card, and it may not seem like a card you should bother yourself with at first blush. "Why would I bother trashing stuff from my rig, if everything I put into my deck has a reason to be there?"

The power of Aesop's Pawnshop comes from the power of most good Shaper decks: flexibility. While you might be playing against the same Corps/players again and again, if you do not know what you should "prepare" for, Aesop's Pawnshop gives you some flexibility to plan for a little of everything.

Decided to bring some extra Links only to find you're playing a slow glacier deck without any Traces?

SELL IT FOR CASH!

Magnum Opus petered out and you'd really like to get an extra MU back?

SELL IT FOR CASH!

Taking the last 2 credits off Daily Casts? Instead...

SELL IT FOR CASH (and take 1 extra credit)!

On top of that Aesop's Pawnshop is a connection which will stack nicely with Calling in Favors, which is cheap enough to splash into most decks.

So this card is critically important to many small program builds like Noise, Hayley and technical Kate because it makes the low cost/low value programs and hardware playable. With Aesop's in play any limited utility or one time use program like cache, imp, d4v1d, lady, etc become an additional three credits of econ.

This means for most of them you get to use them AND gain a profit from them. This core set card breathes live into a lot of cards that would not be playable otherwise when fighting for deckslots. It makes provides click less economy for cards that you want to get rid of and recur maximizing shaper bullshit and enabling noise economy to work.

5 years later (last review was in 2015), Aesop is still the best Shaper ressource, sharing the spot with Professional Contacts.

At 2 influences, it can be used anywhere. It is such a powerful card. There are also major synergies with many faction cards.

1. Harbinger is almost an auto include when using Aesop. It will give you 6 credits clicklessly. Costing only 1 influence, it is easy to include it with Aesop.

2. MKUltra, Black Orchestra and Paperclip, when used with Cybertrooper Talut and Patchwork. With Patchwork, you can install those heap breakers for cheaper, and then trash them for creds, creating a circular economy. With Cybertrooper, whenever you install them they arrive on the board with +2 strenght. For MKUltra and Black Orchestra, this is huge! It will easily safe you 3 creds to break an ice. Both combined gives you an efficient econ engine and powerful breakers.

3. You can use the same trick of heap breakers and Cybertrooper Talut, but use Flame-out instead. Allowing you to break ice for free (using the credits on Flame-out). Then the breaker is trashed. And the cycle continue. So, instead getting a breaker for free, you get to break ices for free.

4. With Daily Cast, you get 1 extra cred if you trash it at the end (when it is at 2 creds). Daily Cast is now a net 6 creds instead of 5 creds, that is good value for a single card (same as Harbinger).

5. At the end game, when you are starve for creds, trash your board for 3 creds a turn. This can make the difference between win and lose.

6. Bank Job, take 7 creds instead of 8. Trash it for 3. Making the card a net 9 creds instead of 7.

7. Drug Dealer. When you do not want the draw or you want to stop paying for it, trash it for 3 creds. No need for Isolation.

8. With any card that have outlasted their value, usually because they don't have any tokens anymore (Imp, Cordycep, Data Dealer and Artist Colony, etc.), trash those useless cards for 3 creds.

9. With Apocalypse. Get A LOT of card to trash, giving you the equivalent of 3 Rezeki each turn.

Unlike Pro.Co,, Aesop require you to build a bit of your deck around it. But Aesop enable a lot of deck. At 1 cred to install and 2 influences, it is a serious option to consider.