At first glance, this struck me as trash. The sub doesn't do much until it's powered up, and even then it's cheap to break, since the number of Harmonic ICE only increases Wave's payoff, rather than add subs or strength. And near the end, the runner can just run though it to grab the game-winning agenda.

But I think I get it now. Wave isn't really trying to be a piece of ICE.

You see, when Wave was little, it wanted to grow up to be an operation that said "0: Increase your Harmonic ICE count by 1." Instead it grew up to be an ICE, so this was the best it could do, but it actually didn't land too far from its target. It won't stop the runner or tax them much, but it counts as a Harmonic, lets you fetch another one, and the runner will probably let it fire a few times, so you'll recoup the investment of installing and rezzing it.

The only real problem is that there isn't yet enough Harmonic ICE in the game for "0: Increase your Harmonic ICE count by 1" to be any good.

Wave is an harmonic ice, if there was more harmonic ices, it would matter. Currently, there is Echo, period.

So, the harmonic part is not what is interesting about this ice. The most interesting part is that it is the HB Pop-up Window. Breaking this will always make you lose more than the corp will gain, so unless the corp is really low (or the runner is filthy rich), it is usually a mistake to break it.

The best part of this ice is two-folds.

First, it tutor and ice for us. If you have ice on which your whole deck strategy hinge on, like Border Control, this is great!

The second part is that it cost only one influence. Making ice tutoring very accessible for decks that needs it.

Now, this is a niche application for an ice, but a fun one in my opinion. Paying 2 to either tax the runner or gain 1 AND tutoring an ice is a fair price.

I could see this ice in horizontal deck, where you want specific ice on the scoring remote and mild ices for the differents assets (looking at you Asa Group: Security Through Vigilance).

On a different note, the quote is evocative and well thought out for what the ice does. While the art is well made, it does not relate to the effect of the ice or to its name (a water vortex makes me think of a very different thing, nothing that relate to a wave), it could have been better.