Design:

• Multiply-Interactable: the Runner can interact with this card by running different servers (thus, in more ways than with most assets).

  1. run Archives: By flipping the discard-pile faceup, you turn off CGP’s Turn 1 facedown card in Archives faceup to … cost (except for a few fun fast-discard/-mill). Thus, there's an implicit Unless the Runner breached Archives last turn, … gate.
  2. run the agenda: Because it never-advances (being a BoT trigger like La Costa Grid), you can steal the telegraphed agenda beforehand (if you can breach the scoring remote, if you guessed right and they didn't bait you with Charlotte Caçador, or so on).
  3. run the asset (duh): Just pay its fair, 2[$] trash-cost.

• Both Payoff and (Self-)Enabler:

  • By itself, you can trash cards facedown (1st turn) and use that card archived-facedown (2nd turn), including the one it trashed itself.
  • Or (using just mode #2) you can install an agenda, a CGP, and play Hansei Review, then score out a never-advanced 4/2 next turn (flipping the Hansei’d card after rezzing CGP).
  • Or (using just mode #1) you can trash an installable, then IAA Hybrid Release (installing the trashed card).

• Both Econ and Threat: it can clicklessly earn two credits every turn while “rummaging” too, until it starts never-advancing agendas.

  • Most econ assets (like Regolith Mining License and Nico Campaign) are “cooked” in the scoring remote until you have a scoring window, and you've already exhausted them, or you'll over-install them anyways (tho a few can even rescue themselves, like Wall to Wall and Janaína “JK” Dumont Kindelán). To never-advance with CGP, however, this should be in a secondary, protected remote.

Notes:

• It almost breaks even on-rez ("+$2, draw 1" minus "card to draw, click to install, $1 to rez, trash 1 to use"), but doesn't (which is healthy for drip-econ or other value-over-time assets, IMO).

• This (as @Diogene said in their review) shines under identities:

  • with multiple protected remotes (like A Teia and Asa Group: since it's, of course, not an upgrade (like Tranquility Home Grid or La Costa Grid). Jukebox Asa (8th @ Worlds 2024) splashed two.
  • that care about facedown Archives (Restoring Humanity) or can protect Archives... or are Jinteki. LouDeeRer (2nd @ Worlds 2024) sleeved up the full playset.

• Like Zer0, you can filter cards and earn credits each turn. But the in-faction synergies of Runner-Red are “Trigger-when-Discarded” and “Heap-matters”, while that of Corpo-Red is “Archived-Facedown-matters”.

• Being non-unique, a second copy can (IIUC) flip the card just trashed by the first copy (but then you need three defensible remotes). (FWIW, I've never done that or seen it done, but I'm not a competitive player.) Also, being self-mill, you might need to reshuffle Archives (like with in-faction Longevity Serum, which can “heal” you for +3HP) if you've used the first mode too many times. (FWIW, I've never felt like I had to do that either.)

@tzeentchling:

I’m extremely fond of Cohort Guidance Program because it increases my draw speed and provides minor filtering from my hand of less useful cards, and if the runner doesn't bother to check Archives it's quite easy to get multiple advancements on a NA agenda.

(PS. I wish NSG released more earlier versions of cards! Even without extensive commentary like they did for Stegodon, which of course takes a lot of work to write on top of all the work that already went into it. There's a lot of knobs on this card that were all tuned well, both from the design and development perspective, yet the final version reads so cleanly while still being very deep.)

Idea: Other “CGP-like” assets that are, implicitly, temporarily-disablable (by breaching R&D, HQ, specific remotes) would be interesting too.

• R&D: Look at the top of R&D with 1st mode, and maybe rearrange (or draw then peek) for value; Guess the top of R&D (or just flip it and check for an “interactable" card-type, IE. an agenda/asset/upgrade, being stealable/trashable) with 2nd mode, to place an advancement. The Runner can disable it by breaching R&D. (cf. Federal Fundraising.)

• HQ: Reveal a stealable/trashable (agenda, asset, or upgrade) from HQ, to place an advancement. The Runner could disable it by breaching HQ and hitting enough stealables/trashables (maybe).

• Remotes: Derez another/noncopy rezzed asset (that wasn't rezzed this turn, or an asset/upgrade in another server) at BoT. The Runner could disable it by touching enough remotes? (cf. Warm Reception.)

• Detagging: Take 1 bad publicity to give 1 tag at EoT; Remove 1 tag to install & place 1 advancements at BoT. The Runner could disable it by detagging, as well as by trashing it (with the 1[$] “subsidy” for running/trashing from badpub). (cf. City Surveillance LOL.) (BTW, Repeated tagging or repeated derezzing can be toxic, and repeated deck-rearrangement can drag on every beginning-of-turn. These are all just zeroth drafts.)

Probably the single best ice in Standard at the time of writing this. Logjam is a gamewinning ice that completely hoses several decks if they don't run silver bullets, shuts down several of the most common cards in the format, and performs well against everything else. Even in it's worst showing it is pretty much a strictly superior Pharos, though pharos doesn't get run and logjam is a 3 of in every BtL for a reason.

As a facecheck:

Naturally, this is logjam's worst performance. Logjam is 6 to rez, and refunds 2, for a net cost of 4 and no cost to the runner.

As regular ice:

Logjam with a single advancement counter is 6 to rez, and has a strength of 4-6 (asset + operation are mostly guaranteed, ice + upgrade are common but may not be in your archives earlier in the game). With 3 subroutines which must all be broken, this makes it at worst about par and at best 2 strength better than the average. For comparison, pharos is -1 to 1 more/less strength for an extra credit, and the runner doesn't have to break one of the subroutines if they don't want to.

Against common scams:

Boomerang is completely shut down without any recourse against logjam. At best they can burn it to deny you the 2cr or recover it on a later run when they are able to break. This is really phenomenal and lets you play cards behind a single logjam with a confidence that you don't normally have against hoshiko or shapers.

Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga pays three subroutines to get past logjam. Nothing special, but gives a more or less 1:1 return on investment.

Botulus can't break this on the turn that it is played, even with Cookbook. This makes Simulchip botulus much less threatening. It also takes three virus counters to break logjam in general, reducing how often they can run and giving an actual use to botulus'd ice.

Audrey v2 needs two virus counters to break logjam's three EtRs, which makes virus counter management much easier in slow grindy games against freedom and the like. Logjam has no special effectiveness against Aumakua other than just being really efficient and high strength ice.

Against actual breakers:

Cleaver is the most common fracter in standard, and is run by most anarchs and most shapers. Other than cleaver, you will mostly see AI, Propeller and curupira. Logjam absolutely eats cleaver for breakfast: every advancement counter is another 2cr the runner has to spend on any run past logjam. Double turbine cleaver pays 12cr to break 12 str logjam, and the cost just goes up.

Unlike pharos, logjam actually beats turbine Propeller. Propeller can't break logjam in the lategame when it is advanced past 8/10 str, and the runner is forced to switch back to cleaver - by which point, breaking with cleaver has a cost well into the double digits.

Curupira only treats logjam as any other large and efficient barrier. It becomes important not to have cheap barriers on the outside of servers to prevent the runner from bypassing logjam by farming charge against these, but for the most part this is just something you have to deal with and conventional criminal breaker suites have the best time against logjam in the current meta.

Special interactions:

Unlike a lot of large and expensive ice, Logjam gets it's money back in a way when it is derezzed - more counters will get added to it when it is rezzed again. This means that if a runner actually wants to pass logjam, then logjam is still cost effective to rez while it's under a Tranquilizer.

Logjam gets forcibly set to 0 strength under Hush. It's a testament to how strong logjam is as a piece of ice that Lat now runs hush specifically to deal with logjam/treeline.

An interesting and rather unique defensive upgrade.

For an average "scoring" deck, an agenda suite usually consists of 8 or 9 agendas that are supposed to be scored out in some pattern of 2/2/3, i.e. scoring out two 4/2 or 3/2 agendas as well as a single 5/3. This agenda suite is great for easily scoring to 7, (as opposed to having to score to 9 with all 5/3s), while still keeping your agenda density low to avoid losing to multiaccess (as opposed to a deck running lots of 1 or 2 pointers). It gives you opportunities to fast advance a 3/2 to quickly close games out and the ability to play a few defensive 5/3s, or you can slot tempo 4/2s like Offworld Office to keep pace with the runner. All in all this agenda suite is probably one of the best, most consistent and most versatile in the game, but if you are running this agenda suite, you should not be running Giordano, because at best it is a worse Manegarm Skunkworks and at worst, it won't tax the runner a single credit.

For this card to be worth it, you need a lot of agendas in the runner's score area, and for that to be true, you also need to be running a lot of "small" agendas that you don't mind them stealing, because if the runner has a few 2 or 3 point agendas in their score area, then they've probably already won...

However, since running small agendas comes with its own inherent drawbacks regarding agenda density, this kind of card is best used in a Corp deck that's already ready and willing to include lots of small agendas for other reasons. The two most obvious examples are Sportsmetal: Go Big or Go Home and Thule Subsea: Safety Below but it could also be theoretically imported into Jinteki: Personal Evolution or other similar IDs.

Essentially, these IDs get some additional bonus whenever an agenda is stolen, which offsets the inherent downsides of running lots of small agendas. A Sportsmetal deck is probably happy running three copies of Hyperloop Extension, Megaprix Qualifier and/or Élivágar Bifurcation because if a couple of these cards get stolen, so what? You still get some money or card draw and as long as they don't win before you do, you don't really care how many agendas they steal.

Giordano gives you a "late" game defensive upgrade that could potentially cost the runner as much as 6-10 credits in an average Sportsmetal game by the time you're going for the final agenda push, which can be just enough to keep them out of a scoring remote they thought they could get into if you're keeping the tempo of the game fast enough and they're forced to play low to the ground.

A couple of notable details

• It's unique, so you can't protect multiple servers with these, but that's true of a lot of defensive upgrades so it's not like it's an uncommon restriction

• It's a facility, a lot of people I talk to seem to assume it's a region since it kind of sounds like it should be one, but it's not, so feel free to stack this with Regions and all sorts of other defensive upgrades

• It's ability triggers when the run is successful, this is rare, most similar effects trigger on the approach step, not the success step. Both can theoretically keep the runner from accessing any cards in the root of the server, but this wording is notable for the fact that it's a nonbo with other defensive upgrades like Manegarm Skunkworks or Anoetic Void since you can't force them to pay the Giordano tax then end the run with Anoetic. Plus, on-success effects like Dirty Laundry or Deep Dive will still technically fire too...

• This ability counts non-agenda "agendas" so cards like Nightmare Archive, Hangeki or Meridian all count as "agendas" for the purpose of Giordano calculations. As would cards like News Team, Shi.Kyū or Fan Site were they still in standard. It's for this reason that "Core Sports" decks have evolved as a way to force the runner to add Nightmare Archives to their score area, simultaneously making it harder for the runner to win despite stealing a large number of agendas and super charging effects like Giordano and Fast Break

• It dies to Pinhole Threading and Light the Fire!, this isn't something new nor unique to Giordano, but it's still worth noting that if you are relying on making an impenetrable remote server using Giordano plus a bunch of negative points to make the runner spend 20 credits or something, they can still just Pinhole it like any other defensive upgrade

I don't know enough about sports to tell you what kind of field that is or what kind of sport it is, but someone once said it looks kind of like a Dorito and now I can't stop seeing a Dorito chip whenever I look at it. The quote is a paraphrasing of the old Netrunner quote: "The world changed. Crime did not." for those wondering about that reference.

TLDR: A niche defensive upgrade for Corp decks looking to include a large number of small agendas and/or lots of sources of negative agendas.

I feel like this card is half of a combo that doesn't exist yet. Wait a minute, have I written this review before?

Compared to every other criminal run event mainstay at the time of writing, you have almost no reason to play this card. Many cards in most criminal decks are cheap, usually 4 credits or less, because criminals don't usually have the money to support a big rig and want to run early, fast and low to the ground. That means that at best, you are getting yourself an Overclock and a card draw, and at worst, you are hitting one of your 1 or 2 cost cards and end up feeling absolutely terrible.

If you want a generalist value run-event, play any of the following, each of them can make you as much if not more money with a much higher consistency. Even Overclock doesn't see much play in Criminal because they have so many other good run events to choose from and getting one extra card draw just isn't enough to make up for this inconsistency and unreliability.

• Bravado
• Carpe Diem
• Dirty Laundry
• Diversion of Funds

So what would make this card playable? Something that sets up the top of the deck obviously, if you can play a pretty Reg Criminal deck, include two disproportionately expensive cards like Femme Fatale, two copies of Concerto and a couple copies of whatever your setup card is, then you might just be onto something.

As far as I see it, there are 3 basic options:

• Something that restructures the top of your deck, like an infaction Making an Entrance reprint
• Something that tutors to the top of your deck, like an infaction Test Run reprint
• Something that lets you put cards from your hand on the top of your deck, like a Criminal version of Mindscaping or Flower Sermon

My personal favourite idea so far is like a Blueberry!™ Diesel near-print, call it say "Grape Diesel" where it says, draw 3 cards, then put one card from your Grip onto the top of your stack. This way, even outside of Concerto you can use it as source of good in faction card draw that then puts your dead draws like a spare copy of your console back on top of your deck for you to bottom next turn with The Class Act or shuffle away with Boomerang.

However, this would also give you a very reliable way to set-up Concerto, say you have a copy of Femme or whatever the equivalent future high cost card is already in your hand as well as a Concerto, the corporation then makes an obvious agenda push in a heavily guarded remote that they're pretty sure you can't get into. It's at this point that you play the Grape Diesel, putting the Femme on top of the deck, then rip the Concerto, giving you a whopping 9 credits to play around with it's quite literally an in-faction DIY Stimhack sans Brain/Core Damage.

Don't get me wrong, this whole thing is clunky, it's a three card combo that requires you to hold quite a few cards in hand in preparation for this. But... as long as each of those other two cards are worth playing in their own right, then Concerto might actually make sense as a big power play that can swing games in the Criminal's favor by giving them a sudden and massive injection of credits.

Will such a set-up card ever be printed, and importantly, will it ever be printed in Criminal? That remains to be seen, but the potential is there, will Stimhack be reborn wreathed in blue, only time will tell...

This is as much a game essay as a review, so strap yourselves in if you are up to it! Otherwise, skip ahead to the last two paragraphs for my suggestions.

Overview

Padma is undeniably weak, seeing almost no play, even at the peak strength of Shapers she was consistently beaten out by Lat, Arissana or Kit. This review will explain why she’s weak, how she could’ve been better designed and how she still can.

ID abilities can generally be thought in terms of 3 factors: payoff, play-pattern and deck-building requirements. What kind of cards do you need to include in your deck, what sort of play-pattern do you need to pursue to trigger your ability, and what is the reward for doing so?

Generalists

Speaking anecdotally, the most widely played IDs tend to have generalistic payoffs with lenient requirements.

Take Hoshiko for example, she gives you card draw and credits, something almost every deck can benefit from, while only requiring you to touch cards every other turn. Thus she can work with almost anything, Reg Anarch, Mulch, ICE destruction, etc., all can benefit from money and cards, and all want to run at least occasionally.

Lat is similar, almost all Shaper decks can benefit from clickless card draw and matching hand-size with the corporation requires almost nothing of you in deck-building and doesn’t greatly restrict your play pattern. Thus Lat can be played with a variety of archetypes, in the days of Endurance and Rezeki, he was the face of control shaper, in the days of Trick Shot and Deep Dive, he was the ID of choice, and when Aesop’s Pawnshop/Coalescence was the best engine, he could still slot in just fine.

Combo

By contrast, combo IDs tend to see relatively little play (unless their combo is busted), and be extremely confined to their specific play pattern.

Tāo, for instance, almost only ever uses Hermes, because the synergy with his ability is too great and he is currently best served by the Conduit/Aeneas engine, because he usually has to tunnel on a single server that he continually weakens in hopes of finding another agenda in time to snowball further. However, when properly locked out, he lacks the lateral options available to other IDs, he’s limited by being unable to reliably choose when and even if agendas will be scored or stolen and his ability does little against asset decks that play few ICE and combo kill decks that don’t plan to score out at all.

Similarly, Mercury usually runs few, if any, icebreakers and relies almost exclusively on finite, bypass tools to “cheat” their way through not just some of the corporation’s ICE, but all of the corporation's ICE. They then plan to win off a critical mass of multi-access supported by tools like The Twinning, “Pretty”, or WAKE Implant. But, much like Tao, they lack the flexible and strategic tools to control the flow of the game should they get unlucky, or get locked out.

Midground/Archetype Players

Most IDs fall somewhere in the middle and their playability is determined by how much value their ability can generate relative to how easy it is to fire said ability, as well as how good the cards in the archetype they belong to are.

Arissana is generally considered a good example, here, we can see the three components, Arissana requires Trojan synergies in deck-building, which lends her to a unique, trojan-centric archetype best played with her ID, she requires you to run often, something that is not-hard for aggressive runners and rewards you with clickless installs at a minimum, or game saving counter-play in a pinch (reactively installing a Hush, Slap Vandal, Botulus or Physarum Entangler can be game-saving). These reactive installs also enable her to be more aggressive with her runs, which is important for a high-tempo, run-based ID.

Padma is similar in theory, she requires you to include cards that can be charged in the deck building stage, and thus should be the best ID for any power-counter centric Archetype. Her play-pattern requires making regular runs, not unlike Arissana or Hoshiko in theory. And the pay-off is the power counters themselves, which have variable returns but can often be used for some amount of card-draw (Dr. Nuka Vrolyck), credits (Coalescence), multi-access (Cataloguer, WAKE, Twinning), breakers (Revolver, Propeller, Lobisomem) or utility (Hippocampic Mechanocytes, Poison Vial, Amelia Earhart). All in all, this seems fine, the biggest catch is that unlike these other IDs, Padma’s ability only fires when you run R&D.

The Problem with Padma

This is a bigger problem than you might initially think, locking your ability into a single server is a crushing limitation because of the counterplay it opens up to the corp. Against the other aforementioned, run-based IDs corporations would need to ICE up every server, a multiplicatively more difficult requirement than icing up just a single server. Because if you heavily ICE up one server against say, Arissana or Hoshiko, they can simply pivot and attack the new weakest server while still getting value from their ability. Whereas once R&D becomes unrunably expensive, should Padma pivot away from it, she is now playing with a blank ID box, a horrible situation to be in.

Furthermore, because her ID lacks in built protection like Arissana has, Padma is vulnerable to bad facechecks on R&D should she try to run into a facedown piece of ICE on turn one. She’s especially vulnerable, even when compared to conventional run-based decks like Criminal that try to force rezzes before they’ve installed any cards because Padma needs at least one card installed to use her ability on, simply increasing the number of potentially tempo-negative face-checks she could make.

There's a very good reason that ID design has moved away from server-specific abilities over its history, FFG era netrunner often included ID abilities that targeted a specific server like Gabriel Santiago, Steve Cambridge, Akiko Nisei or Silhouette. But NSG broadly recognized, correctly in my opinion, that these limitations are best placed on specific cards, not fundamental IDs, and you can see the fruits of these learnings in modern ID design. Zahya's ability works on HQ or R&D, as does Mercury's, Sable has to run a specific central server, but that server changes from turn to turn, so you can never truly know where to place ICE to lock her out for good. The decision to ignore all of these learnings when it comes to Padma and limit her ability to only work when running R&D confounds me as I can't see a good reason to place this limitation. It's like if Arissana could only install Trojans on ICE protecting R&D with her ability, or if Hoshiko only got to flip if she accessed cards in Archives, it just wouldn't make any sense and would be extraordinarily constrictive.

The Solution

My opinion, now more than ever, that we've had a good chance to see how Padma operates in the standard meta, is that Padma’s ability should read “The first time each turn you make a successful run, Charge 1 of your installed cards.”

This would make Padma’s gameplay so much cleaner and smoother at every stage of the game. On turn one, Icing up R&D is no longer so debilitating, because she can still run HQ and get a risk-free power counter. Even once HQ and R&D get iced up, you can still run Archives for a safe supply of power-counters, equivalent to clicking for 2 credits with Coalescence or 2 cards with Nuka, or preemptively charging up your multi-access for once you find your breakers.

In the mid-game, where you need to run the remote to keep the corporation in check, you can still generate an incidental power-counter to refund you some of the cost. If you need to sweep HQ on an important turn, you still get a power counter, if you need to run Archives to keep Jinteki honest or flush out a Spin Doctor, you still get a power counter. Even in the late game, where you might want to run R&D to close things out, you can still get a power counter, only generating that power counter once the run is successful, is a minor downside, but if anything, this is fairer than getting one when the run begins. Not to mention the fact that this reworded ability makes orthogonal game-plans like assets much more playable for her.

Ultimately, it would enable a far more "natural" style of Netrunner, one that incidentally rewards you for making the kinds of good runs you would want to make anyway, rather than attempting to force you into this awkward play pattern of "tunneling" on R&D.

How to Achieve it

I know why NSG does not do functional errata, but I want to propose an alternative solution to this problem. Create a Booster Pack, with maybe only 5 or so cards, such as this reworded version of Padma, reword Daeg to say something more like “The first time this game you install a card named Daeg and whenever an agenda is scored or stolen, you may Charge 1 of your installed cards.” Tweak the numbers on Nanuq or Tunnel Vision to give Shapers or Criminals a new playable AI, reprint Virtuoso but with 2 Memory instead of just 1, and maybe reprint Nanisivik Grid but make it unique. Call the whole thing the “Borealis Reprint Booster Pack” and give everybody who buys the next standard release cycle a copy of this booster pack, free of charge, that way you can easily disseminate these reprinted versions to everybody who is still into Netrunner (plus worst case scenario people can just proxy the new versions from print-and-play).

I strongly believe the Charge mechanic is underutilized and with the Borealis cycle recently released and not rotating for years to come, I think there’s a strong argument to be made that these underplayed or banned cards deserve a second chance while they’re still young. Just don’t reprint the Boat lol, I think this version of Padma would still be good without it :D