Besides Fairchild 3, this is probably the most effective brain-damage ice yet printed. It’s a 5-strength sentry with 3 high-impact subroutines and an effective rez cost of around $5. It does require you to commit deck slots to weaker harmonic ice though. Contrast to Anansi: $8 and you have to commit deck slots to being Jinteki.

Bloop's biggest drawback is that you have to slot a few other harmonic ice, but maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. Bloop only needs 1 other harmonic ice rezzed, which can reasonably be delivered with maybe ~4 other harmonic slots. In contrast, NEXT ice required a ton of other NEXT ice slotted and rezzed, so going NEXT jammed your deck with like 10+ slow, inefficient ice. Bloop is semi-terrifying on a single harmonic rez, it gets started much more quickly and allows you much more flexibility in which ices your deck uses and how many.

This looks okay if you only need one click for tag punishment. In HB, one click might be all you need. End of the Line is generally lethal on two brain damage and Hypoxia helps you get there. This can only be played if they stole an agenda last turn, which is unreliable, but this might still be better in HB than importing (say) Public Trail. Many HB brain damage decks have small agendas and Nightmare Archives, which makes it more likely there will be an agenda steal late enough that you've got your 2 kill cards in hand but not so late that the steal ends the game.

In HB, if your main tag punishment is Hypoxia, I'd probably prefer Public Trail over Distributed Tracing. (Influence is less tight if you're passing on EOTL and also Public Trail only takes one click so sometimes a Public Trail will allow 2 Hypoxias in a single turn, or possibly 1 Hypoxia and some other punishment card like Riot Suppression). A Distributed Tracing -> Hypoxia turn takes a lot of work (2 cards and 3 clicks and $4 for a single brain damage) and puts two cards in your deck that are almost entirely useless without the other. I suspect that probably isn't enough value for the corp. Nanisivik Grid seems like a much more reliable and cost-effective source of brain damage than that, and more versatile if brain damage is not immediately helpful (e.g. if they have Caldera in play, using Nanisivik to fire Tyr's "trash a Runner card and gain $3" subroutine is so much more lucrative than playing Distributed Tracing so you can manually trash Caldera).

Outside of HB, the usual suspects will probably prefer the condition-free Drago when they want a 2-click tag on the corp's turn. Drago's also reusable, so he is less bothered by disposable counterplay like No Free Lunch or Stoneship Chart Room.

Also, this art has a stellar concept, easy to miss at first glance.

In PE, this is as close to a guaranteed 3x slot as a 3/1 agenda can be. It's a reliable 2-4 damage on either steal or score. Defensively, 2-4 damage is comparable to a Snare or most Urticas, if they were free and could trigger from anywhere. Offensively, this is comparable to Ronin, except it's a Ronin which only requires 3 advances and no extra clicks to fire, and also defends itself everywhere. Overall it's one of the stronger net damage cards in the card pool.

Mitosis synergy: because this card works effectively whether the runner checks or not, it is exceptionally useful in Mitosis plays. In Jinteki's card pool, Sting arguably generates the most reliable value from Mitosis's 2 advancement counters. After you Mitosis, a Runner that takes 4 damage from your Urtica (first install) will get crippled by Sting (second install) whether they check it or not. They also have to guess whether your third manual install is a Snare or Reaper Function or another 3/1 agenda.

Outside of PE, it's more ordinary. 3 deck slots for a potential 3-5 net damage is maybe situationally valuable depending on what agenda density you're looking for and/or how much low-cost passive defense you need. It might be playable in Issuaq as a better-than-blank 3/1 even though Issuaq probably cares about 3/1 than about the net damage.

The value of this card is mainly in that it allows you to instantly remove a tag. It's extremely good against quick-kill combos starting with a card like Drago Ivanov or Public Trail or Distributed Tracing. If you're good at identifying Quantum Predictive Model situations, it could also be very valuable for removing a tag during a run.

If you have enough time/funds to clear a tag without using this card, I'd suggest avoiding wasting this card prematurely. It only saves you $2. What this card gives you (that a click and $2 cannot) is the ability to easily survive a tag inflicted on the corp's turn. Relatedly, some tournament players favor Stoneship Chart Room over Diesel. Yes, the effect is small, but the timing is GREAT.

It also gives you a bit of flexibility mid-run if the run is a few credits more expensive than you were expecting.

"This card is unbelievably cool and twice as weak." -Harold Zoid

This is definitely a cool concept for doom-over-time, but so much worse than the rest. It doesn't do anything positive until turn 6 unless you're farming for bad publicity. It's hard enough to pull off Urban Renewal outside of Ob. Borehole is impossible. The runner has 20 clicks and a ⋆⋆⋆⋆ton of bad publicity credits to draw a Pinhole Threading or force their way in or win any other way they want to. This isn't a card, it's a TikTok challenge.

There aren't any cards which produce enough value from bad publicity to make this card worthwhile. The Outfit needs four triggers for Borehole to be more lucrative than Hedge Fund. Regulatory Capture only gets value from the first 4 bad publicity, and it's doubtful anyone needs cards this bad to get to 4 BP. It's doubtful anyone needs cards this bad for anything.

Cards which force the runner to run are great! Maybe look into Urban Renewal instead? It's a lot cheaper, fires more quickly, and could be lethal with a Broad Daylight counter. Or Drago Ivanov, he moves very fast in The Outfit. Or Dr. Keeling, I've heard that doom-over-time cards which start producing immediate value are pretty good.