This is numerically okay. It's slightly faster than PAD Campaign and it probably won't see much use outside of Jinteki. Or inside Jinteki.

Jinteki doesn't have the ID or operation support to play this uniced, and also doesn't have the ice to efficiently ice up widely. And, even if you DID want to invest a Karuna or something to guard a non-scoring remote server, you don't have enough assets to keep that server useful after an asset or two get trashed.

I don't think the potential net damage usually matters much. If you are financially crippled enough that this might deal net damage, you may be taking enough damage on central servers that you have more to lose than they do. I recommend checking out maninthemoon's Ob deck though, using wild tricks like NASX and Hostile Architecture to keep Bladderwort triggering while NASX hides your actual money. Look, Ob is pretty good. Most identities can't throw around enough cards for $1 rez / $3 trash to be particularly hard for a runner to keep up with. Most identities also have trouble attacking from a bank of $3-4. Aside from like Snares and Aikis, I don't think Jinteki can even defend effectively at $4.

The main use I can see for this card in Jinteki is that it's a relatively low-cost way to push the runner into painful runs. Nanisivik hits very hard even if you're poor enough that the net damage is a plausible threat.

Pros:

• This looks like a remarkably good accelerant for Jinteki. For 2 actions and $3 you get 10 basic clicks worth of value (2 installs, 4 advancements).
• Most runners can check a card with 2-3 tokens in the current cardpool without getting immediately vaporized, so the decision-making and consequences might be more interesting than with Mushin No Shin.

Cons:

• Jinteki's cardpool is still worse than Adam's.
• Advanceable traps benefit most from this card, but adding advanceable traps to your deck tends to reduce tempo and increase vulnerability on central servers.
• Doesn't work very efficiently with non-advanceable traps like Snare.

Paperclip can trash this unassisted for $4. If your gameplan generates a huge amount of value from trashing your own cards, cool. If not, drawing this card is probably worse than clicking for a credit. The fair market price for a card which drains $4 from the Runner one time is zero credits. So, if you're not playing Envelopment hoping to getting it trashed, this is not the ice for you.

In Ob, this looks very playable. The turn it’s rezzed, the runner can trash it for $4, beat it without trashing it for $5, or let it end the run. If you haven’t fired Ob yet this turn, Envelopment is a bit more efficient than Fire Wall. If you have already fired Ob, the runner will easily trash this for $4 and you’re losing the exchange. In Ob you’re building around a ID ability which can only be fired once per turn, I think this ice will probably be less reliable than it looks.

This looks very strong. A 7-strength, $4 sentry will surprise a lot of runners and it looks to be the most reliable program-destruction printed in a long time.

Major matchups

• It ruins Aumakua. There are not many ice which can surprise a 5-6 strength turtle and Stavka's the most broadly useful in its price range. Turtle decks tend to run rather adventurously and you will find opportunities to destroy them.
• Against MKUltra, it's reasonable value-over-time. It costs you $4 and usually costs them $3 to break. And maybe you snipe like a Botulus or Fermenter on first encounter.
• It produces very little value-over-time against Bukhgalter, Echelon and Na'Not'k. I'd suggest waiting on the rez as long as it takes to find a window where they'll be unable to break the subroutines.
• A runner exploring with Engolo will have a very bad time.

Stavka's value is heavily short-term, so you may find experimental uses for it with Nanisivik or (!?) ZATO City.

...

The card's power level is reasonable, but I think the card will be unfun. Losing 2 icebreakers (or economic programs) is unusually severe punishment on an ice which will usually be a 7-strength sentry on facecheck. In the spirit of not having a game end because you already discarded a backup breaker or you're in a mini-faction that can't reasonably stock multiple copies of breakers/recursion or are just sick of conspiracy breakers, I'd suggest giving the runner a costly option to prevent the program from being trashed.

Bathynomus does quite well against a popular killer (MKUltra) and is okay against most breakers on Archives, which could help on maybe 3-4 runs most games. It also fares reasonably well as an early draw against Aumakua decks but produces little value over time against Bukhgalter. If you find yourself frequently needing early Archives protection, which is rare, this is reasonable at $3. Off of archives, it usually has an impact of $0-1 except against MKUltra. Considering how little value ice on Archives usually produce, I think a fair rez price would be closer to $1 for an ice which is only semi-viable on Archives and nowhere else.

How does it do off-Archives? Most breakers besides MKUltra get through it for $0-1 off-Archives, which is so inexplicably bad for a $3 ice (or even a $0 ice) that rezzing it non-Archives gives the runner useful information about how desperate your draw has been. (On another central server, it suggests your draw has been starved for ice, which reduces the deterrent value of ice for your early game*. A remote Bathynomus suggests a lack of ice or possibly an exotic ZATO). Most other factions shy away from cards which are so bad that using them indicates you are in an existential panic. In Jinteki, you might not have a choice.

Unfrequently asked questions

Why would showing this card off-Archives weaken my position elsewhere? If I've drawn so few ice that I have to rez a Bathynomus off-Archives, I'm showing very low confidence in my ice draw, and the next ice I install will probably be whatever I draw next even if it's situationally terrible. It might be an ice I can't afford yet, a Bran that I don't particularly want to rez right now because it'd bankrupt me for too little short-term value, or a low-impact ice like Aiki on remote. In a situation like this, there's an above-average chance that the corp is not willing or able to rez that ice right now (or that it's unusually low-impact in its position) and that the runner can be more adventurous until they've seen otherwise. In contrast, if I lead with 2-3 ice early or if you access multiple ice from HQ, my installed ice are probably closer to what I was looking for rather than desperation installs.

Is Bathynomus an unusually terrible card? Not compared to most Jinteki cards, arguably. The worst 5 cards in a 2023 Jinteki deck will range from "how did something better NOT get printed?" up to "legit, is our card-pool actually worse than Adam's right now?" Depending on how worried you are that the ice is tied almost exclusively to the least important central server and not even all THAT good at defending it, this feels more like the second than the first.

Why no Aikis on remote? Remote server runs access cards which the corp has already paid to draw and install and also are more likely to be agendas. Aiki doesn't produce enough pain to create scoring windows on remote or adequately protect early assets. If you install a Rashida and they let Aiki fire, you're probably losing more from Rashida getting trashed than they are from Aiki's subroutines. If the run to trash Rashida was on R+D instead, I think you're probably ahead on the exchange with Aiki firing. (You have invested fewer resources into an R+D Rashida than one that you've drawn and installed).