The “Bioroids-matter” LEO Construction (🛰️) makes:

• any Bioroid ice (like Bumi 1.0) into a “purple Border Control”, and
• any Bioroid upgrades (like Mercia B4LL4RD) into a “local Bio Vault”.

Design

• Bioroids with (hard) ↳ End the run. subs are, implicitly, like non-Bioroids with (soft) ↳ End the run unless the Runner spends [click]. subs. LEO complements Bioroids by “hardening” their EtR’s with a non-“bribeable” (as well as non-breakable) one.

• Despite being a repeatable EtR, LEO requires the heavy cost of a rezzed-sacrifice like ZATO City Grid (and unlike Nanisivik Grid or Sisyphus Protocol). This makes it more dynamic than Architects of Tomorrow (and much more than Stronger Together)*.

Cards

Bioroids (Upgrade/ICE):

• Mercia B4LL4RD: a 2[$] Upgrade, which installs ice clicklessly (to set up another “LEO’ing”), and does so with a triggered—not static—ability (to be sacrificed after already installing one or two ice).
• Bumi 1.0: a 3[$] ICE, with an On-Rez (albeit worse than Magnet, and not EtR like Border Control).
• Brân 1.0 and Ansel 1.0 (they're good).

See s:bioroid t:upgrade|ice z:standard (sorted by cost)

(Even more than M.I.C., a reprinted Eli 1.0 in LEO would've truly been the “HB–BC”.)

Non-Bioroid synergies:

• Harder Servers: like M.I.C. and Manegarm Skunkworks.
• Recursion: especially Archives→server, like Ablative Barrier and over-advanced Project Ingatan (but also just Archives→HQ, like Corporate Hospitality?)
• Compression: like Mercia (and Warm Reception or Tucana?))

Notes

• Shred can prevent its EtR (unless they give up a card in hand in addition to the one in play). CF. Light the Fire!, which can blank upgrades like Manegarm Skunkworks, but not identities like LEO.

• This card spoiled the new Once per turn → … keyword-flag. IMO, it's: clearer than NSG's old templating (… Use this ability only once per turn.), being the first thing you read; and cleaner than the FFG's templating one (Once per turn, …), the extra comma being messy (uncapitalizing the non-boilerplate). Some card games keyword all common conditions (Once per turn: …, Enters: …, and so on).

Flavor

• The conceit (AFAICT) is that servers in space are harder to breach. While digital hacking should be comparable (the light-delay is still less than a second, unlike the second to the Moon and the minutes to Mars), any physical hacking becomes difficult (like planting listening devices, breaking into employees' offices, etc). IDK why the Octoroids get sacrificed. (LMK what you think.)
• A near-Earth hub or Earth station should be within a low-Earth orbit (Wikipedia) . Yet mechanically, LEO’s verticality is completely opposite to NEH’s / ES’s horizontality (which is cool).

Custom

BTW, the ID's aforementioned “complementarity” is a great design for any “TYPE-matters” build-around. (That is, cards of type “X” are consistently complemented by some effect “Y”, where X's can't provide you with Y and/or need some mitigation from Y.) Compare with:

• a “Uniques-matter” ID: that can somehow make use of redundant copies of installed/rezzed (◆)-cards. (maybe by “expend’ing” them from HQ, kinda like Angelique Garza Correa). or,

• a “Bad-Pub-matters” ID; that can sacrifice Illicits to somehow neutralize bad publicity (by removing it, preventing bad-pub from being spent, or so on).

Development

Bounty Hunters and Bioroids in Elevation Playtesting (Chronologist) :

A potential issue with LEO Construction was how it might constrict the design space of new bioroids. Safer compared it to NBN: Reality Plus, an identity that did not initially seem to restrict the design space of tags, yet due to its strength and flexibility turned out to be suffocating.

It is an abnormal HB identity, one that asks players to continuously reevaluate the worth of their bioroids. It is a glacier identity, yet not one that is likely to build servers tall enough to infringe on your opponent’s playmat every game.

With only four bioroid ice left in the new cardpool before Elevation, and an identity this dependent on access to bioroids, it was difficult to get the full sense of the potential power level of LEO Construction. And so, the developers offered up a unique bounty for playtesters: “Playtest LEO Construction, using all bioroids ever printed (except Fairchild 3.0)”. This gave a controlled environment that would simulate how LEO would operate in a future scenario with many more bioroids than exist today, allowing potential power level issues and future design space constrictions to be spotted during testing.

[…] Watzlav: “I was also hesitant [to trash my ice] at first, but then once I tried it, I realized it’s just an emotional thing. Like, Brân is the best piece of ice on the board right now. I can’t use it [for LEO’s ability]. But then if you just compare it with an M.I.C. or Border Control, M.I.C. is literally the same amount of money for a worse effect.”

[…] It’s late in the game. Safer has a Brân on R&D. The Runner goes in for a single access. “[I knew] I should use the Brân. [But] I was like… ‘it’s a single from R&D. It doesn’t matter. It’s fine…’ But I was pretty confident the ‘correct play’ was to stop the single access. And then they hit an agenda, and played Reprise and the game was lost from there.”

AU Co. batches damage with “discard” (Whenever you do damage or trash 1 or more cards from HQ, …); and pairs both with draw, which is mechanically-related to discard, since you refill your hand, as well as thematically-related to damage, since you're “stealing” cards from the grip to HQ (CF. Vampyronassa).

For example, resolving a Boto or Empiricist double-“charges” it, which lets you double-“draw” next turn. Or even a 3rd power counter if the Runner facechecks Saisentan without a Killer, or Attini without credits. (IIUC, rezzing Anemone triggers it twice? Since there's a cost and an effect, even if both are in one sentence via the trash _ to do _ templating. But IDK.)

BTW, I like that placing the counters is unbounded (it's a "whenever", not a "first time each turn"), while spending them is bounded (it's "remove up to two counters", not "remove any number of counters"), and that the ratio is 1-to-2 ("spend two at a time, place only one at a time"). So when deck-building (or jank-brewing), you are rewarded for jamming a lot of different cards that can trigger it (especially multiple times at once, or repeatedly over time). So:

• Cohort Guidance Program can trigger it every turn.
• playing Hansei Reviews will trigger it non-interactively.
• an Anoetic Void trigger costs two cards, which the ID halfway-reimburses (albeit delayed). (IDK if this works out in the archetype, but the interaction is there.)

This is not PE, it only cares about dealing damage (like Prāna Condenser or the new Phật Gioan Baotixita), while PE was dealing the damage; thus protecting your agendas (even unrezzed assets), hardening your AP ice, tempoing out the grip (even grinding out the stack), literally winning the game, and so on. Damage is self-synergistic, because of flatlining, so it "dealing damage" implicitly cares about "damage being dealt" too.*

However, in the best-case, AU would be like When your turn begins, you may draw 2 cards. (!), with some self-mill and card-selection too.

BTW, this first one was my guess on Reddit before spoilers:

Maybe a PE that's less grindy but just as spiky, like:

• Whenever an agenda is scored or stolen, do 1 net damage. Put the trashed card on the bottom of the stack.
• Whenever an agenda is scored or stolen, the Runner adds 1 card from their grip to the bottom of their stack, then the Corp may draw 1 card.

CF. the NSG-era Daniela Jorge Inácio and Bring Them Home, which are still random (like damage is) but cannot flatline you (like damage can).

“Au” is the chemical symbol for gold (which is “aurum” in Latin).

Design

Zwicky batches Operations with Agendas (an ability on an agenda or operation). CF. Nuvem, which batches Operations with Expendables (finish resolving an operation or an action on an expendable card).

And it's a Weyland ID that draws cards!

Its “Earning-Ops-matter” (The first time each turn you gain credits through an ability on an operation or _, …) generalizes WC: Building a Better World’s “Transactions-matter” (Whenever you play a transaction operation, …). For example:

• Each Hedge Fund in BaBW was Gain 5[$].
• The first Hedge Fund in Zwicky is Gain 4[$]. Draw 1 card.

Also, it cross-synergizes with Plutus’s “Transactions-matter”. All Transactions can gain credits (and most always do). They're now cantrips (modulo the click) too.

Notes

"Draw a card a turn" is the one of the most best lines of text that can be on an identity. If you jam Hedge Funds, *KPIs**, **AAPs*, and so on, this ID can be as easy as The first time each turn you play an operation, draw 1 card.. (As in @Au_Revoir_Dog review, drawing one card each turn is more fun than earning multiple credits, and could be even better if you're drawing into FA/Kill.)

Synergies:

• Hedge Fund → Gain 4[$]. Draw (up to) 1 card.

• Government Subsidy → Gain 5[$]. Draw 1 card.

• Armed Asset Protections → Gain ~2[$]–5[$]. Draw 1 card.

• Petty Cash is a Transaction with “Flashback”, which double-triggers Zwicky (net Gain 4[$]. Draw 2 cards., over two turns for a single click).

• Greenmail: It both scores for Gain 2[$]. Draw 1 card., and forfeits for Gain 4[$]. Draw 1 card..

• Key Performance Indicators can draw if you pick its credit mode. (I think you can shuffle away an agenda drawn by that mode, if you resolve the “Descent mode” second, but IDK.)

• Predictive Planogram (1/5 inf) → Gain 3[$]. Draw 1 card. (a cheaper Green Level Clearance).

• Offworld Office → Gain 7[$]. Draw 1 card. (giving you even more tempo)

• Does Zwicky make Extract worth it (without sacrificing like in Ob), as an expensive Beanstalk Royalties that cantrips? (As with MuslihaT and Concerto, IDK.)

See t:operation|agenda x:gain|take x:credit f:weyland-consortium|neutral-corp z:standard b:active (IDK if you can write a query like (t:agenda f:weyland|neutral || t:operation) x:credit … in NRDB.)

Custom

Why not trigger off ice too? IE.

• The first time each turn you gain credits through an ability on an agenda, operation, or piece of ice, you may draw 1 card.

This provides more off-turn triggers (besides just forfeiting Greenmail). And synergizes with Weyland’s many “Incidental-Earning” subroutines, like:

• Maskirovka
• Akhet
• Tree Line
• Anvil
• Valentão
• Logjam
• (Tithe)

For example:

• Maskirovka’s “standalone” sub becomes ↳ Gain 2[$] and draw up to 1 card.
• Tree Line’s “compound” sub becomes ↳ Gain 1[$] and draw up to 1 card. End the run.

t:ice x:gain x:credit

Flavor

Fritz Zwicky (pronounced TSVI-kee) coined "dark matter" (IIUC, dunkle Materie meant "unseen" more than "dark"?). In our universe, Dark Matter is 85% of all mass (the 15% of Non-Dark Matter is what we can see and what we're made of).

Fritz Zwicky

Weyland is always pulling strings and committing atrocities, not just public bombings (like Scorched and Boom, which are the "tip of the iceberg"), but silent disappearances and private threats too.

While both the subtitle and flavor text have dark implications, "Invisible Hands" has an econ connotation ("the invisible hand of the market"), and "Action at a distance" has a physics connotations ("entanglement is spooky action at a distance"). Which is very Weyland (the original Beanstalk itself is the intersection of the two, both in its construction and then its royalties).

And rules text itself is always so flavorful: agenda or operation in "Netrunner-ese" already reads like "schemes or machinations" in English.

PS. In the artwork (which I hadn't noticed until it was pointed out), the night sky—negative space between the skyscrapers—forms a ‘W’!

Sang Kancil (🐁🦌) is “Run-Event-boosted”, like:

• 1[$]: +2 strength. Use this ability only if a run event is active.

For example, you Bravado their Code-Gate; SK can interface with it for:

• 0[$] if 0–2 strength: like Virtual Service Agent (just 1[$], since SK has base 2 strength too).
• 1[$] if 3–4 strength: like Mestnichestvo (3[$]), M.I.C. (4[$]), Vampyronassa (5[$]), and the new Scatter Field (3[$], if singly-iced) or N-Pot (2[$]–4[$], given the threat-level).
• 2[$] if 5–6 strength: like Attini (5[$]), Valentão (5[$], if the Corp has enough credits), and the new Syailendra (5[$]) or Mycoweb (6[$], if the Corp has enough rezzed ice).
• and only 1[$] more from ice gets +2 strength (like Isaac Liberdade) or icebreakers get −2 strength (like Stegodon MK IV) effects.

TIL it's produced more like “sung khanchill”.

Design

I love breakers that have a temporary (turn-length) benefit. It's either a mini-game (where you plan your heists each turn), or a build-around (where you made sure your deck can easily enable it every single turn). Like:

• 🔴 If you trashed any of your installed cards this turn, … (Boi-tatá)
• 🟢 For each card you've drawn this turn, this ability costs 1[$] less to use.
• 🔵 Whenever you play an event, this program gets +1 strength.

Unlike Aumakua, with which you can spend one turn (re-)charging it, and the next turn using it. CF.:

• This program gets +1 for each successful run you've made this turn. (or even 1[$]: Break up to 1 code gate subroutine for each successful run you've made this turn.)
• This program gets +2 strength as long as you've made a successful run on a central server this turn.

I also love “Run-Events-matter” in general. (“The Ken is dead! Long live the T!”). Which is why..

Custom

..my own (WIP) mini-set had an “Active-Event-boosted” breaker-cycle, to synergize with the dance (“stackable/delayable Run-event”) and uprising (“Runner Lockdown”) mechanics. Like:

*(Noting that Kancil would still count a played Grand Jeté before using Debbie "Downtown" Moreira, in a run where you can spend credits from both!)

Choreographer
[$2] PROGRAM [1mu]: Icebreaker [0s] - Fracter
[criminal 3/5]
This program gets +2 strength for each active event. (Events that have been played but not yet trashed are “active”, including run events.)
Interface → 1[$]: Break 1 barrier subroutine.
2[$]: +2 strength.

Grand Jeté
[$2] EVENT: Run - Dance
[criminal 1/5]
Load 6[$] and [Q][Q] onto this event. It is not trashed until this turn or the next run ends.
During the next run, you can spend or lose hosted counters.
You may run any server.

Ad-Hoc Ransom
[$3] EVENT: Uprising
[criminal 4/5]
Play only if there is no active uprising. This event is not trashed until your next turn begins.
Whenever the Corp installs, advances, or rezzes a card, they lose 1[$]. They may take 1 bad publicity to prevent this effect and trash this event.

Flavor

The stories of Sang Kancil is a series of traditional fables about a clever mouse-deer. He can fool the other animals to escape from trouble.

• Kancil (story)
• Tragulus kanchil (species)

The Mahkota Langit Grid (👑☁️) makes “local” assets cheaper-to-rez and pricier-to-trash (especially if protected by a cheaper-to-rez gearcheck too).

Notes

• For example (with zero-inf neutrals-only), a Langit’d Regolith Mining License becomes 0[$]-to-rez and −5[$]-to-trash (a four-credit “swing”).

• Being a region but non-unique, you can have multiple, lightly-iced MLG remotes. For example (in HB), two 0[$]-to-rez Otto and/or Nico Campaigns, protected by 1[$]-to-rez Scatter Fields (and their own −4[$]-to-trash costs), fueling +5[$] Fully Operationals? Like “DIY Asa Group” (🤞)??

• The 2[$/T] ability can pay for ice rez but not install costs.

• The Persistent ability “upsells” assets in the root of this server (not in R&D, FWIW, even if you installed this upgrade centrally).

• The Grid can rez a Descent (or Ablative Barrier) for 0[$] on T1, but IDK if it can then rez the Anthill Excavation Contract (or Humanoid Resources) being hastily protected for 1[$] (or 0[$]) by T2. (Do its hosted credits refill soon enough? LMK to edit it in.)

PS. This card ends up looking very clean (“all two’s”), but my guess is that it was very messy to get there (especially because it increases trash-costs un-influentially). Disclaimer: I haven't played with it yet.

Flavor

AFAICT, “mahkota langit” means “crown-sky”:

• mahkota means “crown”. Wiktionary
• langit means “sky”. Wiktionary

(Malay/Indonesian speakers, please correct me; maybe if it's a specific compound like English “rainbow”, a possessive like “sky’s crown”, has some connotation, or so on.)

CF. The Fountains of Paradise (1979, Arthur C. Clarke):

Due to many technical issues, there are only two locations on Earth where the Orbital Tower can be built. One is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the other is Sri Kanda (a thinly veiled reference to Adam's Peak , in Sri Lanka). However, there is a Buddhist temple on the island, and Mahanayake Thero, the head of the order, refuses to give permission to begin construction.

Unlike NSG’s framing of this conflict, Clarke frames the conflict as "science vs. religion".