I'm going to miss Experiential Data even though it is:

• a junk card
• a card I have never ever sleeved up for any deck
• quite justifiably removed from Revised Core

But it has some of my favorite flavor text in the game.

Firstly, it gives a wonderful peek into the mind of one of my favorite characters in the Android Universe: Floyd 2X3A7C (a playable character in the Android board game and also seen on the art for Successful Field Test).

Secondly, I said I liked Floyd, and the flavor text for Experiential Data just makes me so proud of him! Not only is he learning to better himself, but he is also subtly rebelling against his programming.

Thirdly, I like the way the flavor text ties into the mechanics of the card. Most of your bioroids in the game are ICE, and this card makes your bioroid ICE stronger. This makes sense, experience has made Eli better at their job so they are harder to get past with breakers. But experience also humanized Floyd, and it can humanize your bioroid ICE too. If you have Experiential Data down, it becomes more enticing for the runner to just talk to your bioroids and hug it out (aka breaking with clicks).

Thankfully, a card doesn't have to actually be legal for tournament play just for you to read and appreciate its flavor text, and the flavor text on this card is by far the strongest and most fun part of the card.

PAD Factory is a card I've had a lot of fun with and has gotten slightly better since they printed Mass Commercialization. The card has three possible benefits:

1. It's an economy piece

Advancing cards is expensive, time consuming work. PAD Factory lets you ignore the expensive part (but not the time consuming part) by letting you put advancement tokens on cards for free. If your deck is interested in advancing a lot of cards (or one card a lot of times), PAD Factory can save you money.

I don't think this is really enough justification to play PAD Factory on its own. PAD Factory is two to rez, so it doesn't actually start making you money until you click it a few times. That's not terrible, but you could probably make more money if you had just played something like a Marilyn Campaign instead.

2. It enables advancing cards that can't normally be advanced related shenangians

PAD Factory doesn't care about whether cards give you permission to advance them. You can advance a Tollbooth. You can advance Beth Kilrain-Chang. You can even advance PAD Factory.

Functionally, this means two things. One, PAD Factory can enable Trick of Light plays in situations you might be having trouble finding cards to advance. Two, you can set up a really bonkers Mass Commercialization. Advance your cards. Advance the runner's cards. Advance everything. When you finally play Mass Commercialization, you might be gaining 10 or 20 credits. And each subsequent Mass Commercialization gives you that same benefit without the additional upkeep.

Taking off a bunch of turns to sprinkle do nothing advancement tokens on runner cards is a pretty good way to get out-tempo'd and lose a game of Netrunner. If taking off those turns lets you set yourself up economically for the rest of the game, it may be justifiable. It's certainly fun to click for 20 .

3. It enables mind games

This is a bit silly, but between the ability to advance non-advanceable things, and the restriction that you can't score a card in the same turn you advanced it with PAD Factory (be sure to remind the runner that you aren't allowed to score their Beth Kilrain-Chang the same turn you advance her; it's a good joke), PAD Factory lets you try out silly bluffs:

• Play Beale or No Beale.
• Put a Snare! in a scoring remote and pretend it is the winning agenda. Feel wistful that Edge of World rotated.
• Advance a card the runner is assuming is a trap and remind them that, yes, you probably would have just scored it if it was an agenda, but because you advanced it with PAD Factory, it could still be an agenda, you see. Better check it? When they remind you you could have just advanced the card normally and scored it if you wanted to so they aren't falling for your trap, grumble and advance their Beth some more.

~~~

I love PAD Factory. Incidentally, I love Tennin Institute too, because it enables the same shenanigans than PAD Factory does. Unfortunately, even though they enable the same strategy, it's really hard to fit them in the same deck:

• Sparing two influence for PAD Factory is a really hard sell when you probably want to spend a lot of your influence on Weyland advanceable ICE.
• Tennin is pretty unenthused about PAD Campaign, as they generally don't want a bunch of undefended remotes to give the runner the option to blank the Tennin ability for a turn, and they certainly don't want to waste a bunch of ice protecting PAD Campaigns. Including 3 cards you don't want in your deck just to satisfy the alliance requirement for PAD Factory is similarly unexciting.

If you come up with a solid PAD Factory Tennin deck, hit me up because that sounds incredible.

The last reviews for this card were in mid-2015 and they politely said "hey, maybe you could consider playing this card in a few lists, but this card is kiiiiinda garbage." And that is still sort of true, but Predictive Algorithm got a gigantic boost in last 2015: Data and Destiny dropped, and New Angeles Sol: Your News got printed.

Chances are, if you've ever given New Angeles Sol any serious thought, you've already poured over the list of all corp currents and given Predictive Algorithm a good thinking through. Predictive Algorithm is comically more impactful in a Sol deck than it is in any other deck. When you play Sol, Predictive Algorithm just doesn't go away. Whereas Predictive Algorithm used to just tax the runner for 2 once, now for the rest of the game, if the runner wants to steal an agenda, it's going to cost 2.

There's a lot of shenanigans you can get into with this. Combine Predictive Algorithm with Red Herrings and it is possible the runner just doesn't have the money to take your agenda. Red Herrings generally isn't reliable enough to be a solid defensive upgrade, but Predictive Algorithm makes it a lot more viable. Additionally, NBN has a handful of agendas that do something nice for you whenever the runner accesses them, like Explode-a-palooza, TGTBT, and Award Bait. Predictive Algorith helps you put the runner in situations where they might access agenda and yet be unable to take it, letting you get 5 off your Explode-a-palooza without giving up agenda points. Neat trick. Just hope they don't have Film Critic.

Unfortunately, even thought Predictive Algorithm got a huge power boost, it STILL isn't making it into a lot of decks. The reason: Targeted Marketing. Targeted Marketing costs the same, but can potentially slow the runner down even more than Predictive Algorithm. It's a great situation: either the runner gives you a bunch of money to rez all your stuff and play all your operations, or you've disrupted their strategy. Predictive Algorithm, while a nice bonus, seems not to be as good.

With Temüjin Contract, runner economies are kind of bananas right now. Predictive Algorithm is probably ESPECIALLY not great right now. But it's still a decent effect.

• Consider it if you need a few extra currents for your Sol deck.

• Consider it if you want to slot some Red Herrings to combat Rumor Mill.

• Consider it if Targeted Marketing is too hard to play because it makes you make choices and choices are hard.

This is a powerful effect. The game is built on the premise that your deck has a finite lifespan: eventually you will run out of cards to draw. Of course, you could play with a 100 card deck, but if you do that, your deck is going to be wildly inconsistent. Levy allows you to double your deck's lifespan while letting you still play with a deck that is regular sized.

It feels nice to have a Levy in your deck. Did a card you really like get trashed? Are you worried you are going to run out of cards? Would you like to see those nice events you played again? Don't worry about it. Levy will come to the rescue. It feels good. It feels safe.

But sometimes, in deck construction, it is important to ask yourself how much work Levy is actually doing for you. Sometimes it is very important:

• If you are playing MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock, not playing a Levy seems like suicide. You are going to be flying through your deck, and if you don't play Levy, you are going to run out of steam really fast! It's very important.
• If you are playing Armand "Geist" Walker: Tech Lord, you are probably churning through your deck too, and Levy lets you put all those trashable cards you lovingly included back in your deck so you can trash them again. That's fantastic.
• If you are playing Prepaid Kate and your deck is full of events that give you money, after you Levy your deck is hyper-efficient: you've installed most of your programs and hardware, every card you draw is a powerful weapon.

But sometimes, cutting Levy only helps the deck:

• If you are playing Apex: Invasive Predator, you are likely plodding through your deck, slowly and steadily, maybe with a Chop Bot 3000. Are you really drawing so many cards that you need a double sized deck? Influence is tight! Cut the Levy.
• If you are playing some Dyper deck that combos Hyperdriver, False Echo, and DDoS for some giant turn where you destroy the corp with Keyhole if you draw through your entire deck, you will have drawn all the cards you need to win the game. Why would you need to draw through your deck a second time? This is a wasted card slot!
• When you are playing most Criminals, Levy is very tempting because it is hard to get your icebreakers back if something unfortunate happens to them. There aren't any good in faction ways to do that. But it's three influence for Levy, and often it will be completely useless. If you are worried about losing your icebreakers, you could just include an extra copy of your icebreakers.

And you can compound your Levy problems even worse if you want to feel really safe... maybe you play a copy of Same Old Thing even though your deck doesn't especially care about repeating events, just to make sure you keep your ability to play Levy. Maybe you never play that copy of Déjà Vu you drew because you want to save it to get back Levy. That's bad!

When Levy is just a security blanket, and it isn't part of a definite plan, it's important to cut it to make your deck better. Thankfully, it is easy to tell if you should cut it. Play your decks a few times, and ask yourself:

• Did I draw Levy? If I did, did I ever want to play it?
• If I didn't draw Levy, would I have wanted to play it if I drew it?

If the answer is usually no, cut it! Levy is a very good card, but it is important to know when it isn't.

Also, if you are looking for a specific solution to decks that are trying to run you out of cards, you'll probably be better off with a more dedicated card like Feedback Filter or Net Shield.

This card is extremely elegant from a flavor perspective. It works on a few levels:

Level 1: It's a chess thing! Reina has a chess theme! Perfect.

Level 2: En passant is French for "in passing". So of course it works on passed ICE.

Level 3: En passant is a special chess move that allows you to capture a pawn. It gets a piece off the board. This card gets an ICE off the board.

Level 4: Pawns usually plod forth one space at a time (just like the program of the same name). But they have a special ability where the first time they move, they can move forward two paces. Without the en passant rule, this would allow a pawn to avoid an interaction with an opposing pawn. Even though the pawn moved two, the en passant rule lets the opponent capure the pawn as if it moved one.

For clarification, there's a nice animation showing a white pawn capturing a black pawn here.

What does this have to do with the mechanics of Android: Netrunner? I will tell you. When a runner approaches a piece of ICE, the corp has the choice to rez it, and have the runner encounter it, or not rez it, and then the runner does not encounter it. Not rezzing it is avoiding confrontation.

En Passant, the card, allows the runner to interact with an opposing card after the corp opted to avoid a confrontation.

I am excited for what this means for future Reina cards. Very happy with Queen's Gambit. More chess terminology to follow? Will we see Castling? Forks? Pins? Fischerandom?!

If we do, think of me, because I will be excited.