Blockade Runner

Blockade Runner 1[credit]

Resource: Connection
Influence: 1

[click],[click]: Draw 3 cards. Shuffle 1 card from your grip into your stack.

"I used to run stims, simsensies, the usual. I was scum. Now I run water. I'm a fragging hero."
Illustrated by Chris Peuler
Decklists with this card

Intervention (in)

#65 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Intervention
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

WOW WHAT A GOOD CARD.

"Now Gerrark," you are surely saying to yourself, "You must be joking. You're paying two clicks for two cards, so you're not getting ahead at all. In fact, if you count the original credit and click from installing this card, you literally cannot come out ahead efficiency-wise with this card."

All true, I'll admit. But this card is not about efficiency. It's about flexibility.

More than anyone else, Crims are reliant on their events. Account Siphon, Inside Job, High-Stakes Job, Drive By, Legwork, and so forth. These events are all extremely powerful, and are absolutely worth the one time usage. But they all have a major drawback: what if you can't use them right now? What if the corp has 1 cred, making an Account Siphon pointless, or no unrezzed ice, making High-Stakes Job impossible to use? These aren't hardware or programs, that, if worse comes to worse, you can just plop them on the table and let your opponent know what's coming. Events are use it or lose it. Which is where this card comes in.

Got an Account Siphon that you can't use right now? Shuffle it back in! Got an Inside Job but no servers worth running? Shuffle it back in! Just drew a Rumor Mill and you know it'll be ages before it's needed, if at all? Shuffle it back in! No longer will Runners have to fear that their event based econ or running game plan will end in their hand getting clogged up with a bunch of cards that are extremely powerful, but just can't do anything at this exact moment. In fact, say you're down to your last five cards or so in your deck; with Blockade Runner, your stack is almost like a second grip for you!

At 1 cred and 1 influence, this card can easily make an appearance in Shaper, Anarch, or mini faction decks that use a lot of events. Which isn't to say that I think this card will see a lot of use, even in Criminal. I'm guessing that it won't, because as strong as events are, a ton of decks don't rely on them to the point where a card like this is all that necessary. Still, if you've got a crapton of events and often find yourself with three in hand and nothing to do with them, go ahead and slot this card. It'll help.

(Intervention era)
197
Completely agree. Can't wait to use this with Ken. —
love this with any of the 40 card runners. I have found it enables me to find the pieces I need for most matchups incredibly quickly whilst shoving the stuff I don't need back into my stack for later ... and it is so cheap, it can be an opening hand card, which Mr Li isn't —

Pros: Cheap to install Splashable at 1 influence Card filtering.

Cons: For a bigger up front investment, you can have the various Shaper options for efficient clicks. No actual raw card advantage over basic clicking.

You know who would really like to draw cards AND wouldn't mind shuffling some of them back into their library?

Kabonesa Wu: Netspace Thrillseeker

When your entire deck is your grip, you actually WANT to shuffle 1-of toolbox cards back in while drawing your economy/SMCs/Scavenges/utility events.

Whether the tempo friendly nature of this card is enough to make up for the opportunity cost of just having the in-faction Professional Contacts or Laguna Velasco District remains to be seen. But since any Wu deck will obviously be using Magnum Opus for raw money (since you can have Opus installed turn one in 100% of games if you want), going for pure card draw/selection seems like a good compliment. And the influence cost is right. Excited to try this out.

(Down the White Nile era)
619
For one more influence Mr. Li is also an option. —
Nice catch! I think this will be a real solid include in a Kabonesa deck. —
But I'm not sure Magnum is necessarily the best option for Kabonesa, since it'll just get trashed at the end of the turn. —
removed from game, not trashed^ —
3x Scavenge is a must for Kabonesa. And it has utility with cards like Lady, Femme and Imp, so its rarely a dead card! —
@quailman2101 As far as I can think it through, you have 3 options to have Magnum permanently installed turn 1 with Kabonesa: 1) Draw and install the old fashioned way; 2) Draw a Scavenge, use her ID ability to install and then Scavenge to make it permanent; 3) use the ID to tutor an SMC, use the SMC to tutor Magnum. —
Right, you can definitely make it work. I just meant that it isn't an auto include as suggested. The SMC tutor would probably be ideal though! —
Blockade Runner works well for Kabonesa when shuffling Chameleons back into her stack, because then she can use her ability to re-install them at a discount. —

Both of the other reviews are spot on for this card. It provides draw utility which is something criminals don't have much of in faction, and is something criminal decks desperately need to be aggressive. Most people either go with Mr. Li or Earthrise Hotel/ Career Fair to get the job done. Now we have another option in factoin!

Going beyond that, I think the most important aspect of this card (which also applies to Mr. Li) is that it's a connection and can be tutored and installed with Hostage. This means you can save deck slots by only running one blockade runner, and still have a good chance of getting it installed early game.

The nice thing about that strategy is that the deck slots opened up by it can be spent on other good one off (cheap) connections, like Kati Jones, Film Critic, John Masanori or even Political Operative. That gives you some really nice flexibility, draw a hostage early and you can pick which connection to bring onto the field with out putting duplicates into your deck. In most cases you'll go with Blockade Runner or Mr. Li to accelerate your game play, but if your in need of some cash early Kati Jones is right around the corner.

As a closing thought, Mr. Li and Kati Jones are both rotating out of tournament play in the near future. (The end of the Red Sand data pack cycle) Which is probably why Blockade Runner is getting printed in the first place. Fingers crossed they print a replacement for Kati Jones as with out her running hostage is less appealing.

Tri-maf Contact doesn't count.

(Intervention era)
Import Beth. —
Well Hostage is rotating out too... —

I agree with Gerrark's review, but wanted to add some notes on the obvious comparison with Mr. Li.

This card is awesome! I basically see it as Mr. Li on steroids. It's 2 credits cheaper to install, and draws more at the cost of an extra click. You can loosely summarise it as a dirt-cheap Mr. Li that you have to use twice.

The biggest advantage over Mr. Li is that the card you throw back into your deck doesn't have to be one of the drawn cards. With Mr. Li it really sucks pulling two perfect cards and having to condemn one of them to the bottom of your deck. Blockade Runner lets you choose anything from your entire grip, making it much more forgiving.

However, if you compare the digging power of them per click, Mr. Li pulls 4 cards from your deck for two clicks, while Blockade Runner pulls only 3. So if you really want to steamroll through your deck to find that one perfect card, Mr. Li is probably superior, whereas Blockade Runner makes for a more flexible draw engine.

(Intervention era)
18
IMO the one influence will make this much more viable in non-crim decks. Li is just too costly for what it provides for other factions. I'm excited to give it a go. —
Blockade Runner is bad for digging. Mr. Li sends rejected card to the bottom of the deck, so you'll see 2 new cards next time you use him. Blockade Runner shuffles the deck, so you might end up seeing same cards over and over again. So what Blockade Runner really does is grip filtering, not deck filtering. —