It's somewhat strange to see an ID with no review, now nearly nine months after its release. Interestingly enough, "somewhat strange" may be the perfect way to describe Mr Pessoa, affectionately known as Seb by the community. While Shapers were clearly the big winners of the Liberation cycle (looking at you Trick Shot), I'd say Anarchs have had it pretty good too, Strike Fund and The Price have quickly become staples across a wide range of trash me Anarch decks, Solidarity Badge sees a solid amount of play even outside of tag me decks as a card draw engine for Imp decks. Audrey v2 is a potent AI breaker seeing a lot of new play as what is perhaps a more balanced "near-print" of Faust, Banner has applications in both Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist decks and breakless Mercury: Chrome Libertador decks. Even out of faction, Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra is a staple of Deep Dive shaper decks and Monkeywrench sees some play in Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist. And of course, we cannot talk about Liberation Anarchs without mentioning Arruaceiras Crew which has brought ICE destruction back with a vengeance, arguably being one of the most versatile and easy-to-use ICE destruction tools yet.
Seb however is not exactly the most promising Anarch card in Liberation, which is always somewhat odd as "his toys" see more play in other hands than his own. But why, what makes Seb so hard to utilize?
Well, let's start with what he does, whenever you take a tag, you can install a connection resource paying two credits less. Because removing a tag requires a click and 2 credits, even if we assume you have a connection resource that costs 2 or more that you want to install in your hand whenever you take a tag, that still means that you only really break even from taking a tag, since you save yourself a click and two credits on the install and spend a click and 2 credits removing the tag. Which... is kinda pointless.
Normally that would lead us down the obvious road of tag-me Anarchs; if you never need to remove the tags, the install is pure profit, then, rely purely on programs, hardware and events so that there is nothing for the corporation to trash, go all out with Counter Surveillance or both.
Unfortunately for Seb, his text specifies, that whenever you take a tag "if you had no tags" ... and some of his associated cards like Privileged Access or Eye for an Eye share similar text, which means that tag me is out of the question for Seb, to utilize him to the fullest you have to continually take and remove tags, kind of bobbing and weaving in and out of the spotlight. Once again, this means he functionally has no profit margin, you gain the equivalent of a click and 2 credits on the proviso that you will spend a click and 2 credits, it's power neutral, and it might as well not even exist in isolation.
To get value from Seb, therefore, you need to play cards that treat a tag as a drawback paired with an otherwise powerful effect, Rogue Trading and Hot Pursuit are notable examples on top of his aforementioned cards released in the same cycle like Crew, Privileged Acess or Eru Ayase-Pessoa. By cancelling out the downside of the tag, you can improve the underlying value proposition of any cards that otherwise treat taking a tag as a cost.
The second application is to get more value from cards like Valentina Ferreira Carvalho, normally an extremely niche tech against tag flooding from Oppo Research, Valentina improves the value proposition of any tag combo. Now, you can take a tag, install a connection paying 2 less, ultimately saving you a click and two credits and then only have to spend a net of one click and 1 credit to remove the tag, letting you not only cancel out the bad effect of taking a tag from a card like Eru or Rogue Trading, but actually profiting you a single credit from the combo.
The other strategy, what I like to call "Spicy Seb" involves floating a tag for a single turn, then utilizing Solidarity Badge and Amanuensis to clicklessly remove the tag and clicklessly draw two cards, which is incredible value. This strategy utilizes Seb's secondary ability, as well as effects like Manuel to disincentive the corporation from trashing your precious connection resources during that turn. However, the corporation still has the opportunity to trash non-connection resources and even critical connection resources they feel are worth the sacrifice and it enables other tag punishment. This strategy gives Seb far more value from tags at the expense of a far more polarizing match-up spread, particularly against NBN and Weyland who are the most likely to be packing tag punishment of their own. However even HB and Jinteki have cards like Greasing the Palm, Hypoxia or Mindscaping, all of which enable some scary tools like damage and fast-advance. As such, this strategy is not for the faint of heart, nor would I recommend it to beginners learning the game as it can be incredibly punishing if misplayed.
The biggest problem from here is arguably a lack of good combo targets, as there is a limited number of connection resources, let alone connection resources that cost 2 or more, let alone in faction ones. Additionally, getting the right hand-states where you can install a connection whenever you want to take a tag and take a tag whenever you want to install a connection resource can be unreliable at best and can make it hard to continually generate value from his ability.
That being said, I want to quickly run through some good ways to combo with Seb to give you some deckbuilding ideas, I'll mostly focus on cards released in the same cycle as Seb to avoid referencing cards about to rotate, and I cannot predict what future card combos will arise as new cards are released:
Eru + Manuel is a neat way to repeatedly get a Maker’s Eye worth of value off of an Archives run while simultaneously triggering Seb's ability to offset the cost of taking the tag, plus you can even use Seb's ability to install Manuel mid-run, giving you a tempo-positive way to pressure the corp and get lots of accesses
Valentina is practically a must-include as she makes every tag combo better. By giving you a credit whenever you remove a tag instead of technically making removing tags cheaper, she also synergizes with all sorts of "non-basic-action" ways of removing tags like Friend of Friend, Bahia, Hannah or Solidarity Badge if you want to go down that pathway as well as out-of-faction and out-of-cycle cards like No Free Lunch or Flip Switch if you prefer
Friend of a Friend is a great way to smooth the inconsistency of his deck, it's an in-faction 2+ cost connection resource and it's not unique like many connection resources are, which makes it the perfect target for Seb's ability, not only that but it can either remove a tag or give you a tag for greater gains, which means it's always useful, whether you are installing it off of taking a tag from another source, removing a tag in a credit positive way or taking a tag to install another connection, this card does it all and bridges a lot of the shortfalls of Seb decks, I'd highly recommend including 3 copies and I would probably include 6 if I could
Privileged Access gets you value from the tag in addition to the recursion, allowing you to quickly build and rebuild board state by installing connections from your hand and archives at the same time, as well as potentially grabbing a lost program, notably, by making recursion cheap, you also further disincentive the corp trashing your connections in the first place, which adds an extra layer of protection on top of Seb's ability, alternatively it can just be a good way to grab a card lost to self-trashing like The Price as well as other out of cycle cards like Moshing or Labor Rights or Isolation. Worst case scenario you can just grab an already used Friend of a Friend for even more econ
Somewhat interestingly a disproportionate number of Seb's associated cards have Threat 3 triggers, while the Threat N mechanic, in general, is a new addition to Netrunner introduced in the Liberation Cycle, Seb arguably has more than most, Shaper's have Pressure Spike but that doesn't trigger till Threat 4 (quite late in the game) and isn't a staple in Arissana decklists while Living Mural sees arguably even less play. Criminals have S-Dobrado, which is potent as well as Debbie "Downtown" Moreira but Malandragem sees little play and Jeitinho's Threat effect is not the main draw while Shibboleth gets actively weaker.
Perhaps more than any other runner, Seb cares about the Threat level for a large number of his most important cards, and I would highly recommend keeping an eye on that as your deck can switch into overdrive after just a single 3-point steal.
Less notably:
Hannah can be used to remove a tag and can incidentally give you a tag, but you only take a tag on an unsuccessful run, which isn't reliable and trashing her just to remove a tag and gain a click isn't her peak potential, Shaper decks tend to use her as a tech against asset spam to make guaranteed runs on unprotected remote servers and then either use her secondary ability on Deep Dive turns to access multiple agendas or use it to save themselves from False Lead + Oppo Research kill combos. I'm not saying you shouldn't include Hannah, but don't expect her just to be another Friend of a Friend, her potential applications are very different and more complex.
Arruaceiras Crew is a potent and scary card to many corporations, but once again, IDs like Freedom Khumalo: Crypto-Anarchist or Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist can often do better with it than Seb and use other forms of strength shredding like Devil Charm or Leech while rarely using Crew's own strength shredding effect. I'm not saying you can't build a Crew Seb deck but if you like Crew and aren't really sold on Seb I'd refer you to either of those other two IDs
Bahia Bands can also give you a click-compressed way to remove tags and make a run, in addition to one of the other effects like installing another card, drawing some cards or making trashing cheaper, however, it is worth noting that since successful run triggers resolve before accessing cards, there is some inherent anti-synergy with Manuel, so be aware of that, since this is a run event it also cannot be used at the same time as Eru's ability
Eye for an Eye is an interesting multiaccess tool that blends Jailbreak and Carnivore, giving you multiaccess and unconditional trashing, anecdotally it sees very little play, even in Seb decks and it's worth noting that both Jailbreak and Carnivore see very little play either. Perhaps once Imp rotates with Dawn, Eye for an Eye will be reappraised as a tool with which to trash cards you otherwise couldn't like Operations, ICE or nasty defensive Agendas. As with all self-trashing it's best used on spare copies of unique cards, techs not needed in the current match-up and intentional trashables like the new Strike Fund. It also synergizes nicely with Manuel, to let you access a total of 3 cards from HQ, a kind of make-your-own Legwork, which together with Eru can give you respectable pressure on all three central servers.
TLDR: A fascinating ID that does something new in the tag me space, having an almost rhythmic pattern of taking and removing tags to maximise value instead of simply taking as many tags as possible with reckless abandon like Anarchs historically might have. That being said, he has struggled so far to make a real impact on the meta, and I'd really only recommend him to those interested in the unique playstyle as he's probably not the most competitive.