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.”

When this card becomes legal in Standard, these will be the available Bioroid Cards:

Ice

Ansel 1.0 (Cost 6)

Bran 1.0 Cost 6)

Hakarl 1.0 (Cost 5)

Tyr (Cost 10)

Bumi 1.0 (Cost 3)

Other than Bumi, these all probably cost a bit too much to be trashed to end the run unless it is extremely important to do so. Especially as they are probably the main protection for the server. Bumi is an interesting one as it isn’t too expensive and has a good rez effect so could definitely see use with some recycling from archives. It also pairs decently with Hakarl which is probably the only other current ice you might want to trash for the effect.

Assets

Bass CH1R180G4 (Cost 3)

Calvin B4L3Y (Cost 0)

Trieste Model Bioroids (Cost 2)

Wage Workers (Cost 2)

B-1001 (Cost 0)

Just including these for completeness really as you’re not likely to trash the thing your server is protecting to end a run on it. Calvin especially might be useful to protect an Upgrade you really don’t want trashed - shame he was made first or he could have been triggered by being trashed during a run on a server!

Upgrades

Isaac Liberdade (Cost 3)

Mercia B4LL4RD (Cost 2)

Mercia is currently the only HB Bioroid upgrade and has a decently low cost along with a fine ability. Definitely worth playing when she can be trashed for a hard ETR. Isaac is a little too expensive for a card that doesn’t do much outside of Weyland - not to mention the influence cost - but again a hard ETR is something that might be worth paying for, and his effect can be of use if some advanceable Ice are brought in too.

That is all right now. There isn’t much going for this ID at the moment outside of Mercia and Bumi, but a few more cheap Bioroids (especially upgrades) could turn it around - so one to watch in future!

Edited because I mistakenly thought B-1001 was an upgrade! Also adding in Bumi 1.0.

Second Edit to add in Mercia who is definitely good for this ID.