PGB is “PE-as-an-Asset”.

For example, he makes Fujii Asset Retrieval into When this agenda is scored or stolen, do 3–5 net damage.. (IIUC, four if the Runner steals a Fujii immediately after you rezzed him, five if you've been charging/defending him, and three if you score an agenda when he's empty.)

In comparison, a local Daniela Jorge Inácio makes Fujii into Obokata, while PGB: does an extra point of damage, triggers offensively as well as defensively, and his ceiling is a flatline (versus "just" keeping the Runner from stealing three points).

Flavor-wise, “I make the best company.” is a pun on cloning himself into servants, as well as being a corporate executive. And in Vietnamese, his name translates as “Buddha John-the-Baptist” (CF. “Jesús Juan Bautista”).

en.wiktionary.org

vi.wikipedia.org

I would be very surprised (and honestly, a bit annoyed) if this card wasn't on the next banlist. Once this card gets rezzed by the corp behind a gear check, there is practically no way for the runner to get out without, at the very least, a significant tempo-loss.

First, the Rez/Trash ratio are extremely favorable. Even in the best case scenario, where the runner has a card like the Dedicated Asset Sniper or the Remote Checker, you are still left, respectively, with a credit discrepancy of 3 to 4. For the situation where the runner has THE exact tool needed to check this threat. And they better hope to have it again the next time Phat gets installed (because of course you run 3, it's your victory condition), otherwise the results are much costlier, or much more lethal.

Let's compare, for a moment, Phat with a similar card printed recently : Djustad Grid. A few differences to make :

• Asset vs Upgrade, which makes the grid a little easier to use.
• Core damage is obviously better than net damage, but the grid is limited to one. Phat will usually deal 2-4 if unchecked, which has a much larger impact.
• Djupstad is 4/4 on Rez/Trash, which makes it require a significant investment from the corp. Phat is 1 credit cheaper to trash, 3 credits cheaper to rez.
• Djupstad is on score (on that remote). Phat is "on score or steal", anywhere. That is the most profound difference.

The reason the "on steal" part matters most is because, if a Djupstad grid is installed in a remote that you do not have the ressources to contest, the game isn't over. The corp has a massive threat, but you can pivot, and start hammering R&D in order to filter agendas, and prevent the corp from scoring. That's healthy for the game, because it means Djupstad Grid isn't a "deal with this immediately or you die" card.

Phat is very much a "deal with this immediately or you die" card. If you don't have a tech card to remove it, every other access you make becomes a potential flatline (it doesn't take many counters to flatline you on a Fuji Asset Retrieval), and any 2/1 agenda becomes the equivalent of an tagless End of the Line, if not worse.

So this is a card that, once rezzed, sets a countdown before your defeat. Once it is rezzed, you pretty much have to focus on it or lose. That's already pretty bad for the game, and that's why Keeling got banned.

But at least, when you sniped Keeling (which was expensive as hell, due to her 4 trash cost), you could at least know that the corpo invested some creds into rezzing her, and you can hope they won't pull the same trick immediately afterwards.

Phat costs 1 cred to rez. If they lose it, there is almost 0 tempo loss. If they don't lose it, then the runner flatlines is a handful of turns.

He plays hard to get, but I've been playing Phật Gioan Baotixita in BANGUN. It turns out that combining two ID abilities (Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed and Jinteki: Personal Evolution is pretty potent! PGB makes your installed agendas really, really painful to steal. If you surprise rez him, they Byte! with one counter, they're Obokata Protocols, and with 2 they're nearly deadly even with a full hand. Add in Angelique Garza Correa or other Jinteki imports like Daniela Jorge Inácio, or Anemone and it quickly becomes outright suicidal to try to steal. PGB also gives Bangun centrals a little teeth, as a consolation for not getting to fire your ID you get a little damage. Smacking the runner on a Greenmail that's trivial to score also feels really good - PGB is great at setting up catch-22s where the runner gets set back no matter what.

Except for Pinhole Threading. Yeah, PGB folds to Pinhole, played at least 1x in almost every runner deck at this point. Mahkota Langit Grid helps with this, but it still feels bad to see him trashed, especially since BANGUN can't really afford to have more than 2 copies.

tl;dr, oh no, he's hot, and he's down to bang -- BANGUN, that is.