Gordian Blade

Gordian Blade

Featured in many tournament winning decks, Gordian Blade is one of the most powerful breakers in the game. It has the combination that everyone loves: 1, 1 to pump, 1 to break. It's reasonably efficient for early game (e.g. Enigma), high subroutine (e.g. Merlin), and high strength (e.g. Tollbooth) Code Gates.

The Blade is not as weak as ZU.13 Key Master, not as expensive as Torch, doesn't require stealth (unlike Refractor), can be pumped to infinity (unlike Yog.0), and is not limited to a single server (unlike Cyber-Cypher). Like all great hacking tools, it is flexible, efficient, and elegant. If you are only putting one Decoder in your deck, it is a solid choice.

It is also a subtle reference to a famous Greek Legend. For those of you who are unfamilar:

Long ago, an oracle decreed that the next man to enter the Phrygian capital (modern Turkey) should become king. Gordias, a peasant, drove into town on an ox-cart, and was declared the ruler. Out of gratitude, his son dedicated the ox-cart to Zeus, and tied it to a post in the palace with an intricate knot that had no exposed ends ("GORDIAN Knot"). The cart stood unmoved for generations. It was, in fact, still there when Alexander the Great arrived. Alexander attempted to untie the knot, but could not find the ends. Instead, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword-er, wait, I mean, BLADE. Once Alexander moved the cart, an oracle further prophesied that the one to untie the knot would become king of Asia (... and win a Fantasy Flight game mat).

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Pawn

Pawn

According to the FAQ 2.2, Pawn Should read: “Whenever you make a successful run while Pawn is hosted on a piece of ice, move Pawn to the piece of ice directly after the current ice hosting Pawn, if able..."

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Surely that's implied by the "after the current ice hosting Pawn" bit? —
A straightforward (but obviously unintended) interpretation is that an unhosted Pawn fails the 'if able' check and pops a new Caïssa. —
I'm confused, why does faq version 2.2 call for this distinction? Pawn was already able to be hosted on other cards (scher) and then moved onto ice. The new faq changes the rules for other Caissa, but not pawn. If anything, the extra text you mention should have been on the card since it was introduced. —
What difference does it make which piece of ice Pawn is hosted on? The only benefit I can see is that it helps get other Caissa programs installed after a successful run. Can someone provide a review that describes how the strategy this card facilitates actually works? —

I'm responding to a 7-year-old comment here, but what the heck. The issue with the card as written, if I understand it, was that when you installed Pawn, it was unhosted. Because the "successful run" trigger as written didn't require Pawn to be hosted on a piece of ice, the ability would still trigger if Pawn was unhosted. You wouldn't be able to move Pawn to the next innermost ice, so the "if you cannot" part of the trigger would fire. You'd get the Cäissa fetch as if you'd marched Pawn all the way through your opponent's ice, but without doing the hard work. I assume the idea was your Pawn could be "promoted" to another Cäissa after reaching your opponent's side of the board (evoking pawns in chess), but the ability as written allowed you to bypass that entirely by never hosting Pawn.

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I agree with StaticSky. Pawn is installed in your rig, thus not hosted on a piece of ice. The click ability then becomes available. But if you never used that click ability, you would have to trigger the "otherwise" clause after a successful run. Thus it's a hack of sorts without the errata.

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