I think a lot of reviews are missing the point of this card. This should not be viewed as a hardware tutor. That's merely a secondary effect, and quite a useful one if you use it for its primary purpose. What's its primary purpose, you ask? To trash your own console! The tutoring just lets you find the console you want to swap to.

That's right folks, in case you didn't already know, you cannot voluntarily trash your current console to install a new one in its place (without help from this or maybe Enforcer 1.0). So if you're like me, and you like to have several different consoles in your deck, and want to use one or the other depending on the situation, this is the card for you.

Love getting that Astrolabe out early, but want to ultimately swap for The Toolbox or Dinosaurus when the time comes? This will let you do it in style. Already holding your other console in hand, or hosting it on Personal Workshop? Then just tutor for whatever hardware suits your needs. Pick whatever will annoy the corp the most.

Lastly, this will probably never see play in criminal, as Doppelgänger and Desperado are essentially interchangeable, so why bother switching? It might see some play in Anarch, though this too seems far fetched. It really shines in faction—not just because it won't cost influence, but due to the fact that Shapers have all the variety when it comes to consoles. Monolith, is this finally time for your 15 Minutes of fame?

One cannot even glace at Geothermal Fracking without Hostile Takeover coming to mind. But, why play one over the other? Because the and bad pub to ratio is almost the same, does it really even much difference? Why yes, yes it does.

The most apparent difference is that Hostile Takeover can trivially be scored from your hand. As anyone playing corp knows, this is a huge deal, and makes most people opt for HT without even giving GF a second look. Additionally, sacrificing HT to rez Archer isn't a big deal, while forfeiting the 2 points from GF to do the same is certainly an act of desperation.

But, there are definitely a few places where GF outshines HT. Most notably, it's synergy with Titan Transnational cannot be overstated. Also, with the lower agenda density that GF affords, you can fit more ice to protect it or other agendas, or those oh so delicious money operations.

Of course, no one is saying that you have to use one or the other, either. Why not use both, load up on the bad pub, and then try and score a Veterans Program or play Witness Tampering at your leisure? Or just ignore removing it altogether, embrace the bad publicity that is Weyland, and laugh at all those Anarchs with Faust as you sit behind your Patched Swordsman. Both cards have their places, and they're definitely not mutually exclusive.

Minelayer is one of those cards I really want to like, but just can't. Why? Well, for starters, its is pretty damn amazing. When it fires, it saves you both the and the s that would otherwise be spent doing exactly what you want to do—ice up the server that the runner is running, to slow or stop repeated runs. But there lies the problem, as it's only when it fires.

The best card to compare this to is Architect. Still, there are a plethora of differences between the two, even if the don't fire:

• Minelayer costs half the influence of Architect out of faction.
• Architect costs significantly more to rez, a whole 3 more. This can potentially have a big impact if the runner is playing Forged Activation Orders, as it is trashed by that if not rezzed.
• Architect is a Sentry, while Minelayer is a Code Gate.
• Architect is broken by Mimic for 2 without any need for sucker tokens, while Minelayer is broken by a boosted Yog.0 for free or a Yogsucker for 1 token, or Gordian Blade for 3, unless they already boosted the Blade for other Code Gates.
• While both can be lowered by Parasite, only Minelayer can be trashed by it. Also, Minelayer is vulnerable to Spooned, while Architect is invulnerable to Forked. This plays quite a big role against ice-destruction decks, or in rare cases, a mill Noise that actually runs at some point during the game.

Either way, no runner wants to let the on either of these fire more than once, so usually they end up being more tax than anything. But what happens if the do fire? Again, a comparison with Architect:

• If we compare Architect's first to Minelayer, we can see that while it does negate install costs, it doesn't have to install ice nor is it restricted to this server, and instead of looking for things in HQ, you get to dig through the top of your R&D. This is almost always preferred for a few reasons, namely that you can see what's coming up (you cannot reorder it though), and you always get to look at 5 cards, instead of what may be less than that (and rarely more) in HQ. It also doesn't reduce your hand size when used to install, which can make that agenda in HQ that much easier to find.
• If we compare Architect's second to Minelayer, we notice that Architect trades the negated install cost for the opportunity to install from Archives, as well as losing the "ice only/this server" restriction that Minelayer has. This is huge against ice-destruction and especially mill decks, where one would gladly trade install costs for the ability to pull anything from Archives. You can also dump agendas on the table from HQ (usually assuming this fires in front of it), making those HQ Interfaces that much less important. Or grab that Marcus Batty out of Archives and let it become equal to Caprice Nisei in utility.
• Lastly, and perhaps most important, is the fact that Architect has two s, and Minelayer has only a single one. If I'm a runner and can't break either Architect or Minelayer, I'd rather run into Minelayer over Architect on a face check any day of the week.

So, while I want to like Minelayer, and it may have some very niche applications, I can't recommend it over Architect. Yes, eventually Architect will no longer be tourney legal when enough additional cycles come out, while Minelayer will be around forever, but who can say that it won't be replaced by something just as good if not better?

Freelancer is probably getting a second look now that Wireless Net Pavilion has been out for a bit. But, is it worth including in a can-tag deck even if WNP, Fall Guy, or even Paparazzi is a rarity? I'd still say yes, and here's why—economy. Yes, economy, even if they're not using WNP and FG because playing this saves you a total of one and 4.

But if WNP and FG are the exception, Account Siphon is the norm, and that's where this card really comes into its own. On more than a few occasions, I've seen runners happily float a tag or two after draining the corp of all their , figuring, "At worst they'll for twice, and then trash 1 resource, but that's not the best use of s by itself." Not so if the corp has this, and the best part is, you really only need one.

That's right, one play of this puts the fear of God into them for the rest of the game. While floating a tag against a broke corp seemed like a good idea, I'd wager any runner who sees this will definitely wait for that Lawyer Up to be in their hands before dropping another Account Siphon, and that can open up all sorts of opportunities for the corp. In particular, it can let you money up or open up a scoring window.

So, is this going to see play? Maybe, but its popularity will be proportional to Fall Guy and Wireless Net Pavilion. Those running Account Siphon and floating the tags will wise up fairly quickly, but then it has arguably its done its job without even being played. Still, I like to pack one copy in any of my tagging decks, right alongside Cyberdex Virus Suite.

Borrowed Satellite is one of those cards with a very, very narrow set of decks it works with. This is largely due to the fact that Public Sympathy and Access to Globalsec exist. For the cost of one additional card, but no additional , you get more benefit (+2 hand size from PS) from two cards that cost no influence. And in-faction, card economy is relatively trivial for Shapers, with Diesel, Quality Time, Professional Contacts, etc.

So, I don't see this ever being used outside of Shaper decks. But even there, where is it useful? Well, do you have Underworld Contact in your deck? Do you also have Personal Workshop and Stimhack in the deck? Okay, then this could probably be justified, if only in small quantities. But even there, unless you're very cramped on deck space, I still might pass it up completely in favor of Public Sympathy plus Access to Globalsec.

What's that, you have Career Fair too? Okay, finally you may have made a case, but wouldn't you really rather spend the Career Fair on something else, or drop it entirely for influence on something else? So yes, the uses for Borrowed Satellite are few and far between. While there are a few places where it may see the light of day, but it's doubtful it'll ever be in large quantity, and more often than not, just to save a slot for some other card.