Wall of Thorns returns, with cost reduction twist, playing off Jinteki's Code Gate theme.

Wall of Thorns was of course, never a strong card, being very expensive for what it did, and ice has only gotten stronger and cheaper since the original core set.

You have to rez quite a lot of ice to bring this down to 5 credits, which is probably where this would need to reach to be "good", but realistically you want it to be even cheaper for it to really be a payoff for an ice, especially since it won't be able to pay off early.

So, this clearly wants you running a fair amount of ice, and quite a few code gates for this to work, and going that way means you probably want more taxing than gearcheck; so what's about for it? Let's see what's in Startup to go with it.

• Diviner - This ice is probably the single best code gate in these sets. Cheap, taxing, and can end the run.
• Hafrún - Comboey ice that lets you mess with what breakers the runner can use.
• Lotus Field - Oh no. Looks like there's probably just not enough code gates in startup for this to really work.

As for bigger Standard's card pool... bigger card pools also tend to mean having big good ice does less for you.

... It's not bad. But don't expect this to be some star card.

This is a good ice. I'd price fair market value for this card is around $5 and I'd guess that this will generally cost something like $5-6 when rezzed. You can reasonably slot (at least) 5 code gates in Jinteki without feeling like you're scraping the barrel. Aiki is one of the most efficient ice in the game, Thimblerig is a cheap end-the-run with positional flexibility, Mind Game is cost-effective against server-specific run cards.

It's not as good as Kakugo was, but it's still Jinteki's best option for forcing the runner to invest $4 into installing Paperclip. Alternately you might slot some combination of Ice Wall, Sandstone or Bran 1.0. Bran has more long-term efficiency than Ivaak, and it's much easier to come up with Bran's $6 to protect a turn 1 Rashida than Ivaak's $7. On the plus side, Ivaak can't be clicked through and the 2 net damage is probably a more useful early face-check than installing an ice.