Anthill (🏗️🚛) is Weyland’s “long Rashida”!

• T+0: Install it and protect with a Kessleroid. Jamming a 3[$]-to-rez asset behind a 2[$]-to-rez gearcheck is affordable even without Hedge Fund.
• T+1: +1[$], 1 card. You'll break even on rez (WRT “units of value”), but you can't have completely bankrupted yourself rezzing ice.
• T+2: +5[$], 2 cards. You'll profit more, but you'll need to protect it rezzed for a turn. CF. Nico Campaign.

Design-wise, Anthill is the first(?) “Two-Turn Asset”. Most are either:

• “One-Turn pseudo-Operations”: like Rashida, Gaslight, etc. or:
• “Three-Plus-Turn” drip/click econ: like Otto, Nico, and other Campaigns.

This “One turn face-down; One turn face-up” (first with security through obscurity, then with security through.... ice, reprisals, etc) feels dynamic. You're still ramping rapidly, but not quite as easily as with Rashida. You're still exploiting hidden-information and click-constraints (the Runner checking unrezzed remotes), but you can't just spam three of these assets uniced.

I'd love more such “Contracts”.

BTW, this was the first card spoiled in Elevation’s “neo-Rashida cycle (non-neutral, powerful, accelerated econ assets/upgrades):

• 🟢 Anthill Excavation Contract
• 🟣 Humanoid Resources
• 🔴 Jinteki already has Charlotte Caçador?
• 🟡 Maybe NBN will get the “⅔ Rashida”? (EG. [$0] → When your turn begins, you may trash this asset to gain 2[$] and draw 2 cards.).

Anthill Excavation Contract is a good economy and draw card, but it shines brightest with Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel..

In Ob Superheavy, once it self trashz it fetch a 2-cost card at the beginning of the turn. Imagine, after clicklessly getting 2 cards and 5, you can fetch The Holo Man or Regolith Mining License at the beginning of the turn! What is a lot of efficiency!

Please read D4v1d-Gr43b3r review for more on the mechanic and flavor.

Outside of Ob Superheavy, it is good for any Weyland deck, as it force the runner to either let the corp gain a lot of tempo or run the remote where it is. Making the runner spend a Pinhole Threading for this is very good also.

Out of faction, Anthill Excavation Contract is outclassed by Humanoid Resources, both of which cost the same in influence and in trash cost. But it can have its place in a glacier strategy, where you want to spend time to build the board. Especially in HB deck, where it can be played alongside Humanoid Resources.

The art is evocative of the name and the effect of the card, with a quote that ties everything together quite well. Nice design.