This card looks like it's going to do a lot of work in this tag-heavy meta, but the card draw ability means he'll almost never be a dead draw in other matchups. Great addition to Criminal, along with stuff like On the Lam they're really being given a ton of tools to deal with the increasing amount of tag & kill options for Corp.
Some of the neat stuff you can do with this card:
- Hard counters Breaking News: as soon as they score it you get 2 counters, use them to clear the tags and draw up! Breaking News + Exchange/BOOM! is one of the most potent combos in the game so anything that can straight up deal with that is fantastic. However you won't get counters when 24/7 News Cycle is played, and this doesn't help against the Power Shutdown/Accelerated Diagnostics combo as you don't have a paid ability window to clear tags.
- For each agenda scored/stolen, you can clear Account Siphon tags for free and draw 2 cards without spending a click, almost like a free Lawyer Up.
- If you make an unsuccessful run with John Masanori, you can clear the tag with a counter (and get the draw you wanted anyway!)
- Clickless draw is very useful vs Jinteki decks that aim to kill you with some combo of Ronin/Bio-Ethics Association/Chairman Hiro. Getting a large amount of counters can be a bit tricky vs decks like IG that don't ever really score out, but the possibility is there.
- Hard-Hitting News becomes much less taxing. Even with only one or two counters on Aaron you have a much better chance of making it through the huge tempo hit HHN can be.
All that aside, even against a non-kill no-tag deck Aaron can still provide you with somewhere between 5-15 clickless card draws across a game for only 2 credits! Criminal is generally considered the weakest runner faction when it comes to card draw so I think Aaron will give them a great boost in speed and survivability.
(Quorum era)
I think the way the card is worded you won't get to use it for draw unless you can also remove a tag.
—
vor_lord
TGTBT gives you two cards on steal instead of a tag? That really IS too good to be true!
—
LordRandomness
@vor_lord I'm not sure that's the case, might need confirming but I think effects that can partially resolve are still able to be triggered.
—
MC729
According to this thread on Stimhack you can use this with no tag. "UPDATE: So Jake just told me it works in a PM. "Aaron Marron says "draw a card and remove a tag". Because it's an "and", it is two effects smushed together into a single effect. As long as one of those effects can cause a change in game state, then the ability as a whole has the potential to change the game state and can thus be used." @jakodrako"
—
wozzit
Blanks PE and Argus. Who the hell thought this is a good idea?
—
MrHuds0n
"As long as one of those effects can cause a change in game state, then the ability as a whole has the potential to change the game state and can thus be used." That's a really fancy way of saying 'we screwed up the wording'. All they had to say was 'and/or' instead of 'and', or, if they want to be really persnickety, add an 'if able' to each of the 2 effects. 'They could have worded the card better' is becoming the slogan FF.
—
CascadeHush
How is this card not on the MWL? He provides lots of card draw and hoses tag decks into the ground. The corp can't land a tag so it can't remove him so there's very few cards that can counter Aaron. The card pool already had lots of anti-tag tech but now they've been eclipsed by this guy.
—
DGB123