Looks made for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist.

Let's assume you are also playing Marrow and other core damage cards, so early in the game it's plausible that you can do 2 core damage to yourself. If you then install Begemot what does that help you do?

You can break all of these ice for 1:

• Ice Wall
• Eli 1.0
• Hagen
• Akhet
• Bran 1.0 eventually, if you can do one more core damage to yourself
• It's probably going to be too hard to break triple advanced Pharos with this at any point in the game

So, this looks like a potentially high impact card in Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist, a runner that often isn't rich in the first place. This may help a lot in the Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design matchup for instance, because you will be able to contest servers much more cheaply, for Chastushka and Light the Fire! runs.

For comparison, many runners break Eli and Hagen for 2 using Boomerang. But this requires you to draw Boomerang, and spend a click installing Boomerang. And you can only have one Boomerang installed at a time. So Begemot would save you a lot of clicks compared to that.

The card has some significant drawbacks though:

• Costs 5 to install which is pricey. Maybe you plan to Simulchip this out at the last second?
• Takes 2 MU which is a lot, and Marrow only gives you one MU. This would leave you with only one extra MU for flex. So you will have a hard time playing a lot of viruses, which is also something that many Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist want to do to take advantage of Avgustina Ivanovskaya. You can run T400 Memory Diamond but then you are spending precious money and clicks building a pretty big rig. (OTOH that also helps you sustain more core damage)

Breaking Bran cheaply is very attractive because you need to land your Chastushka's and then be able to check archives. So this definitely can help your game plan.

But, it looks like if you are playing this card you probably aren't also running a bunch of viruses. If you don't have Leech then, you probably aren't on Buzzsaw either, you probably pull in Unity and Bukhgalter. You probably need to pull in Boomerang to deal with cards like Pharos.

So this looks like an Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist that's all in on brain damage and not on Avgustina Ivanovskaya and viruses. Maybe less sabotage potential but more consistent landing of Chastushka?

Another point: If you are on Begemot then you no longer have a good reason to use Chisel + Devil Charm to blow up Bran 1.0. You can reserve that particular power tool for troublesome code gates and sentries, which will help make all the servers more porous.

This sounds like a fun version of Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist. But this is a runner that needs to breach servers to win. Without a lot of room for Fermenter and without Keiko you are going to miss out on a bunch of econ opportunities that power many contemporary Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist decks.

As corp, if I see you install this, I will likely assume you aren't on Stargate because of memory pressure. You may not even have a lot of room for Imp. That takes a lot of pressure off of me to ice up R&D, and let's me put ice everywhere else instead, which is probably a bad thing for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist.

Ultimately this will give the corp a lot of headaches. A lot of servers that are taxing for almost all other breakers will suddenly not be so taxing, and you won't really have any counterplay like you do around Botulus. And many alternative ways to make taxing servers, like Manegarm Skunkworks and Anoetic Void, will get blown up by Light the Fire!. (NEXT Activation Command might still help you score though.)

So, everyone will splash Gold Farmer now?