It's somewhat strange to see an ID with no review, now nearly nine months after its release. Interestingly enough, "somewhat strange" may be the perfect way to describe Mr Pessoa, affectionately known as Seb by the community. While Shapers were clearly the big winners of the Liberation cycle (looking at you Trick Shot), I'd say Anarchs have had it pretty good too, Strike Fund and The Price have quickly become staples across a wide range of trash me Anarch decks, Solidarity Badge sees a solid amount of play even outside of tag me decks as a card draw engine for Imp decks. Audrey v2 is a potent AI breaker seeing a lot of new play as what is perhaps a more balanced "near-print" of Faust, Banner has applications in both Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist decks and breakless Mercury: Chrome Libertador decks. Even out of faction, Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra is a staple of Deep Dive shaper decks and Monkeywrench sees some play in Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist. And of course, we cannot talk about Liberation Anarchs without mentioning Arruaceiras Crew which has brought ICE destruction back with a vengeance, arguably being one of the most versatile and easy-to-use ICE destruction tools yet.

Seb however is not exactly the most promising Anarch card in Liberation, which is always somewhat odd as "his toys" see more play in other hands than his own. But why, what makes Seb so hard to utilize?

Well, let's start with what he does, whenever you take a tag, you can install a connection resource paying two credits less. Because removing a tag requires a click and 2 credits, even if we assume you have a connection resource that costs 2 or more that you want to install in your hand whenever you take a tag, that still means that you only really break even from taking a tag, since you save yourself a click and two credits on the install and spend a click and 2 credits removing the tag. Which... is kinda pointless.

Normally that would lead us down the obvious road of tag-me Anarchs; if you never need to remove the tags, the install is pure profit, then, rely purely on programs, hardware and events so that there is nothing for the corporation to trash, go all out with Counter Surveillance or both.

Unfortunately for Seb, his text specifies, that whenever you take a tag "if you had no tags" ... and some of his associated cards like Privileged Access or Eye for an Eye share similar text, which means that tag me is out of the question for Seb, to utilize him to the fullest you have to continually take and remove tags, kind of bobbing and weaving in and out of the spotlight. Once again, this means he functionally has no profit margin, you gain the equivalent of a click and 2 credits on the proviso that you will spend a click and 2 credits, it's power neutral, and it might as well not even exist in isolation.

To get value from Seb, therefore, you need to play cards that treat a tag as a drawback paired with an otherwise powerful effect, Rogue Trading and Hot Pursuit are notable examples on top of his aforementioned cards released in the same cycle like Crew, Privileged Acess or Eru Ayase-Pessoa. By cancelling out the downside of the tag, you can improve the underlying value proposition of any cards that otherwise treat taking a tag as a cost.

The second application is to get more value from cards like Valentina Ferreira Carvalho, normally an extremely niche tech against tag flooding from Oppo Research, Valentina improves the value proposition of any tag combo. Now, you can take a tag, install a connection paying 2 less, ultimately saving you a click and two credits and then only have to spend a net of one click and 1 credit to remove the tag, letting you not only cancel out the bad effect of taking a tag from a card like Eru or Rogue Trading, but actually profiting you a single credit from the combo.

The other strategy, what I like to call "Spicy Seb" involves floating a tag for a single turn, then utilizing Solidarity Badge and Amanuensis to clicklessly remove the tag and clicklessly draw two cards, which is incredible value. This strategy utilizes Seb's secondary ability, as well as effects like Manuel to disincentive the corporation from trashing your precious connection resources during that turn. However, the corporation still has the opportunity to trash non-connection resources and even critical connection resources they feel are worth the sacrifice and it enables other tag punishment. This strategy gives Seb far more value from tags at the expense of a far more polarizing match-up spread, particularly against NBN and Weyland who are the most likely to be packing tag punishment of their own. However even HB and Jinteki have cards like Greasing the Palm, Hypoxia or Mindscaping, all of which enable some scary tools like damage and fast-advance. As such, this strategy is not for the faint of heart, nor would I recommend it to beginners learning the game as it can be incredibly punishing if misplayed.

The biggest problem from here is arguably a lack of good combo targets, as there is a limited number of connection resources, let alone connection resources that cost 2 or more, let alone in faction ones. Additionally, getting the right hand-states where you can install a connection whenever you want to take a tag and take a tag whenever you want to install a connection resource can be unreliable at best and can make it hard to continually generate value from his ability.

That being said, I want to quickly run through some good ways to combo with Seb to give you some deckbuilding ideas, I'll mostly focus on cards released in the same cycle as Seb to avoid referencing cards about to rotate, and I cannot predict what future card combos will arise as new cards are released:

• Eru + Manuel is a neat way to repeatedly get a Maker’s Eye worth of value off of an Archives run while simultaneously triggering Seb's ability to offset the cost of taking the tag, plus you can even use Seb's ability to install Manuel mid-run, giving you a tempo-positive way to pressure the corp and get lots of accesses

• Valentina is practically a must-include as she makes every tag combo better. By giving you a credit whenever you remove a tag instead of technically making removing tags cheaper, she also synergizes with all sorts of "non-basic-action" ways of removing tags like Friend of Friend, Bahia, Hannah or Solidarity Badge if you want to go down that pathway as well as out-of-faction and out-of-cycle cards like No Free Lunch or Flip Switch if you prefer

• Friend of a Friend is a great way to smooth the inconsistency of his deck, it's an in-faction 2+ cost connection resource and it's not unique like many connection resources are, which makes it the perfect target for Seb's ability, not only that but it can either remove a tag or give you a tag for greater gains, which means it's always useful, whether you are installing it off of taking a tag from another source, removing a tag in a credit positive way or taking a tag to install another connection, this card does it all and bridges a lot of the shortfalls of Seb decks, I'd highly recommend including 3 copies and I would probably include 6 if I could

• Privileged Access gets you value from the tag in addition to the recursion, allowing you to quickly build and rebuild board state by installing connections from your hand and archives at the same time, as well as potentially grabbing a lost program, notably, by making recursion cheap, you also further disincentive the corp trashing your connections in the first place, which adds an extra layer of protection on top of Seb's ability, alternatively it can just be a good way to grab a card lost to self-trashing like The Price as well as other out of cycle cards like Moshing or Labor Rights or Isolation. Worst case scenario you can just grab an already used Friend of a Friend for even more econ

Somewhat interestingly a disproportionate number of Seb's associated cards have Threat 3 triggers, while the Threat N mechanic, in general, is a new addition to Netrunner introduced in the Liberation Cycle, Seb arguably has more than most, Shaper's have Pressure Spike but that doesn't trigger till Threat 4 (quite late in the game) and isn't a staple in Arissana decklists while Living Mural sees arguably even less play. Criminals have S-Dobrado, which is potent as well as Debbie "Downtown" Moreira but Malandragem sees little play and Jeitinho's Threat effect is not the main draw while Shibboleth gets actively weaker.

Perhaps more than any other runner, Seb cares about the Threat level for a large number of his most important cards, and I would highly recommend keeping an eye on that as your deck can switch into overdrive after just a single 3-point steal.

Less notably:

• Hannah can be used to remove a tag and can incidentally give you a tag, but you only take a tag on an unsuccessful run, which isn't reliable and trashing her just to remove a tag and gain a click isn't her peak potential, Shaper decks tend to use her as a tech against asset spam to make guaranteed runs on unprotected remote servers and then either use her secondary ability on Deep Dive turns to access multiple agendas or use it to save themselves from False Lead + Oppo Research kill combos. I'm not saying you shouldn't include Hannah, but don't expect her just to be another Friend of a Friend, her potential applications are very different and more complex.

• Arruaceiras Crew is a potent and scary card to many corporations, but once again, IDs like Freedom Khumalo: Crypto-Anarchist or Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist can often do better with it than Seb and use other forms of strength shredding like Devil Charm or Leech while rarely using Crew's own strength shredding effect. I'm not saying you can't build a Crew Seb deck but if you like Crew and aren't really sold on Seb I'd refer you to either of those other two IDs

• Bahia Bands can also give you a click-compressed way to remove tags and make a run, in addition to one of the other effects like installing another card, drawing some cards or making trashing cheaper, however, it is worth noting that since successful run triggers resolve before accessing cards, there is some inherent anti-synergy with Manuel, so be aware of that, since this is a run event it also cannot be used at the same time as Eru's ability

• Eye for an Eye is an interesting multiaccess tool that blends Jailbreak and Carnivore, giving you multiaccess and unconditional trashing, anecdotally it sees very little play, even in Seb decks and it's worth noting that both Jailbreak and Carnivore see very little play either. Perhaps once Imp rotates with Dawn, Eye for an Eye will be reappraised as a tool with which to trash cards you otherwise couldn't like Operations, ICE or nasty defensive Agendas. As with all self-trashing it's best used on spare copies of unique cards, techs not needed in the current match-up and intentional trashables like the new Strike Fund. It also synergizes nicely with Manuel, to let you access a total of 3 cards from HQ, a kind of make-your-own Legwork, which together with Eru can give you respectable pressure on all three central servers.

TLDR: A fascinating ID that does something new in the tag me space, having an almost rhythmic pattern of taking and removing tags to maximise value instead of simply taking as many tags as possible with reckless abandon like Anarchs historically might have. That being said, he has struggled so far to make a real impact on the meta, and I'd really only recommend him to those interested in the unique playstyle as he's probably not the most competitive.

This card struggles to find a place in the meta and probably isn't very good.

Let me explain, when you account for the draw, one click to install and a rez cost of 2 credits you realistically need to make 4 credits from this card to break even, 6 credits gives you a meagre profit, the same margins as Hedge Fund but since hedge fund is substantially quicker and easier to play, and is normally untrashable, it's not a fair comparison. What would be a fair comparison is Regolith Mining License, which is also a trashable asset that needs to be left on the table to provide you credits and which nets you 8 credits (15 - 2 for the install - 5 for the clicks used to harvest the credits). That means I'd be looking to generate at least 10 credits from this card for it to be equivalent to Regolith and for me to consider including it.

That means hyper-glacial, not just regular old glacial but real, honest-to-goodness hyper-glacial. To get value from this card you need to install it relatively early on in the game (which means you probably need to include 3 copies for consistency, otherwise you'll either end up rezzing ICE with no Cybersand installed or be forced to hold off rezzing ICE while waiting to draw into your Cybersand), then you need to rez at least 5-6 pieces of ICE per Cybersand, which means a deck that has 15+ pieces of ICE, otherwise the spare Cybersand's are dead draws. Except, the Cybersand credits can only be used to pay install costs, not rez costs, which means that you also need multiple other sources of credits to pay the rez costs of the ICE to charge up the Cybersand.

Not only that, but you need to protect the Cybersands, which probably means putting one in your scoring remote while you are still getting set up and before you are ready to score. Alternatively, you could try putting 2 Cybersands on the table at the same time to generate twice the value per rez, but at that point you either need two ICE'd remote servers or some alternate way to protect them, such as a Front Company or the looming threat of Oppo Research. Don't get me wrong, 4 credits is a lot to trash, but if the runner knows they'll be denying you 8-10 credits down the line, they're probably happy to make that trade-off.

At this point I'm envisioning some kind of monstrous 54-card Weyland hyper-glacier deck, running 20 pieces of ICE building 5 ICE deep servers, using Hedge Funds, Government Subsidies, Armed Asset Protections, Regolith Mining Licenses and still needing more money...

Now, I'm not saying these kinds of decks don't exist... they do, it's just that's not the meta, like... really not the meta. The meta is a broad mixture of jammy HB, asset spam R+, shell game/tempo-based PE and a pinch of glacial in the form of AgInfusion and BTL. Aginfusion likes destroying its ICE almost as much as it likes rezzing it and tight, efficient 44-card BTL probably struggles to find slots for this kind of card.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't play this card, if you enjoy 54-card hyper-glacial Nuvem then this card is an option and I'm glad that option exists but I'd only really recommend using it if you've exhausted all other econ options and still find yourself needing more money.

Alternatively, A Teia: IP Recovery might be able to protect 2 Cybersands at once and might appreciate another source of income, but it might also just be easier to rely on Charlotte Caçador + La Costa Grid or something like that.

Perhaps if the numbers and wording had been changed around this card could've had more potential in standard glacial or mid-range decks. If it granted 3 credits per ICE rez instead of 2 then it might've been able to provide value sooner, easier and with less extreme amounts of ICE, or if the card had been unique and hosted credits could be used to pay rez costs instead of just install costs it could've self-sustained, being the backbone of glacial decks instead of just another source of credits you need to wait for.

Somewhat more broadly I'm confused directionally by the Liberation cycle, it brought massive pieces of ICE like Logjam, Boto, Cloud Eater, Seraph, Attini and Valentão alongside defensive upgrades like Adrian Seis or Isaac Liberdade and constructive cards like Vovô Ozetti, as well as the econ pieces to sustain them like this card right here or Janaína “JK” Dumont Kindelán. Yet a runner meta dominated by K2CP Turbine, Lobisomem/Orca Kit and ICE destruction Anarchs directly invalidates much of this corp playstyle by sawing through ICE for pennies regardless.

Thematically this card draws on Weyland's existing theme of extractive and exploitative economic moves, though I don't know enough about the net and cyberspace to really say what "cybersand" is and what the applications of harvesting it are. Maybe you harvest the building blocks of the net and use it to construct ICE, not sure... Perhaps someone else can add a comment or link a Wiki resource? I'd be interested to know. The art's not bad but I wouldn't say it's my favourite piece of Netrunner art. All in all, a bit of a middle-of-the-road kind of card.

TLDR: A setup-heavy econ piece that requires you to have and rez a substantial amount of ICE to turn a good profit. Probably outshone by other simpler and less conditional pre-existing econ options.

Edit: I forgot to mention one application of this card in my initial review: the potential synergy with Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel., having an instant speed self-trashing card is nothing to scoff at, even if this card doesn't end up netting you any profit, it still might be worth it purely as a way to easily and reliably trash your own cards to search for a one cost card you actually want.

Trick Shot, you were some of the most fun I've had as a Shaper. I always appreciated how you let me pressure a remote and a central at the same time, making the Corp think long and hard about which ICE to rez since both servers were under attack. You helped deal with the asset spam crisis while keeping my momentum up, and you allowed my rig to bloom into a beautiful menagerie. When we made it into R&D together, you let both of us take a peek just a little deeper.

The Net was better when you were in it. I miss you already.

The Wizard's Chest is an incredibly fascinating card and I want to start by giving a big shout-out to the World Champion Richard Hall for giving us such a wild and intriguing card to theory craft with.

In a nutshell, this card combines soft-tutoring and soft econ, you get to sort through your deck with some caveats and then install one of the revealed cards, ignoring all costs. This by its very nature, makes it a combo card that is hard to evaluate. When analyzing ICE, we can test how expensively various breakers perform against it, and visa-versa with icebreakers and common ICE. With conventional econ like Sure Gamble or Telework Contract or Bravado we can compare them and see their use-cases and break even points and profit margins.

A card like this, however, is directly dependent on what you can find and install with it, and thus its power level will be highly dependent on the power level of the cards it can find. Below will be less of a strict analysis of its usefulness, and more a musing as to its potential applications, what future applications might arise and how best to utilize it.

The most expensive runner cards at the time of writing are all programs: Orca and Lobisomem, Femme Fatale and Mass-Driver. Unfortunately, programs, especially icebreakers, are suboptimal targets for The Wizard's Chest since you often need the icebreakers themselves to access all three central servers, thus making it a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Spark of Inspiration is generally better for searching and installing large programs cheaply and comparatively unconditionally.

As a rule then, this narrows our targets to Resources and Hardware. The most expensive of which, Endurance, is banned, the next most expensive Maw, is generally considered to be overpriced for what it offers and most Anarchs prefer Patchwork or Keiko, both of which are markedly cheaper. Knobkierie is also banned, and Māui and Daredevil also see very little play.

This leaves Resources, the most expensive of which is Liberated Account, by using this on LA you can save yourself 6 credits, which, since this is an economy card, you essentially get to keep as profit, however, if you are resorting to these measures for extra credits you are probably just better off including more econ cards in its place, same goes for something like Red Team or Professional Contacts.

And besides, to consistently hit your target you have to include few, if any, other cards of the same type, a hefty requirement when there are so many different and potent Resources. Meeting of Minds offers you arguably more consistent tutoring while not only allowing, but encouraging you to include a large number of Resources in your deck.

This brings us back to Hardware but with the most expensive ideal candidates being 4 cost Consoles, it's a hard sell, as most decks would prefer to just include conventional card draw and conventional econ to install their Consoles normally.

The most promising candidate in standard is perhaps Jeitinho, decks that include Jeitinho tend to be built around it by its very nature and usually need at least some way to tutor for it to soften the inherent inconsistency relying on a single card to win brings you. The Wizard's Chest helps with that, acting as the 4th, 5th and even 6th copy of Jeitinho, as you can install The Wizard's Chest, make a successful run on each central server and still then use the paid ability to go find Jeintinho and install it, Jeitinho will then still trigger at the end of your turn, bringing you closer to victory. However, of the few decks I see that include Jeintinho, most prefer Asmund Pudlat as he is more consistent and in faction for Criminals.

At this point it might be tempting to write The Wizard's Chest off to the annals of Netrunner history, a cool card that never made sense to include but I believe this card has yet to have its "Golden Age," having just been released, there are almost certainly many more sets to come before it rotates, giving us many more years to see potential combo candidates.

If I had to speculate, the ideal target it probably either going to be:

• A. A very expensive Resource, ideally one with a hefty influence cost of 4-5 making people only want to include a single copy, or perhaps even the specific restriction of only being able to include a single copy per deck. Something like DJ Fenris only somehow more powerful and more expensive or;

• B. A super pricy Console, something 8+ ideally, something on par with Endurance in pricing or even larger like the now rotated, Monolith, Blackguard or The Toolbox

TLDR: A really cool card with few practical application at the time of writing but I look forward to seeing what new combos players can cook in the coming years and Cycles!

A "pre-emptive replacement" is a somewhat strange thing. Normally, you delay replacing something until the old one has stopped working to avoid overlap. Yet, Living Mural is perhaps best thought of as a pre-emptive replacement for a card the designers knew would rotate very soon: Ika. The problem with pre-emptive replacements is that they can look strange when first released, as they might not see any play for some time while the old options remain.

In the spirit of prescience, I'd like to make some predictions and speculations about what might happen when Ika does rotate, and Living Mural is forced to step up to the plate as the premier Trojan Killer.

The Differences:

• Higher install cost 3 vs 0

• Breaks less efficiently 1 credit per subroutine vs 1 credit for 2 subroutines

• Pumps marginally more efficiently 1 credit for 2 strength vs 2 credits for 3 strength

• Lower base strength 1 vs 2

• Threat 4 text makes it 4 strength for a single turn

• Different Interface requirements (see below)

From a pure numbers standpoint, it's looking weaker, except for ICE which has exactly 3 strength or ICE with 6 or more strength, Ika can interface more efficiently. ICE with 6 or more strength constitutes a painfully short list, whether it's been released by NSG (Trebuchet, Cloud Eater, Tyr and Colossus (who I consider an honourary member)), or whether it's an old FFG card that will be rotating with Ika (SYNC BRE, NEXT Diamond, Hydra, Archer and Surveyor). Even against 3 and 6+ strength ICE, Living Mural often doesn't break them as efficiently due to its lower subroutine cost-to-ratio. And even then that's without factoring in the higher install cost.

At Threat 4, this becomes somewhat more favourable, as you can now break anything with 4 or less strength without pumping and break almost everything with minimal pumping. If you can continually bounce this card with UAV, an argument can be made that it is always a 4-strength Icebreaker once Threat 4 is achieved. The problem is that Threat 4 tends to be deceptively late into the game, especially compared to Threat 3, and having to continually bounce and pay for Living Mural to stretch the benefits means this is meagre compensation for all the other sacrifices this card makes during the rest of the game.

Not only that but since it already pumps rather efficiently, 3 extra starting strength actually saves you fewer credits than you might think (usually only 1 or 2 fewer credits per ICE, and that's assuming it's a large ICE, which tends to have more subroutines anyway), which makes it hard to justify bouncing and paying the reinstall cost. Furthermore, it doesn't compensate for the fact that it still breaks subroutines 1 for 1, which is one of the major downsides this card has compared to Ika, especially against Sentries which frequently have multiple subroutines.

The last and perhaps most interesting distinction is its mobility, where Ika could be used to break any ICE anywhere, for the additional movement cost, Living Mural can break anything in the same server, but cannot be moved. This is somewhat reminiscent of the old Cyber-Cypher in its high efficiency compared to conventional breakers, limited by only being able to affect a single server. Here Living Mural can eke out some efficiency against tall Glacial servers that include multiple Sentries that Ika would otherwise have to continually bounce between. However, if you want to break sentries on multiple different servers in the same turn (such as for Deep Dive which Arissana often uses), you will either need to have multiple Living Mural's installed or use Spree to move it mid-turn.

On the whole, the comparison is not looking great, maybe this card is better against breaking multiple high-strength sentries stacked on top of the same server once Threat 4 is reached but who are we kidding, there's a very good reason that every Arissana deck I've seen runs Ika and not Living Mural. Perhaps the real question is if Arissana will use Living Mural at all, once Ika rotates or fall back on conventional breakers like Echelon or even import a breaker like Revolver or Carmen?

Well, let's compare it to Carmen, the bread-and-butter Killer from System Gateway.

From a strength perspective, Carmen is eerily reminiscent of Ika, with 2 base strength and pumps 2 for 3, which means that like with Ika, Living Mural is cheaper at pumping when it comes to 3 strength and 6 or higher strength ICE. However, as they both break 1 for 1, it can actually retain the added value and is better against 3-strength ICE while being competitive against 4 and 5-strength ICE too, unlike with Ika. And if you can reliably get the Threat 4 ability online, you can break substantially more efficiently than Carmen, while having comparable install costs (you can usually install Carmen for 3). Once again, however, the server limitation is its downfall, as Ika could move anywhere for a cost, and Carmen, like most conventional icebreakers can break any sentry anywhere without problems. Living Mural's one server limitation becomes crippling and I struggle to see how Living Mural could coexist with Deep Dive decks unless you add Spree, or include multiple copies of Living Mural, ultimately just adding to the setup and expenditure, and driving down its value proposition in the process.

Alternatively, however, cutting Deep Dive and adding more conventional multi-access such as Conduit and “Pretty” Mary da Silva (or importing a strong card like The Twinning), or even utilizing some Flux Capacitor + Cataloguer combo, while putting a Living Mural on R&D and regularly running R&D to lock the Corp could be a viable strategy. Or you could place one of these on the scoring remote to lock the Corp out of scoring and force agendas to accumulate in HQ before going in for a Spree + Cupellation run to win the game.

Ultimately, it's a very different icebreaker compared to Ika, with very different strengths, weaknesses and limitations. While it is almost certainly weaker and more limiting than Ika on the whole, it will be interesting to see what becomes of Arissana decks once Ika rotates. Will her playstyle change to fall in line with Living Mural's as she focuses on a single server or will she stop using Killers altogether and rely more heavily on Slap Vandal + Poison Vial combos, or turn to Botulus and Physarum Entangler or will she prefer to use more conventional non-Trojan Icebreakers like Carmen or Echelon to be the backbone of her deck while using Trojans like Pichação and Hush as more of an extra flourish? No one knows for sure, but it will be interesting to see.

Thematically Living Mural pretty much sells itself, the server is an alleyway and the Mural is a painted-on, living weapon that can attack anything in its path, but cannot move itself. It's very in theme with Arissana's identity as a street artist and Urban Art Connoisseur and fits perfectly with her whole character design. As for the actual text on the walls; "Mente" literally translates to mind or maybe in context mental? Perhaps calling NBN mental or mad? The text on the other side of the wall seems to read "viva livre brega" which roughly translates as live, free, strange (or quirky perhaps). I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean and I think I either read it wrong or translated it wrong, corrections would be much appreciated! Similarly, the word in the top corner of the left wall seems to read "fora" if you squint, which means outside, what that means in context and the accuracy of my reading is questionable, to say the least, and I'd love to see a full size, high-quality copy of this art just to understand the little references and world-building details better. Lastly, including an Archer walking past and getting tongue-slapped is just a really nice touch to tie the whole card together, a true weapon, worthy of the Killer name! (yet so cute!)

TLDR: A weaker replacement for Ika in Trojan-based Arissana decks, doesn't see much play at the time of writing but if you are reading this after Dawn that may well have changed dramatically.