Let's say that, for whatever reason, you decided to make a Jinteki rush deck. (Saraswati is a good choice, due to saving a click every time you install an agenda; rush decks can sometimes live or die by their economy, and saving clicks gives you time to play the economic operations.)

In previous formats, the way to make a rush deck's economy work would be to fill your deck full of economic 4/2 agendas: Corporate Sales Team, Cyberdex Sandbox, Offworld Office, that sort of thing. (3/2s don't generally provide meaningful amounts of economy, with the exception of Luminal Transubstantiation which is not legal in Jinteki; and 5/x agendas are too hard to score for a rush deck.) Unfortunately, Corporate Sales Team has rotated, and Cyberdex Sandbox has been banned, leving a bit of a gap in the typical rush deck's agenda suite. As such, rush decks have to resort to scraping the bottom of the barrel for agenda economy somewhat, perhaps even resorting to marginal choices like Timely Public Release because "at least it saves a click installing ICE".

Trying to fill this void for a Jinteki rush deck, I decided to try out Flower Sermon, and was blown away by just how much it helps out the typical rush deck. This happens for two main reasons:

• The agenda gives a direct economic benefit, in that it allows you to clicklessly draw cards. Drawing cards by click is something that a rush deck frequently has to do (because you want to get the agendas into hand before the opponents can set up, and also need to draw into ICE and economy operations). So the agenda is effectively saving on those clicks.

  The relatively free card draw is also pretty helpful for Jinteki rush decks in particular, as it helps to support certain cards that they would likely be running anyway – Hansei Review for their economy, and Anoetic Void to delay the Runner by the last vital couple of clicks (it is far from unheard of for the Runner to find their last critical icebreaker halfway through the turn before you score the 7th point, so having a clickless way to fuel Anoetic Void can make the difference between a win and a loss).

• The agenda also gives a fairly large indirect economic benefit: it helps to protect the top of R&D, because you can use an agenda counter to put a useless card there (or even a Snare!, and you can do that once the Runner is already committed to accessing). This means that once you have scored a Flower Sermon, R&D needs less protection than it usually would, and so it effectively saves you money because you don't have to rez (or even install) as much ICE there as you normally would. This effect probably isn't quite up there with Offworld Office, but it isn't that much worse, and it's definitely better than the currently available alternatives for economic agendas.

  It's worth noting that this protection works even against the new Cataloguer (you place an untrashable card on top of R&D after the Runner rearranges it). It doesn't work against Stargate, but Cataloguer is much more popular at the moment – often replacing Stargate – and that's helping to make Flower Sermon better than it previously was.

This means that Flower Sermon is probably better-positioned for rush decks nowadays than it has been at any time since it was printed. It's no longer facing as much competition from other agendas, with most of the good economic agendas being rotated or banned. It's also facing a more friendly line-up of cards from the Runner side than in previous formats. If you decide to play a Jinteki rush deck in the current metagame, it should definitely form part of your agenda suite – it has been one of the best-performing agendas in my testing (along with the obvious Offworld Office).

The remaining question, of course, is "should I really be playing a Jinteki rush deck anyway?". I don't have a great answer to that one – other styles of Jinteki decks are more popular at the moment, and probably for good reason. But in my testing, it at least hasn't been completely hopeless; even with an untuned list, it seems to outperform most of the other casual Corp decks I've been trying out (although I suspect it won't hold up in a proper tournament), and it's a good way to get a lot of games in quickly. Still, if we ever end up in a metagame favouring rush (which looks like it might actually happen, given the popularity of somewhat clunky Shaper decks at the moment), Jinteki rush seems to be an interesting alternative to Weyland rush, and if it's viable, Flower Sermon will be a major part of the reason why.

April 2024 Startup Review If you’re an Anarch right now, then unless you want to spend quite a bit of influence or are Sebastião Souza Pessoa: Activist Organizer, this is going to be your console. Amanuensis is only for a specific kind of deck and Carnivore is expensive, has an expensive ability and has lost Steelskin Scarring to make it really do work. For half the cost of Carnivore, T400 gives you the same extra Mu and an additional ability that will always be somewhat helpful. But the biggest upside is that additional copies aren’t dead in your hand - you can increase your Mu even more (great for having multiple viruses out at once) and build up your damage resistance at the same time.

As the first card spoiled from its set, Burner came out of the gates swinging. This is a very strong card, giving Shapers HQ pressure they didn't previously have in-faction. It's kind of like a pseudo-Legwork, in that you see three cards from hand. That alone is useful, in that you gain a fair amount of knowledge about what gameplan the Corp is on, and what they're currently prepared to do. But you also have the ability to disrupt those plans and set up steals for yourself.

Here are a couple of modes this card can function in:

• See combo threats, scoring tools, or econ bombs in hand, and sequester them safely on the bottom of R&D for free, where they can't even be immediately recurred.

• See agendas in hand, and clear out the chaff so that your run back on HQ next click is hitting a target-rich environment.

• See agendas in hand, and put them on top of R&D so that your run back on R&D next click is guaranteed* to hit.

You can also combine these effects, ie by bottoming a dangerous threat while putting an agenda on top of R&D. Note that the last one can be disrupted by the Corp drawing or shuffling before you get access, so be careful about deploying this tactic when a Spin Doctor is on the board, or when playing against Ob with a shuffle trigger in play. A Corp player with a scored Basalt Spire can also pull the top card off the deck and into hand by spending a counter, so be careful.

All in all, a great card, and one of the reasons Shapers are ascendant with the release of Rebellion Without Rehearsal.

"Well you see, when a Maker's Eye and an Overclock love each other very much..."

This might seem at first like kind of a janky in-between or situational card, but it does so much for you. It's credit value, multiaccess, and click compression, all at the same time. Whether you're trying to break out of prison, keep up with asset spam tempo, or just hammer R&D with high-value runs, this card has got your back. I'll even sometimes play it when there's no remote to run, and it's still great value then (although it's obviously most efficiently used when you get value out of the second run as well).

The biggest limitation it has is that you have to run R&D first, so if you're not prepared to deal with the outermost ice there, it's effectively turned off. But most of the time, that's not going to be the case. If you play Shaper and your rig uses credits during runs, you should probably be slotting this card.

Corp: Surely three Archers and a Valentao is enough to score behind, right? You only have 5 credits and you don't even have anything on the table...

Runner: shakes spraypaint can with intent

Although it's a bit situational, in the right deck, this card is incredible. With a Poison Vial, a Slap Vandal or charged Botulus somewhere on the board, and a few credits, you can effortlessly run through a 3-deep remote piled high with big ice for the winning agenda steal (or key asset trash). If you instead use Rigging Up to get down the Poison Vial and have the Slap Vandal in hand as Arissana (or spend a click to pre-emptively install it on the first ice before running), you can even go 4-deep. Although it's a one-time trick, ask Criminals how effective those can be. This is best at getting into a remote late-game that the Corp can't imagine you can break out of nowhere (which is also when they're most likely to put an agenda in it).

Even if you don't have the opportunity to maximize it on a big server, Spree can be situationally useful in just repositioning your installed Trojans without having to do Simulchip flickers, saving you precious resources, and preserving accumulated Botulus counters.

I wouldn't slot this in a deck running regular breakers hoping to get giant Kyuban value; as funny as it would be to surf a Flux Capacitor down an ice stack for big charge value on a Cataloguer or Amelia Earhart or something, it's surely not worth the deck slot.