Homedude will eat your brains

Like Fairchild 3.0, this is a beefy mid-size piece of ice with a nasty facecheck. It most closely parallels Ichi 1.0 and should be compared to that when you're considering this for your deck:

• It costs 1 more than Ichi to rez, and the cost to break is 1$ less. I'd say that's still a good rez-to-break ratio.
• Like Ichi, there's a time and a place to rez it. You don't rez Ichi if they don't have programs installed. You don't rez Zed 2 if they don't have hardware installed.
• There's no ETR on it, so it won't have the same stopping power of a Fairchild 3.0.
• Virtually all runners have programs, so Ichi will be relevant in pretty much every game. Almost all runners have a console, so I think this will be universally useful enough to include.
• Now that MKUltra is probably one of the most popular killers, I want to point out that it can break this for 6+, 6 and a datasucker token, or 3+ and a datasucker token. None of those are remotely cheap, and all of them are more than the rez cost of 6.

EDIT: The MKU math was wrong because the last sub is blank if they can break. The correct math is 6 or 3 and a datasucker token, assuming they haven't clicked through another ice before this one. Still respectable, but not quite as strong.

The power of the facecheck here is relative to the hardware that the runner has. If they're on Astrolabe or Forger, it won't be that painful for them unless it screws up their . If they're running Obelus or Şifr, that's a pretty notable setback. If I had less than 10 and had to choose between trashing Sifr or taking 2 brain damage, I might take the damage. It's like, deeeyaaaamn...

Can't wait to see these in CD with Fenris, Enforced Curfew, and some splash of Snare! or Neural EMPs.

I also love this card in Weyland decks as a Plascrete/Hopper killer. Taking two brain damage against a deck is obscene, so it's a total lose/lose facecheck.

I slotted this in a Null deck that I brought to a recent store champ. I was looking for more non-event econ to synergize with Street Peddler. It felt good, but I thought more about the slots I was spending on it.

I had this as a 2x. My deck had a lot of draw (3x each of IHW, Inject, and Peddler), so I consistently saw it before the 2nd agenda was scored/stolen. Most games went to 6-4 if not 6-6, so I was getting ~10 off the single click. Great!

But it's unique. So from a deckbuilding perspective, you need to consider how much money you're getting for each copy, not just for each card.

In this example, I was really getting ~5/copy, which is what you get from Daily Casts. I think it was a fine include for my deck - roughly as good as have an extra 2 DCs.

However, if I had less draw in my deck and saw it a few turns later, I may have only been getting ~8 from it, which is 4/copy. That's like 2 extra Sure Gambles, but they drip out the money inconsistently instead of getting it all at once, so they're definitely not as good.

If I didn't have that much draw in my deck, maybe I would have wanted to include 3 copies. That's ~10 over 3 copies, which brings us down to ~3/slot. Now it's in the range of non-burst Easy Mark, which is not worth it.

All of this assumes best-case money-making. In the games where it's not installed until 4 or 6 pts are on the board, you're making considerably less money.

Overall, it needs notable synergy to be worth it, with either Peddlers, Paige Piper, or maybe OCAs. What a shame! I would have liked to have seen it been 2 and not unique.

Aaron Marrón is the Beth Kilrain-Chang of Criminals.

Also, Marrón is pronounced "mah-RROAN," technically with rolled Rs. If you say it so it rhymes with Aaron, that's fine, but just know you're doing it wrong. :-)

Thanks to the 23 Seconds incident, Awakening Center got a bit more support. The Flashpoint Cycle released cards that encourage you to at least try some crazy things with Creation and Control cards like this one.

• You'll obviously want to put in some exciting bioroids into your Architects of Tomorrow deck.
• Fairchild is one such exciting bioroid, as is Sherlock
• A single F3 protecting this server means that the runner might be out of when they encounter that bioroid you just forced them to encounter.
• After you pitch the ice, you can always call your Friends in High Places to install them regular-type OR back onto the Center. You could also get back a trashed Center.

Hell, you could stack Centers. They would trigger simultaneously, so you decide the order of encounter. Vikram-Ichi double-punch!

Yeah, it's still a bit janky, but it will definitely catch people off-guard.

That suspenders game is on point, yo. Get it, guuuurl.

We've had stealth around for awhile, so there's not a lot here to explain mechanically. The most notable things about Smoke for me are:

1. You get a stealth credit from turn 1. You no longer have to spend your first SMC on a Cloak or draw into a Ghost Runner. This dramatically shores up stealth's early-game weakness.
2. Net Mercur is an auto-include, particularly because of the draw ability.
3. Smoke is the replacement for CT when she cycles out.
4. Smoke might be the strongest runner to date: her ability rivals Kate's econ advantage, and she has a smaller deck size with the same influence.
5. OMG HFS WE FINALLY GOT SMOKE