It's like a smartphone, but in your clothes.

Any card that says "the other player can't score points" is worth looking at.

Lakshmi Smartfabrics introduces an amazing new mechanic for constructing HB decks, particularly horizontal decks with many remotes. Thought purple was the only team not spamming assets? Maybe not for long...

Few cards have had "Whenever you Rez" triggers up to this point - Spark comes to mind, but not much else. These are powerful because of the "instant speed" at which you can trigger them.

Lakshmi fits well within asset- and upgrade- heavy builds (remember that Upgrade-a-palooza deck from the early cycles?), particularly with the following:

• Advanced Assembly Lines to rez, net 2, trash and install a new asset (which can trigger ETF on the runner's turn, btw)
• Mumba Temple for cheaper rezzes (AAL quickly becoming a Hedge Fund)
• Worlds Plaza, similarly to Mumba
• Test Ground, which can de-rez cards to be re-rezzed at instant speed
• New Construction, which came in the same data pack. Weird...

You might be skeptical about Lakshmi, but I guarantee you this is a must-trash card when you see it as the runner. It can pull off some incredible combos:

1. Lakshmi and Advanced Assembly Lines are installed, AAL is unrezzed, and you have an Advanced Concept Hopper (or any 4/2) and another asset (let's say Adonis) in-hand. 1st Fast Track another Hopper; 2nd Install a Hopper in a new remote, 3rd advance. At the start of the runner's turn, you rez AAL, trash AAL to install Adonis, rez Adonis to gain 2 Lakshmi counters. If they run HQ or the ACH, spend two counters to reveal ACH, protecting both your hand and your remote. Runner feels weird, reads Lakshmi again, draws some cards and passes turn. Score.

2. You're running Gagarin with a Lakshmi with 2 counters on it. You have a New Construction in HQ and Fast Track a second one. Maybe the runner runs your hand - spend Lakshmi counters to defend both agendas. Now with no counters, your next turn is 1st Install New Con in a new server; 2nd adv New Con and install an asset, 3rd same thing. Runner runs New Con, rez both assets, spend 2 counters and defend. Next turn score. Hell, 3 New Cons and a Lakshmi could very easily chain themselves together with minimal support. You would just need cards to rez. Which you have because you're Gagarin.

It may look janky on paper, but so did that spastic Hayley Cachemeleon deck, and that crap wins tourneys.

The absolute bane of this card is Film Critic. And Hacktivist Meeting. Because a lot of people run Critic, you gotta back this up with Snatch and Grab.

Also, I bet anyone 5 that Jesminder's Mirrormode clothes came from Lakshmi. Prove me wrong, bro.

Don't be anxious. Here, trim this tree.

Mental Health Clinic forces you to choose how you're going to make it hard for the runner to win. Are you going for a vicious Scorched Earth flatline? Or are you going to tax the runner's credits? Or something else entirely?

Runners have access to resources, and corps tax those resources to prevent the runner from dancing all up in their servers. Most commonly, those resources are credits, clicks, and cards. In terms of which corp factions are particularly good at one of these, NBN takes your money, HB makes you spend clicks, and Jinteki makes you trash cards. Weyland just burns your house to the ground laughing while swimming in piles of money.

When Honor & Profit first came out, I thought MHC was only appropriate if you weren't choosing to deal damage to the runner, as a larger hand size means a more difficult flatline. I found it difficult to tax credits in Jinteki, and so I dismissed this card as not very good. As I get more experienced with Netrunner, I'm learning that taxing cards and flatlining are different. Hand size doesn't matter if you're able to continually do small amounts of net damage. Over time, the clicks spent to draw back up are very taxing, and all those cards in the runner's heap aren't doing them a lot of good.

Mental Health Clinic is weak with:

• Tag and Bag decks with Scorched Earth
• Most out-of-faction decks, as most have access to drip econ options without spending the influence on MHC.

Mental Health Clinic is good with:

• Thousand-Cuts Jinteki and Personal Evolution
• FA/Rush Jinteki, such as Harmony Medtech
• Komainu and Psychic Field, which help to mitigate the drawback of MHC

If someone had to sum up the Criminal Faction in Android: Netrunner with one card, they might choose Account Siphon.

This card has defined Criminal since the dawn of running nets, even before Emergency Shutdown told Tollbooth to stuff it and Andy made the mulligan her man-servant. Tournaments of all levels have been won and lost by those who could play this card often or those who couldn't defend against it fast enough.

Experienced players don't need a review of this card because you've already felt Syphon's sting enough to know: Account Siphon is one of the defining cards in Netrunner. So, yeah, it's good. 10/5, or whatever.

Why So Good?

Newer players may want to know why it gets all the hype. I will do my best to illustrate:

• Siphon is sometimes thought of as an Econ card. You play it, you have 10 more than you had a click ago. It's easy to see why, but I'd urge you to not think like that. Siphon is a denial card that debilitates the corp, with a side effect of giving the runner spending cash. An early-game Siphon completely kills the corp's econ, making it hard to get enough credits to rez campaigns or play burst econ cards. This keeps the corp in the defenseless "Early Phase" of the game, where the runner is free to dig around R&D and HQ for agendas. Without money, the corp cannot rez ice, advance agendas, or trigger powerful traps.

• Spending turns to recover from the econ hit is extremely costly for the corp. When not stealing agendas, runners are establishing their own econ and building up their rigs with those sweet sweet stolen creds. This pushes the game to the "Late Phase" where the runner is able to threaten servers no matter what defenses the corp has.

These two effects are renewed and exacerbated with repeated Siphons, thus creating the Siphon Recursion archetype.

Combos

• Same Old Thing and Déjà Vu allow recursion, meaning you can hit with Siphon that many more times. These also allow non-criminal decks to run 1 fewer Siphon to save on influence.
• Planned Assault tutors for Siphon, giving you more chances to get it when you want it.
• Gabe, Silhouette, and Ken all trigger with Siphon, making themselves great Syphon recurrers (is that a word?).
• There are a multitude of cards that let you avoid or remove the two tags from Siphon for less than 2+4; some personal favorites are Networking to save 2-3, Lawyer Up to save 2 and draw 3, and New Angeles City Hall to save 2.
• Reina and Jessie love to run Siphon and its orange cousin, Vamp.

Comment with strategies, exceptional combos, or just really good siphon stories.

TL;DR

In short, Siphon simultaneously prolongs the early game (when the runner is strong) and shortens the mid-game (when the corp is strong). It's a huge tempo hit that can and will determine how the rest of the game goes.

Oh, and if your opponent is playing criminal, always ice HQ turn 1.

Sensei's real problem is Cost vs Gain.

History Lesson

Waaaaay back the days of the Genesis cycle, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, Fantasy Flight Games thought adding subroutines was a powerful thing, forcing exorbitant costs upon runners to run. Probably because the card pool was so limited. Hell, criminals were using shit like Aurora and Peacock to break subs, and many a Noise player tried relentlessly to make Darwin work somehow. Hence, ice like Sensei, Woodcutter, and Salvage were designed to add subs with limitations and at high cost. Woodcutter must be rezzed first, then costs , per sub. Sensei has high install and rez costs relative to subs added.

Nowadays, runners either pay 1 per sub to break or use limited free abilities, such as Overmind counters or ID abilities like Quetzal or Adam/ABR. Or they don't give a shit how many subs your ice has. So, by today's standards, cards from the early packs that add subroutines are vastly underpowered, and I expect to see newer iterations of these cards in the next few years as these older packs get cycled out.

Sensei's Weaknesses

All positional ICE have the hidden cost of installation: to affect an ice following it, you must pay an additional 1 to install it in front of that ICE. In the case of positional ICE that affects the rest of the run (Sensei, RSVP, Wendigo), you must pay increasing amounts of in install costs to get increasing benefits.

Adding an ETR is weak because it doesn't anything nasty to your opponent - not like an alternate win condition like "Do all the net damage" would. Either they can't get into your server for a little bit until they find the right breakers (blocked run), or they have to pay more to get into a server (taxing).

Sensei's bad at blocking runs. If you're installing ice to end the run, just use ETR ice. If you're adding subs to the next ICE, I'd sooner use Marker, as being free-to-rez offsets the install cost. Or, seeing as this example assumes no decoder, Lotus Field would serve the same purpose without requiring other cards.

Sensei's pretty weak as taxing ice. The extra usually translates to an additional spent by the runner. The most you're hoping for is +1 cost to run per ice, which you paid to install Sensei. An overhead cost of 3 to rez Sensei means you're paying more than the runner until they've run around 3 times.

Exceptions to this would be breakers that use counters, such as D4v1d or Cerberus "Lady" H1: Lady would not enjoy Sensei-Eli-Eli. Also, it's good to point out that it costs the decoder staple Gordian Blade 4 to break, so the runner is likely to just let Sensei fire.

How to Use Sensei

To make Sensei playable, combine with abilities that lower install and/or rez costs, and install him on a deep server that your opponent will run often (HQ vs. Siphon recursion, for example). Refer to @slobad31's awesome review for synergistic ice.

I think Flare deserves a second look now that Data and Destiny has been released. I mean, we only got, what, less than 2 years before it's cycled out? Now is the time for Flare to shine (see what I did there?).

By itself, Flare rezzes at a whopping 9, so you wouldn't rez it unless you were darn sure you could land the trace and trash runner cards with reckless abandon. Aside from silly combos like Amazon Industrial Zone, I don't think you're going to find a cheaper way to rez this sucker (comment to prove me wrong). Therefore, you would look to combo with cards that make Flare even more powerful to get the most of that 9 punch to your wallet.

Ahem:

• NBN: Making News obviously improves your traces, but Improved Tracers does even more so. One ImpTrace in NBN:MN makes Flare a STR 7 with a Trace base str of 9. Holy cow. Maybe only Sunny is not blinded by that light (see what I did again there?).
• Any deck could use Primary Transmission Dish and/or Rutherford Grid to boost the trace.
• Surveillance Sweep is interesting here, as it forces the runner to pay money to equal 6 more than your current credit pool or suffer the consequences. Even if the trace doesn't land, the runner could potentially be broke. Wouldn't that suck if there was anything else in the server behind Flare that they would need money for?
• The Cleaners increases the meat damage to 3, so I can see Flare finding a home in Weyland.
• If you really want to get some replay out of Flare, surprise the runner with a Marcus Batty.

As far as taxing goes, this will probably cost the runner around 5 or 6 to get through consistently. Either they run through it with a credit lead on you and beat the trace, or they use Faerie, Garrote, or GS Shrike M2 to break the sub. Mimic needs 2-3 SuckerEyes counters, which is a bit painful. More than likely, the runner will avoid that server or use things like Inside Job or Femme to bypass.

Adam would click twice to get through from turn 1, and Sunny Lebeau: Security Specialist has enough link that you probably would never even install it in those match-ups.

Overall, I think you still need to build a synergistic deck around Flare to include it. There are more synergies out now to power it up and make it more worth the rez cost. Occasionally it may be a dead draw if you're broke or against certain match-ups. It is by no means a common include, but I hope to see a couple at tournaments in the next few years.