Phoneutria is a wonderful piece of ICE from so many perspectives. I'll cut to the chase--it is very Jinteki. Let's break it down.

Saisentan, long the replacement for Komainu, is the ICE I enjoy using as a baseline for Jinteki sentries these days. If we completely ignore the text on both Sai and Phone, they are quite comparable. Sai costs 5s and has three "1 net damage" subs, whereas Phone costs 4s and has two. Strictly from a -to-net-damage ratio, Sai (0.6/) has Phone (0.5/) beat. That being said, sometimes a 's difference in rez cost makes all the difference, and there are times where you might be willing to take the lower ratio for the lower cost. Both ICE are Str 2, so they're on equal footing there.

Now, let's look at the text.

Sai has the potential for bonus net damage by playing the card-type guessing game and the statistics in Spaulding's review of Sai shows that this can be quite favorable for the corp even without prior knowledge of the runner's hand. However, this is only if the subroutines themselves fire. Subs typically only fire against a face-checking runner--but we'll get to this in a moment. Onto Phone, the damage caused by a face-check is far less deadly. The sum total net damage will be 2 and always 2. While this may bring a runner down below 3 cards in hand (the magic number for a snare flatline) there won't be that many cases where this can actually threaten a net damage kill. Frankly, if the runner is blind-running a server against Jinteki with only 1 card in hand, please take them aside and kindly point out that there might be better ways to approach the situation.

So what does Phone actually do then? Some may be tempted to say "it can give the runner a tag if the runner has 4 or more cards in grip when they pass it," and while from an academic perspective they would be correct, it misses the far greater and insidious nature that makes Phone a wonderfully designed Jinteki ICE, both thematically and mechanically. You see, Phone is a hidden mind-game.

2 net damage isn't that bad. In fact, a lot of runners, especially Anarchs, will gladly take it to save on the cost of installing a killer and breaking the subs. However, 3 is the magic number when running against Jinteki since it keeps you safe from Snare!. 3 will also keep you safe from Phone's tag--but consider that if the runner started with 3 or 4 cards in hand and they eat Phone's net damage, they're now in Snare flatline territory. So they're incentivized to actually spend the s to break Phone.

...but maybe they're a cheeky runner and they don't care about the tag. After all, you're Jinteki--you're not exactly known for your tag-punishment tactics. They overdraw to 6, make a run, take the net damage, take the tag, and crash into your double-advanced Urtica Cipher. They live just fine, they don't shake the tag (because why would they) and they undid all of your trap setup without having to spend a dime... only to die unsuspecting to your new Mindscaping card's secondary effect.

Okay, okay, so maybe they get smarter. They expect Phone, they expect Mindscaping, and they've sussed out and avoided your Urtica. They run with 5 in hand--the perfect number. They hit Phone and laugh as they eat 2 net damage, going down to 3 in hand, which simultaneously avoids Phone's tag. They crash into a server with an un-advanced Snare, live through the whole ordeal, and again, undid all your traps while spending nothing... except they now have a tag from Snare... which you can then use to flatline them again next turn with Mindscape.

But lastly, we encounter the actual smart runner. The big-brain hacker. All of this is irrelevant if they shake the tag, right? The biggest-brain runner will. They won't run last click. They won't forget to leave themselves 2s for the cost. But that is exactly the point. Phone's greatest strength isn't its net damage, or tag-into Mindscape flatline potential. It's not about driving them mad by asking them whether they want to run with 3, 5 or 6 cards in hand. It's the fact that they have to care about the tag at all, which means that (barring tag-removal shenanigans like Solidarity Badge, Networking etc.) Phone forces the runner to lose something regardless. They lose a and 2 s if they go in with more than 3 cards. They lose 2 s and 4 s if they do the same and hit a snare afterwards. They lose 2 cards if they go in with 5-6 and eat the subroutines (and probably want to shake the Snare tag if they hit one, for fear of Mindscape). They open themselves up to a flatline if they run with 4 or less and eat the subs.

Now do you remember when we were talking about Sai? (I bet you thought I forget, eh? :P ) Well, therein lies the difference between the two. Sai is a flatline ICE, used to punish face-checking runners. Phone is a taxing ICE used to mess with the runner's head.

Does any of this on its own actually concretely kill or stop the runner? No. But it's a lot for them to think about all at once--ergo, the mind game.

I've been puzzling over Tatu-Bola for some time now and while I don't think I'm an expert on the matter, I'll weigh in with how I believe this card is meant to be used.

Let us isolate the cost, strength, type and subroutine. With these four points in mind, we see a very weak but relatively effective End the Run (ETR) gear check ICE. The strength of 1 is mostly irrelevant and will only tax those odd breakers that start at strength 0. Likewise, the single ETR sub is not going to break any runner's bank. Its subtype barrier is exactly where we expect ETR subs to proliferate, and while its 2 cost to rez is overpriced for what it does (compared to something like Ice Wall) it's also a cost most corps will be able to afford at any given time.

To reiterate, so far we have an extremely basic ETR gear check ICE that's over-costed by 1.

But now, let's move on to the card text. What does that extra get us? The ability to swap this ICE (rezzed) with another piece of ICE (from HQ unrezzed) and make 4 out of the deal. At first this seemed lateral, but the more I looked at it, the more genius I realized the effect was. In short:

This is an economy card combined with a piece of gear-check ICE that efficiently replaces itself when it is no longer needed.

How often do we want easy-to-rez ICE at the beginning of the game? ICE that just keeps the blasted runner out early while you're just setting up? (Excuse me, I barely have Ad-Block installed Mr. Runner, can you please stop snooping through my recycle bin) But of course as the game goes on we groan as the handy little gear check ICE becomes a liability. We invested in it--we rezzed it with our precious s--but come midgame and beyond the runner is laughing in Bad-Pub-1-Break-Breakers. The fact is we're losing more money with each increased install cost per additional ICE added to the server than they are with each time they have to break it. Sure, we could trash the ICE, overwrite it, but that just feels like signaling failure. We're the corp. We have to communicate that we're the alpha.

And that's where Tatu-Bola shines. Install it in your scoring remote early. Cover your centrals early. Heck, throw it in a blank remote early, I don't care--the point is, that by the time the runner starts breaking this thing for peanuts, you can just make it nope-out and put a better ICE in its place--and you make 2 (once you consider the 4 payout vs the 2 rez) out of the deal. No extra click needed, no additional installation cost--just a clean "swapsies." Plus, now you have that nice little gear check ICE to throw somewhere else where it can actually be useful--maybe covering archives to make Aumakua runs annoying, maybe as an outside piece of ICE to thwart Hippo, who knows? The point is, it's great all around; you get a better ICE in the server you want to protect and can reposition your expendable ICE.

Of course, decks that only want 1 piece (or 0 pieces) of ICE on servers aren't going to be excited about this one. After all, if you're only putting 1 ICE on a server, you don't care about installation costs since you'll just create a new server for a new piece of ICE anyway. Likewise, if you draw this late it's not going to be great. This is true of most inexpensive gear-check ICE, but this one is even worse since, it's a little more expensive vs. other options. But, if you're the kind of corp that likes to run a lot of ICE and you want an option to protect your servers early while paying you back a little dosh in the midgame while you shift your ICE around to better suit you, this one is a definite win.

In a general sense, Netrunner has fallen into what I like to think of as the "2, 3, 4" value principle. While 1 is almost always worth more than 1, in isolation the structure of 1:1:1Draw is typically a good place to start. Continuing this isolationist approach, every card played immediately costs a value of 2 (1 and 1Draw). Therefore cards that net you a positive value of 2 units are in essence, worthless since you could have obtained the value of 2 without the card by simply spending those s do gain resources naturally (looking at you Infiltration). A value of 3 is where things start to become positive, but are usually of too little impact still to justify use (I usually think of Easy Mark). A value of 4 or higher is really where cards start to shine, and at this point become near auto-includes to any deck that supports the card itself (the conventional Sure Gamble).

Within this backdrop, we can look at Greasing the Palm. Ignoring the required 3 upfront cost and its conditional tag-removing effect, this card gains you a value of 3 at 2 and 1 (from the install). This puts the card in the previously mentioned realm of "technically positive" but with there still probably being a better card to slot in somewhere. This means that in order to justify putting this card in your deck, you really need to be playing toward the tag-removal effect.

Removing said tag gives you a +2 value due to the free advancement token, which otherwise would have cost you a and a . If you can do this, suddenly Greasing the Palm is swinging at a total 5 value, greater than even Sure Gamble. Add to that, that this effectively fast-advances that card by 1 and you can see the clear advantage of Greasing the Palm.

Before we get too excited however, we must remember that the Runner must have a tag in the first place, and we remove it. Manual Runner removal of a tag is a 3 value tempo hit (2 and 1) and we are handing that over to them for free. It also means that we needed to invest resources into giving them the tag in the first place, which has also costs us a variable amount of value elsewhere. Lastly, the conditionality of the tag's existence, the Runner's ability to choose to remove that tag and the lack of ability to repeat the effect should we remove the final tag, makes this effect conditional and somewhat difficult to pull off reliably. So how do we slot this Event?

For starters, it needs to be in a deck that can give tags. Secondarily, if it is a deck that gives a small number of tags, then this probably needs to be the only tag-reliant effect that there is (since you will be removing said tag). Otherwise, it needs to be in a deck that gives the Runner so many tags that removing 1 is irrelevant. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that if you're playing against a Runner that just refuses to let those tags stick, you can still at least use it at a fairly reliable (if a bit weak) 3 value effect.

While the recent The Automata Initiative card release seems to be trying to spread some of the tag-love around to Corps other than just NBN, it would seem somewhat difficult for HB to innately make use of this. The effect is undeniably strong but my fear is that it will either never see use in-faction, or will simply be imported to NBN for some soul-crushingly efficient 3/2 scores. The issue I see with that however is that NBN already has plenty of fast advance in-faction (tag-reliant and otherwise) so splurging for this at a 3-influence cost even then may not be worth it.

Ah, finally a 1-influence costed neutral cantrip card that is interesting. Let us compare this to its predecessors, Build Script, Process Automation and Deuces Wild.

Both Build Script and Process Automation were incredibly boring cards, almost signaling to the consumer that FFG had run out of ideas that month and desperately needed to fill the card pool by +2 with... something. Arguably, Build Script was probably the better of the two, but neither were particularly great and inclusion of either or both in your deck usually meant that you either didn't want to put the effort into finding a better card, or some serious jank was incoming. At best they were/are a technical increase of one-unit of tempo each (if we value one , and draw equally) at the cost of 1 influence.

Deuces Wild took this to another level. Effectively, if you only ever chose the first two options, it was identical to Process Automation with the disadvantage of the 2 upfront cost. The second and third options however, greatly expanded its utility, suddenly giving it the potential to provide much greater value. Using our ratio from before, removing a click is a three unit swing (1, 2 ) and while exposing a piece of ICE usually can't be distilled to a numerical value, its effect can be game-changing (not to mention that you get a free run out of the deal). If I'm honest, when Deuces Wild was printed I was annoyed at how good it was. It wasn't broken, it wasn't drastically warping the meta, but it just felt too safe.

So now, with Deuces Wild rotated out, Bahia Bands comes in as the replacement and finally I can breath a sigh of relief. This strikes a clean middle-ground between the previous three cards. It's more interesting than Build Script and Process Automation without being the guaranteed immediate win that Deuces Wild was. For starters, two of the abilities return--draw 2 cards and remove 1 tag. These are fine--drawing 2 cards at the cost of 2 credits isn't good on its own, and while the value of a free tag removal on top of it is great, it's going to be situational and small (it is after all, just one tag).

The other two abilities are new and not immediate, guaranteed wins on their own either. Installing a card at a -1 is very likely to something the runner can do, but it forces them to move the game forward. It doesn't just say "hey dummy, gain money." Now the runner has to show something, they have to do something, they have to lose a card and unless the card costs 1 they have to spend something. This overall creates a more interesting board state. And lastly, possibly the most creative of the four cantrips is a whopping 4 value... that can only be spent on trash costs. Again, this is wonderful--this is a nice, relatively powerful effect (a value of 4 units) that is very situational and also requires the runner to do something. They have to make a run, they have to either know where an asset is or they have to guess properly. And of course, the asset itself (or combined assets in the case of upgrades) must be valued at 4 at least in order to obtain the full value. It isn't as simple as "hey, get free information and make a run anywhere" like Deuces.

No, overall I like the design of this card. It feels fun, it's not a free win and it's not an overpowered mess. At first-glance it seems like it will be the strongest against asset-spam NBN, what with the 4 trash and tag removal, but we will have to see.

Upon initially viewing S-Dobrado, you may be tempted (as I was) to see it strictly as a linear upgrade to Inside Job. And in truth it would be, except for one key difference--the word "central." Whereas Inside Job can be used on any server, S-Dobrado is limited to central servers only.

The benefit is initially somewhat appealing. Around mid-game and beyond, you can double S-Dobrado's effectiveness for the price of another . If you want into centrals, this seems like a good idea, right? However, when deciding between this and Inside Job, you must ask yourself, "What is the cost of both a and of losing the use of this on a remote server?"

If a is roughly worth about 2 (something that will vary depending on the efficiency of your deck) then this means that the act of bypassing the second piece of ICE needs to save you at least 3 to be a positive. Probably all but the lowest strength gear-check ICE will cost around 3 or more to break so it's not totally unreasonable to think that you will get this value--but it's also not 100% reliable either.

Overall, S-Dobrado will be useless against 1 tax ICE. Additionally, the prospect of saving just 1 against a 3 tax ICE does not seem amazing when faced with giving up your remote server use of the skill. The math starts working in your favor heavily though when you start looking at ICE that costs 6 to get through. Getting a Sure Gamble's worth of s is great value. This however relies on the ICE actually being that expensive to break and that it is the second-most piece of ICE coming inwards to the server. This is by no means guaranteed. Likewise, a corp that runs ICE-light may never even double-ICE their centrals, meaning you've given up remote access for nothing.

Lastly, let's look at the loss of remote access itself--you cannot use S-Dobrado to threaten remote-scored agendas that sit in the server for a turn. You cannot use it to sneak into double-ICEd remotes and trash pesky assets. You are strictly looking at this to get you into centrals. Therefore, justification of inclusion of this card in your deck must come from the following situation:

"It is game-winning to me that I am able to easily access central servers, even if they are heavily protected by multiple pieces of taxing ICE, while giving up my ability to activate any other event card, or -to-run abilities."

(Since remember, the card itself occupies the Event action.)

The problem is, I struggle to think of that many situations where this is true. It would turn on abilities that require an HQ or R&D run (since these are more-likely to be double-ICEd than Archives). It could potentially do something like get you into a server for that last Aumakua counter that you need. But... overall if you're just including this because "bypass is cool," for a single access, then there are almost certainly better things to include (like simply Inside Job). No, we must combo this with things like Docklands Pass or WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ. But hey, those are already in Criminal, right?