Similar to Test Run, Compile lets you get programs from your stack/heap at a fixed (lower) price.

The main benefits of Compile over Test Run is that it's a run event, and the program tutor is delayed until you hit encounter ice. This gives you the freedom to make an educated choice on what to pull, and under certain circumstances, it might dissuade the Corp from rezzing any ice at all!

Compile has a bad interaction with Femme, who can't bypass the first piece of ice, since you have to encounter the ice before Compile's tutor activates. For any ice other than the first, she works fine though.

Notable differences to Test Run:

• the tutored program goes on the bottom of the deck, not the top
• the program vanishes at the end of the run, not the end of the turn

You can do some fun things with non-breaker programs like SMC and Grappling Hook. I'm sure there are other candidates for shenanigans in this direction; I can't think of any others at the present time.

Overall, where Test Run is great for banking up and finding stuff you plan on keeping, Compile's flexibility gives you a bit of push power to get into servers you couldn't normally reach. It's best suited for programs that trash themselves or conditional breakers.

A local player convinced me to slot two of these in my current Shaper deck, and despite the hefty influence cost, it's proven to be worth it.

It's a single-use "let me get through this ice" resource, which gives you a huge amount of threat power. It plays out a bit like a reverse Nisei MK II, weirdly enough!

In particular, blowing this up in the middle of a Marathon still lets you claim the click from finishing your run, since Logic Bomb clears during and Marathon rewards you at the end.

Getting it out early, along with something like Laamb, makes the Corp very very sad. And really, isn't that our goal as Runners?

Laamb has replaced both Battering Ram and Morning Star in my Modded Shaper deck, and it's been an absolute superstar.

First, it's a really strong fracter by itself. It has Morning Star's "break any number of subroutines" quality of life, but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Its boost cost is high, but when paired with cards like Dinosaurus, you can both offset its cost and save money on how often you have to boost it.

Additionally, and I think this is its real strength, it's got a sort of "soft AI breaker" effect to it, where you can smash a non-barrier once per turn (without catching the attention of our stabby friend). It's a super strong effect that really shines in the earlygame where you don't have to plow through mountains of ice, and it sometimes forces the Corp to ice a bit harder than they'd like.

All in all it's a solid breaker, easily my favourite fracter in Modded so far.

Looks like a serious earlygame detriment with easy recouping of costs if you're quick enough and can afford the server space. Additionally it combos well with any rig-tampering effects. I like it because it both taxes the runner and provides semi-consistent income.