This card looks very bad. However, it is actually quite good and valuable for Weyland decks using Regulatory Capture.

Taking bad publicity is generally bad. You're generally supposed to be compensated with money for taking bad publicity. This is why Hostile Takeover, Too Big to Fail, give you big money in exchange for taking it, so the corp accelerates their game to try to win before the runner get get too much leverage. This card, when you rez it, you LOSE 6 credits, and you take a bad publicity. And increasingly more bad publicity, not profiting from it at all (you profit a little if you are The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated.)

The trash cost is high, but its win con only lets you win after a ridiculously long amount of time, and the closer you get to winning, the easier it is for the runner to trash it. So as other reviewers say, it looks more like a Tik Tok challenge than a part of a legitimate strategy.

The point of this card is the following.

You play a big-money bad-pub weyland deck like The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated or Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World. You have 3x Hostile Takeover, big 3 pointers, and 3x Regulatory Capture. You probably have Punitive Counterstrike, to force the runner to play around that.

Good news, 8 turns went by. You scored 2 Hostile Takeover from hand. You scored Send a Message, simply IAA'ing it like a boss because you had 40 credits and the runner only had 15, and they had to respect the double Punitive Counterstrike. So you're now on 5 points.

That's when you install the Superdeep Borehole. You rez it at the end of the runner's turn, taking 1 more bad pub, to a total of 3. Now, the runner absolutely must trash this thing on their turn, or you will get to 4 bad pub on the start of your turn, and be able to score Regulatory Capture from hand for the win. If the runner is a Nyusha "Sable" Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy on Tunnel Vision, odds are they won't get past your remote server ice on this short notice anyways.

Congrats! You managed to get 2 bad pub from the borehole. You can now simply Extract the borehole, you don't need any more bad pub, and its built-in win con is goofy anyways. Now you simply draw into Regulatory Capture and win the game.

What's that? The runner huffed and puffed and trashed your Superdeep Borehole before you could get a second bad pub from it? That's okay, install another. If they don't trash it (face down) before the start of your turn, you'll get your 4th bad pub and proceed as planned. If they do, they paid 6 to trash something that you didn't even rez.

Or, at this point, just draw into the third Hostile Takeover. Then you are at 4 bad pub. What's a runner to do.

So, particularly in the (Parhelion) startup meta, this card is key to any weyland decks that want to run Regulatory Capture, because this and Hostile Takeover are the only ways for you to get bad publicity in Parhelion startup. And while it may seem crazy expensive for what it does, because it gives you a path to score Regulatory Capture as a 2/2 from hand, it creates a win con that is actually very hard for the runner to disrupt. You don't need to have both a 3/2 and Trick of Light in hand, and have advancement counters on the board, to fast advance. You don't need to have Biotic Labor and a pile of money and a 3/2. You just need to have played normal weyland for a while, and at some point installed a borehole that stuck around for two turns. And you don't have to try to score a second 5/3 pointer behind ice to win anymore, which is often the achilles heal of Punitive Counterstrike decks, which gets mooted once the runner steals 4 points from R&D before you can win.

So, contrary to what other reviewers are saying, do not "install this early", and don't focus on the "when it is empty, you win the game" text on the card. Install and rez only when you are 2 points from victory so that all you have to do is draw into Regulatory Capture to close out the game.

This seems like a potentially very powerful card for criminals at first:

At 2 cost, it seems comparable to Inside Job, which is a great card for many reasons, and a big enabler for criminals getting past big taxing ice.

Compared to Inside Job, Backstitching:

• Has the advantage that it can bypass any ice in the run and not just the first encountered ice. So, corps that try to harden a server against inside job by putting a cheap ice on the outside won't have success vs. this threat.
• Inside job can't be used to help you land another run event like Legwork or The Maker's Eye, but this card can. This card can also be used with Inside Job to bypass two ice (and perhaps multiaccess with The Twinning?)

However, it is also a lot less flexible than Inside Job:

• You can only use it on centrals, you can't use it to crack the remote
• You can't control which server is your mark, so if you really need to get into a specific central, this card won't reliably help you do that.

For Nyusha "Sable" Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy the most obvious consistent use of this card is that it may help you translate Easy Mark into a successful run and a free click on a turn when you might not otherwise have been able to. So this card may enable opportunistic access, possibly more cheaply if the corp is playing big ice.

The argument against this card I think goes as follows:

In the new Cezve meta, centrals are already very porous. Cezve helps you get where you need to go no matter what your mark is. With Bukhgalter and Cezve you are breaking Drafter for free. With Corroder and Cezve you are breaking Gold Farmer for two. Instead of breaking Gold Farmer, you could bypass it, but then you paid two to install Backstitching. So why bother with Backstitching?

If there's something big enough in your way that Backstitching would be cost effective, Boomerang would probably also work, and Boomerang has a lot more flexibility and utility. You can use it to crack the remote also for instance.

On the plus side, Backstitching will always be able to help you on the turn where you play deep dive.

Overall, I expect this card to be somewhat niche.

Note: This review is focused on the startup format.

Let's ignore the effect of sabotage for the moment in order to compare this to other cards.

This card provides "pseudo multiaccess" to four cards for a cost of three. In this respect it looks comparable to The Maker's Eye or Legwork, which let you see three cards for a cost of two. You may not actually get to see those cards unless you also run archives, and if there is a spin doctor on the board then you probably won't get to see any agendas.

Is this likely to be splashed into reg Hoshiko decks? I would argue, probably not. Hoshiko is more likely to select The Twinning for multiaccess for many reasons.

So, this is likely an Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist-only card, and it's most interesting when the runner is trying to win by milling the corp -- you're playing this for the sabotage win-con rather than "just" for multiaccess. And if the runner is able to land this card twice let's say, that puts 8 cards in the bin.

If the runner is able to put say 20 cards from the corp in the bin via sabotage, they are likely to win the game, because about half of the agendas and half of the ice will end up in the bin, and corp can only Spin Doctor so much of that back. If they lose half their ice they may not be able to secure all the servers, and then Esa can win in the remote, or R&D, etc. Note that Esa is likely to do 6-10 sabotages from playing core damage cards, and then they can also get some more sabotage from Avgustina Ivanovskaya.

Of those sources of sabotage (Chastushka, Esa identity, Avgustina, Marrow), Chastushka is the easiest one for the corp to try to prevent, and many corps will stack ice on HQ when vs. Esa. Why?

• Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist's identity doesn't give them any economic advantage like say Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist or René "Loup" Arcemont: Party Animal.
• Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist's core damage cards also don't provide much in terms of actual credits, the most notable being Ghosttongue.
• Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist that tries to make money likely uses a combination of Liberated Account, Fermenter, etc. but these are not fast paths to money.
• Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist's breaker of choice Begemot, is very efficient in the mid-late game, but not really early. If they commit to Cleaver instead they may be sacrificing the late game.
• The corp can try to get rid of Avgustina Ivanovskaya by using Drago Ivanov to tag the runner. But Avgustina Ivanovskaya is very cheap to install and the runner may have several copies if they want to play this reliably, so the corp has to invest a lot of resources towards this. In startup it's hard to win the game outright by tagging the runner.

So, Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist that wants to land Chastushka early is likely going to use Botulus or Boomerang. So many corps will decide to put two ice on HQ right away when playing against Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist.

However, there are other forms of counterplay besides just stacking ice:

• Crisium Grid shuts down and burns the Chastushka. For this reason, any upgrade installed in the root of HQ likely forces Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist to do a scouting run of HQ first, but then they have to break all the ice and pay five. So this will slow down a Chastushka-focused game plan considerably. Because of the need to respect Crisium Grid, Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist is likely to have to do this for any defensive upgrade installed on HQ, whether or not it is actually a Crisium Grid, since Crisium Grid is so easily splashable.
• Subliminal Messaging is also a pretty decent counterplay to sabotage-based decks. A corp with Subliminal Messaging in hand can sacrifice it whenever sabotage occurs, and it will return to their hand if Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist ever doesn't make a run. Since Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist is likely to spend turns drawing up or clicking on liberated or what have you, this is likely to happen pretty often, and this will greatly blunt the impact of small amounts of sabotage here and there, from Avgustina Ivanovskaya, Marrow, and the Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist identity. Getting Chastushka'd when you have 2x Subliminal Messaging in hand feels very good since you cut the strength of the effect in half.

Of these forms of counterplay, which ones are most viable?

Crisium Grid has always been a very strong card, having a significant impact in many criminal and shaper matchups. It shuts down a lot of shaper multiaccess events like The Maker's Eye, Khusyuk, Deep Dive. It also blocks Stargate. For this reason it usually goes on R&D, except in matchups like Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter. However, there are also a bunch of important multi-access tools that have been printed which don't depend on the run being successful, and so don't care about Crisium Grid. This includes Docklands Pass and now The Twinning. The more popular these cards become in the meta, the weaker it is to run Crisium Grid.

Subliminal Messaging is obviously not a "power" card, but it has usually been fine to run it as a "one-of" in many decks. It usually translates to a small amount of free, clickless money. There are a few newer corp identities that have significant synergy with Subliminal Messaging.

• MirrorMorph: Endless Iteration really likes Subliminal Messaging anyways, because on the turn they play Subliminal Messaging, they can use the extra click they get after getting the mirrormorph bonus, and so install two cards in a turn, which is normally an impediment.
• Hyoubu Institute: Absolute Clarity likes Subliminal Messaging because it triggers their ID on the corps turn when subliminal messaging returns to their hand, so they effectively get two credits clicklessly instead of one.
• GameNET: Where Dreams are Real somewhat synergizes with Subliminal Messaging, because once they have iced up a bit, they make money whenever the runner runs, and Subliminal Messaging ensures they can also get an additional credit if the runner doesn't run. This helps them to control their own destiny.
• Pravdivost Consulting: Political Solutions somewhat synergizes with this card, because they already have a built-in deterrent to the runner making runs.

Of course, Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist can try to prevent you from getting back the Subliminal Messaging by initiating a run every turn, but if this does not advance their game plan of milling you, then this is it's own tax on the runner.

Most reviewers seem to like this card, so I will take the unpopular opinion:

This card is probably not worth it particularly after System Gateway.

": Gain 2" isn't a super good rate for your click, it's kind of the lowest viable rate. Cards like Telework Contract give you a net of 8 over 4 clicks (including the install), so still 2 per click on average, but the up-front cost is only 1 while The Artist costs 4 up front, only breaking even a few turns later. Security Testing also gives you two for comparison, but criminals are usually trying to stack that with things like Pennyshaver, Dirty Laundry, Red Team, DreamNet. With the artist, there is no possible way to stack anything with the "click for two credits" action. Another example is Smartware Distributor distributor -- now you can click for 3, with the caveat that it drips those credits to you over several turns. After a few turns though you are getting more bang for your buck this way than from clicking on the artist, AND the up-front install cost is zero. So why would you not rather click on that?

": Install a program or piece of hardware, paying 1 less": is also okay but not all that great. The problem is that this is hard to stack with other shaper staples like Self-modifying Code, Test Run, or Into the Depths. By comparison if you use cards like DZMZ Optimizer instead then it will reduce the cost of programs you install no matter what method you use to install them. True, this card stacks with DZMZ, but how much program cost reduction do you really need? True, this card can also reduce the cost of installing hardware, but most Shapers are not installing that much hardware right now. The Artist is probably too much influence to splash into Az McCaffrey: Mechanical Prodigy, and even then, Az McCaffrey: Mechanical Prodigy is usually trying to use things like Masterwork (v37) and Prognostic Q-Loop to install hardware clicklessly, and doesn't want to sit around clicking on the The Artist.

The card art is beautiful, but nowadays this card probably belongs in the binder. There have just been too many other better econ options printed later.

TL;DR

This card is not good from an econ perspective, as other reviewers have pointed out.

However, because you can use it to draw cards on the corp's turn, it gives you a way to survive double Punitive Counterstrike.

This is probably the best in-faction way for shapers to survive that right now, and it's not easy for the corp to prevent this.

It is also highly relevant in games vs. Jinteki: Personal Evolution. If the corp plays Mitosis, and you run and hit an Urtica Cipher, this can help you get your card count back up rapidly so that you don't die the following turn.

So, think of this card as a shield.