Why are 2/1's good?

• They can let you play a deck full of 5/3's and still have a clean path to 7 points.
• The 2/1's are a lot harder to steal because you can score them from hand without any special tricks. So this is attractive to Glacier-type decks.

In Weyland this is a common pattern for corps on SDS Drone Deployment. Their plan is usually to score one Hostile Takeover and jam SDS.

A difference though is, Haas Bioroid already has a lot of access to fast advance tools -- it's not like they couldn't easily score 1 point from hand if they really wanted to before. But, maybe they can use the Biotic Labor and Bass CH1R180G4 slots in some other way now.

Why is this 2/1 good?

There were a lot of comments on Hákarl 1.0 about how to use the derez effect profitably:

• De-rezing Spin Doctor means you can re-rez it for free and instantly draw two cards. A lot of decks have spin doctor. So now compare the effect of scoring this agenda to scoring Superconducting Hub.
• De-rezing Marilyn Campaign or Nico Campaign means that you can re-rez it for free and put more counters on it. So now it will keep giving you money for longer. This won't actually give you any benefit until a few turns from now, and if the runner trashes that card then there's no benefit. But at least this may be profitable at some point, or pressure the runner to actually go trash it.
• De-rezing Anemone means you get to re-rez it and do two net damage again. However, you can't rez it a second time unless the runner runs it, so this isn't going to accomplish much except grinding the runner down a bit. (Anemone isn't super interesting in Haas-Bioroid, it was more like, maybe a Jinteki deck would import Hákarl 1.0.)
• De-rezing Hákarl 1.0 means you get to re-rez it again and trigger it's on-rez effect again. However, this isn't likely to have any impact. The point of that effect is to make the brain damage stick if they face-check the ice, but if you are de-rezing it then they already know what it is.

Those comments considered the midnight sun booster pack. But in the full midnight sun, there are a few other interactions worth noting:

• De-rezing Trieste Model Bioroids means you can re-target it when you re-rez it. This might be useful if e.g. the runner put Femme Fatale on the ice it was targetting.
• De-rezing Wave means that when you re-rez it, you can trigger every rezzed copy of Echo to add another subroutine. That potentially gives you a way to beef up all your echos and make them really annoying. (However, that may be bit janky, because Anarchs will still break them pretty cheaply with Buzzsaw or destroy them instantly with Chisel.)

Overall, the de-rez effect seems pretty marginal.

The way I imagine this agenda being useful is something like:

• A MirrorMorph: Endless Iteration deck that runs pretty rich
• Agenda suite is 2x Élivágar Bifurcation, 3x Project Vacheron, 3x Send a Message
• Game plan is, score one Élivágar Bifurcation, then jam Vacherons in a scoring remote repeatedly until eventually you score one of them, then score another three pointer for the win with Big Deal on the next turn. (Maybe using Digital Rights Management here to go faster, or even Malapert Data Vault to tutor the Big Deal).

The Élivágar Bifurcation is helpful because, even if they steal both, the runner steal needs to steal at least two 3 pointers to win. And you don't need to pack Biotic Labor or spend money on Biotic Labor, you can use those slots for Big Deal instead.

This is basically a reprint of Study Guide, with very small changes:

• It starts with one power counter on it, saving you a few credits.
• It's one less influence to splash it now.

Give that review a read first, it's great, and a lot of the trade-offs are still accurate.

This is going to be very attractive to Rielle "Kit" Peddler: Transhuman decks -- instead of pumping Gordian Blade's strength once per run, now they can pump it once for the entire game, and as long as they can successfully turn everything into a code gate, then they will break everything pretty efficiently.

(But, see also the study guide reviews, because you have a pretty big tempo hit if you need to pump the strength up to Ravana 1.0 and Tollbooth levels for example.)

Maybe this can be mitigated a bit with Rigging Up -- you save 3 on the install cost that way, and save 4 pumping (compared to Study Guide) if you start with two power counters, so if you encounter Tollbooth you "only" need 7 more credits to get in now.

On the other hand it may also be attractive in Captain Padma Isbister: Intrepid Explorer, because you can charge it using the ID ability and save yourself 2 each time. Not clear if that is a better use of the ID ability than charging the boat though. Maybe you can get value this way in the very early game when you haven't installed the boat yet.

Looks made for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist.

Let's assume you are also playing Marrow and other core damage cards, so early in the game it's plausible that you can do 2 core damage to yourself. If you then install Begemot what does that help you do?

You can break all of these ice for 1:

• Ice Wall
• Eli 1.0
• Hagen
• Akhet
• Bran 1.0 eventually, if you can do one more core damage to yourself
• It's probably going to be too hard to break triple advanced Pharos with this at any point in the game

So, this looks like a potentially high impact card in Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist, a runner that often isn't rich in the first place. This may help a lot in the Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design matchup for instance, because you will be able to contest servers much more cheaply, for Chastushka and Light the Fire! runs.

For comparison, many runners break Eli and Hagen for 2 using Boomerang. But this requires you to draw Boomerang, and spend a click installing Boomerang. And you can only have one Boomerang installed at a time. So Begemot would save you a lot of clicks compared to that.

The card has some significant drawbacks though:

• Costs 5 to install which is pricey. Maybe you plan to Simulchip this out at the last second?
• Takes 2 MU which is a lot, and Marrow only gives you one MU. This would leave you with only one extra MU for flex. So you will have a hard time playing a lot of viruses, which is also something that many Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist want to do to take advantage of Avgustina Ivanovskaya. You can run T400 Memory Diamond but then you are spending precious money and clicks building a pretty big rig. (OTOH that also helps you sustain more core damage)

Breaking Bran cheaply is very attractive because you need to land your Chastushka's and then be able to check archives. So this definitely can help your game plan.

But, it looks like if you are playing this card you probably aren't also running a bunch of viruses. If you don't have Leech then, you probably aren't on Buzzsaw either, you probably pull in Unity and Bukhgalter. You probably need to pull in Boomerang to deal with cards like Pharos.

So this looks like an Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist that's all in on brain damage and not on Avgustina Ivanovskaya and viruses. Maybe less sabotage potential but more consistent landing of Chastushka?

Another point: If you are on Begemot then you no longer have a good reason to use Chisel + Devil Charm to blow up Bran 1.0. You can reserve that particular power tool for troublesome code gates and sentries, which will help make all the servers more porous.

This sounds like a fun version of Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist. But this is a runner that needs to breach servers to win. Without a lot of room for Fermenter and without Keiko you are going to miss out on a bunch of econ opportunities that power many contemporary Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist decks.

As corp, if I see you install this, I will likely assume you aren't on Stargate because of memory pressure. You may not even have a lot of room for Imp. That takes a lot of pressure off of me to ice up R&D, and let's me put ice everywhere else instead, which is probably a bad thing for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist.

Ultimately this will give the corp a lot of headaches. A lot of servers that are taxing for almost all other breakers will suddenly not be so taxing, and you won't really have any counterplay like you do around Botulus. And many alternative ways to make taxing servers, like Manegarm Skunkworks and Anoetic Void, will get blown up by Light the Fire!. (NEXT Activation Command might still help you score though.)

So, everyone will splash Gold Farmer now?

This is an interesting card which combines two different elements:

• When your turn begins, gain 1 . This is comparable to cards like PAD Campaign (which is one more to rez and one more trash) and Tiered Subscription, which is one less to rez, but only pays you if the runner makes a run. (And costs one influence to bring into Jinteki, which usually can't be justified)
• Then, if you have 4 or less, do 1 net damage

The latter effect reminds of cards like Bio-Ethics Association, which was a pretty powerful card, even with it's restrictions. It meant that if the runner allowed you to establish a board presence, you could suddenly rez Bio-Ethics association and get some net damage without spending a click, possibly contributing to a kill. But also, even if you don't get the kill, the runner must run and trash this or suffer on-going net damage. So if you suddenly rez two of these, this is a tempo hit to the runner, even if it's only two to trash it, and you can follow up with more pressure the next turn.

However, this is really a pretty different card from Bio-Ethics Association, because, the corp usually cannot just sit below 4 . They will not be able to threaten to rez ice, play kill cards, score agendas, and so on. Ending turn at or below 3 is usually bad because you cannot trigger Snare!, so the runner will hammer HQ and R&D. So the corp is not really looking to trigger the net damage from this card in an on-going way.

Instead, the way I could imagine this card being used is the following:

• Bladderwort is face-down on the board. (More ideally, two of them.) The corp is on 5-10 or so during the runner's turn.
• The runner runs HQ or R&D and hits a Snare!.
• The corp is now on low credits after paying for Snare!. If necessary, they rez other assets on the board, like Storgotic Resonator perhaps, at the end of the runner's turn, to get to < 4 .
• At the end of the runner's turn, the corp rezzes any Bladderwort on the board. At the start of the corp's turn, each one does one net damage and gives the corp money to cover its rez cost.
• If we are lucky, we trash some cards matching the runner's faction, charging Storgotic Resonator. We spend our clicks clicking on that for additional net damage, which doesn't cost any money. Each time we click on it, there's a chance it will charge itself again, so hopefully we can do 3 net damage this way.

This may not be a reliable kill, it depends greatly on what cards are in the runner's hand. There are a lot of neutral cards that are commonly played that won't help us out much here.

However, the silver lining is, even if we don't get the kill, we still did net damage for each Bladderwort, which builds tempo, and now we have rezzed Bladderworts on the board, which are about as good as PAD Campaign. If the runner doesn't run these now, we get on-going money, and if they hit Snare again later without trashing these first, then they may get more net damage.

So to recap:

• It cost us 1 click to install Bladderwort
• By waiting to rez it until the opportune time, we got one net damage out of it, and this was credit neutral
• It costs the runner a click to draw that card back, and a click and 3 credits to go trash Bladderwort

For Jinteki: Personal Evolution decks that are primarily looking to win by taxing the runners clicks, this may be like a more playable version of PAD Campaign.

That's the most positive argument for this card.

The argument against this card is like:

• PAD Campaign is not exactly a staple of Jinteki: Personal Evolution, because usually what will happen is, you play it, the runner either runs and trashes it, or waits for you to rez it and then trashes it, which takes a credit from you, and didn't do any damage to the runner. Trading a click for a click is not a tempo advantage. Even if it cost the runner some money to trash it, the runners usually have plenty of economy to trash PE's board.
• This card has a one less trash cost than PAD Campaign, so if that's all that happens, then this was slightly worse than playing PAD Campaign
• This card only does something more than PAD Campaign if you manage to install it, it doesn't get trashed, and at some later point, you have very few credits.
• Usually, the corp is not trying to go down to very low credits -- that usually means you are losing. In the turn where we rez Bladderwort, we get to do some net damage, but after that we have a strong incentive to click for credits for the rest of the turn, because if we end on 4 or fewer credits then we risk not being able to trigger traps like Snare! and Cerebral Overwriter. So if this turn doesn't result in a kill, then arguably we aren't ending our turn in a good place.

In other words, a lot of things have to go just right in order for this card to advance our game plan meaningfully, and more likely, it's slightly worse for us than a PAD Campaign.

One of the issues here is, if the corp count is not in a pretty narrow range, then hitting Snare! won't push you down into Bladderwort range. But keeping your credit count in a narrow range like this at all times may not be viable -- sometimes the corp wants to play a bunch of Hedge Fund or Celebrity Gift and bank for a power turn later.

So to make this more viable, we'd like a way to sit on a lot more credits than this, but suddenly dump them in a way that helps us do a lot of damage to the runner on their turn, and then follow up with Bladderwort on the start of our turn.

We could imagine like:

• The corp is on 15-20 . Saisentan is on R&D, already rezzed, and we install Corporate Troubleshooter in the root. The runner most likely guesses this is Hokusai Grid or Crisium Grid or something. Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist has a killer out and decides to run to clear the way for Stargate.
• The corp dumps almost all of their credits into Corporate Troubleshooter, so now it's like a 15 strength Saisentan or something. They also rez Storgotic Resonator, and sacrifice False Lead if possible.
• It's possible that Saisentan kills the runner outright, but if it doesn't, we follow up with rezzing of 2x Bladderwort at the end of the runner's turn, and on our turn, clicking on the Storgotic Resonator, or perhaps, scoring a Sting! that was sitting on the board. We can make sure we pay exactly the right amount into Corporate troubleshooter so that we have exactly 3 credits before rezzing the Bladderwort, and therefore have enough credits to score Sting.

Is this play likely to succeed?

• For most killers, like Bukhgalter or Odore, if we pay e.g. 15 into Corporate Troubleshooter then they have to pay about 15 to match strength. So this only works if we have a credit lead over the runner. That's not exactly common for Jinteki: Personal Evolution. But it could happen, because when playing vs this identity, it's often correct for the runner to decide not to play their econ cards in order to conserve them as shields for net damage and avoid being milled out. There's usually no risk of things like Punitive Counterstrike which can cause them to lose the game if the corp gets a credit lead, so they may not be concerned about the corp having a credit lead when the corp is Jinteki: Personal Evolution.
• If the runner is on Mimic, they may be screwed.
• If the runner is on Afterimage, if they have two stealth credits then they will bypass Saisentan and then the corp is screwed, otherwise they are likely screwed.
• If the runner planned to Chisel and Devil Charm the Saisentan, then they are probably screwed, because the corp can boost the strength after the runner has decided to encounter the ice.
• If the runner used Boomerang or Botulus on Saisentan, then the corp is screwed. But this is not likely once Saisentan has already been rezzed and is already known to the runner.
• If the runner has Endurance installed, then the corp is probably hopelessly screwed.

So again, this is kind of a marginal play. Some runners may be surprised by the Corporate Troubleshooter + Saisentan combo, but it requires the corp having a credit lead and the runner not having certain cards. To be able to pull this off reliably, the corp probably needs to run several Corporate Troubleshooter. But then if the runner sees one of them, that will be a massive tip-off to what's going on. It's hard to see any other ice in jinteki that would be interesting to pump up with Corporate Troubleshooter.

• Corporate Troubleshooter is pretty janky (but props to Bowlsley for finding a way to make it work in this deck)
• Bladderwort is also pretty janky
• The net damage part is probably too hard to trigger in an interesting or useful way. The only reason to play Bladderwort is that it's one less to rez than PAD Campaign, and that may be more important to Jinteki: Personal Evolution than the trash cost being one less.

Why does Jinteki want to defend Archives?

A couple good reasons come to mind:

• Jinteki: Restoring humanity wants to get their sweet drip credits
• Kakurenbo works a lot better if there are facedown cards in archives at the start of your turn. Usually the question for the runner is, did you use Kakurenbo to replay a trap out of Archives, or did you play something like an agenda from hand. If archives was revealed before you play Kakurenbo, then after you play Kakurenbo, the runner can run Archives and if it looks exactly the same, then they know you played something from hand.
• In Midnight Sun, we have new cards like Moon Pool and Regenesis, enabling Archives focused shenanigans described in a blog post by Doomrat
• Counterplay to Security Testing builds, Sneakdoor Beta, Sabotage focused runners, etc.

How do popular icebreakers fare?

• Bukhgalter breaks it for 2, including the discount. This is the same cost as Drafter, which is also rezzed for 3. I posit that Drafter is quite playable in the current meta.
• Afterimage needs 1 normal and 1 stealth credit, or two leech counters and a normal credit, so this is fairly taxing to that icebreaker
• Carmen breaks it for 3
• Mimic cannot break it unless the runner can reduce the strength by 1.
• Echelon likely breaks it for 4, (but only 1 if you have 4 icebreakers installed)

What alternatives stand out?

• Saisentan (probably) does more damage to the runner if they face-check without a killer. But it costs 5 to rez rather than 3, and is broken for the same or less with all of the above killers. On the flip side, Saisentan resists Boomerang and Botulus better than this ice.
• Karuna costs one more to rez, has one more sub and one less strength. A face-check without a killer is usually only going to do 2 net damage. Karuna is a bit weaker vs. Afterimage and Mimic. This ice is not often played in the current meta, because it usually is pretty low impact -- the runner either runs with their killer, or hits it with boomerang before running, and then it costs 4 to rez and probably does nothing for the rest of the game. In most cases you'd rather have Saisentan, because if they facecheck it it can kill them outright, and even if they hit it with Boomerang, you still probably do 1 or 2 net damage.

This ice is a lot closer to Karuna than Saisentan, and the same arguments against Karuna applies to this ice -- boomerang and botulus completely break it, and most runners won't blindly face-check this. But the difference is that it is bit more efficient than Karuna -- it's still 2-ish to break and it's only 3 to rez rather than 4. So we're reaching towards Drafter levels of efficiency in a faction that is usually pretty poor.

In Jinteki: Personal Evolution, it's possible that Anemone is an all around better choice than this for defending Archives.

• Anemone is only two and a card to rez. Anemone does 3 net damage if the sub fires, but does 2 guaranteed net damage even if the sub is broken -- even if the runner played Inside Job and bypassed the ice.
• Because when you rez Anemone you pitch a card from your hand into Archives, it is possible that the corp pitches Sting! into archives when Anemone is rezzed. If there are a bunch of other facedown cards in Archives, then it's possible that the runner can be flatlined. So when Anemone is rezzed, it is likely that the runner actually jacks out. This is very tempo positive -- you paid two and a card, did two net damage, and the runner jacked out, abandoning their click. They probably spend the rest of their turn drawing up and don't actually run Archives until the next turn.
• This probably isn't what happens with Bathynomus -- they probably break it for 2ish, take no net damage, and complete their run.
• This argument doesn't apply if the runner is using Sneakdoor Beta, in that case you'd rather have Bathynomus.