Mausolus

Mausolus 4[credit]

Ice: Code Gate - AP
Strength: 5
Influence: 3

You can advance this ice.

[subroutine] Gain 1[credit]. If there are 3 or more hosted advancement counters, instead gain 3[credit].

[subroutine] Do 1 net damage. If there are 3 or more hosted advancement counters, instead do 3 net damage.

[subroutine] Give the Runner 1 tag. If there are 3 or more hosted advancement counters, instead give the Runner 1 tag and end the run.

Illustrated by Yog Joshi
Decklists with this card

Martial Law (ml)

#97 • English
Startup Card Pool
Standard Card Pool
Standard Ban List (show history)
Printings
Martial Law
Rulings

No rulings yet for this card.

Reviews

The Spoiler that made Weyland fans around the world say: "OMG Weyland's getting good ICE!"

One of the primary concerns Weyland has revolves around its suite of ICE; the earlier cycles giving us the likes of Tyrant, Salvage, Woodcutter, and Burke Bugs, which hasn't exactly lit the world of fire. This faction has a good reputation with most of it's barriers, but other ICE types seem to fall apart. When asked to name a good Weyland Sentry piece of ICE, 99% of you will proclaim Archer, and for Code Gates most would say Checkpoint or Wormhole...and herein lies the problem, why is most of Weyland's ICE so mediocre?

Enter Mausolus, a stand-alone, strong Code Gate with multiple subs that are respectable, until you discover this pieces of ICE is the first of its kind - one that has stronger, more impactful subs when it is advanced. Staring down the barrel of this ICE fully advanced gives Faust a run for its cards, requiring 2 to boost and a further 3 to break, you can be sure the Runner will let the first sub fire. The problem comes with surprise, a thrice-advanced piece of ICE will telegraph itself as a Mausolus, which doesn't allow it to get the drop on you like an Archer would. Sure, there's Anson Rose to consider for means of boost-advancing on encounter, but then you're surrendering yourself to build a deck that capitolises on that support network, with ICE like Fire Wall that gets slow-rolled into a towering beast of an inferno, until the runner drops a D4v1d.

Mausolus is a good card, and I think any and all Weyland decks will treat this as an auto-include. Maybe someone could bluff out a triple-advanced Ice Wall to instill the fear of the steroid-ed Mausolus, but the fact remains despite the little impact of surprise - Mausolus isn't ICE to encounter lightly, and each run is going to tighten the belt of the Runner's pay-to-break pool. I sincerely hope Weyland get to see ICE like this in future packs, because Meat Damage Protection is still being printed and Weyland needs more ways to secure their beefy agendas, (at time of writing - still the only faction with a single 3/2 agenda.)

(Martial Law era)
1595
Might be fun out of Tennin too... —
A good ID for it, in a faction native to net damage, but at 3 influence I think the asking price is too high. —
Interesting designer choice, that Code Gates get more scary, see DNA Tracker. —
Thrice-advanced ICE could also be space ICE so you can potentially bluff one of those instead —
@LordRandomness. - While mechanically possibly I don't see a lot of space ice at all these days. Wormhole sometimes makes an appearance while Orion is sometimes used as an Oversight AI target; but the times I do see wormhole no one advances it beforehand. Sometimes the surprise is just too impactful to throw away. —

Now that the hype has worn off, let's talk about Mausolus.

It turns out that this card isn't as absurd as people thought. 4 for a 5 strength, 3 sub code gate is actually fantastic, but the three subs turn out to be fairly weak without being triple advanced. And if you aren't using jank to triple advance it, well, 10 credits for a 5 strength, 3 sub code gate is pretty hard to justify no matter how good the subs are. If you are using jank, you run into the problem advanceable ice has had since day 1, which is that it sucks without the jank, the jank sucks without the ice, and the benefit you're getting is probably marginal compared to just playing better ice and an econ card.

(Crimson Dust era)
293
It's not absurd, but taken on the value of it's unadvanced side only it is a highly respectable piece of central-server tax ICE. —
Wouldn't it be 7 credits to advance normally? Still taxes Gordian Blade 6 credits to break everything. —
I think he's counting the click as another credit —
Okay, I see that now, but click =/= credit. —
Gotta disagree with you there Junkmail, this ICE is godsend in Weyland. though it's unadvanced subs aren't stellar, the facecheck punishment is real. a net damage and a guaranteed tag for only 3 credits is enough to make even NBN jealous. It costs a lot to break, even with the most efficient decoders, and tools like Priority Construction, Shipment From Kaguya and even Hollywood Renovation can easily get it up to 3 advancements. And while less than 3 advancement counters won't boost the ICE itself, it still fuels Builder of Nations and Mass Commercialization. —