A "pre-emptive replacement" is a somewhat strange thing. Normally, you delay replacing something until the old one has stopped working to avoid overlap. Yet, Living Mural is perhaps best thought of as a pre-emptive replacement for a card the designers knew would rotate very soon: Ika. The problem with pre-emptive replacements is that they can look strange when first released, as they might not see any play for some time while the old options remain.

In the spirit of prescience, I'd like to make some predictions and speculations about what might happen when Ika does rotate, and Living Mural is forced to step up to the plate as the premier Trojan Killer.

The Differences:

• Higher install cost 3 vs 0

• Breaks less efficiently 1 credit per subroutine vs 1 credit for 2 subroutines

• Pumps marginally more efficiently 1 credit for 2 strength vs 2 credits for 3 strength

• Lower base strength 1 vs 2

• Threat 4 text makes it 4 strength for a single turn

• Different Interface requirements (see below)

From a pure numbers standpoint, it's looking weaker, except for ICE which has exactly 3 strength or ICE with 6 or more strength, Ika can interface more efficiently. ICE with 6 or more strength constitutes a painfully short list, whether it's been released by NSG (Trebuchet, Cloud Eater, Tyr and Colossus (who I consider an honourary member)), or whether it's an old FFG card that will be rotating with Ika (SYNC BRE, NEXT Diamond, Hydra, Archer and Surveyor). Even against 3 and 6+ strength ICE, Living Mural often doesn't break them as efficiently due to its lower subroutine cost-to-ratio. And even then that's without factoring in the higher install cost.

At Threat 4, this becomes somewhat more favourable, as you can now break anything with 4 or less strength without pumping and break almost everything with minimal pumping. If you can continually bounce this card with UAV, an argument can be made that it is always a 4-strength Icebreaker once Threat 4 is achieved. The problem is that Threat 4 tends to be deceptively late into the game, especially compared to Threat 3, and having to continually bounce and pay for Living Mural to stretch the benefits means this is meagre compensation for all the other sacrifices this card makes during the rest of the game.

Not only that but since it already pumps rather efficiently, 3 extra starting strength actually saves you fewer credits than you might think (usually only 1 or 2 fewer credits per ICE, and that's assuming it's a large ICE, which tends to have more subroutines anyway), which makes it hard to justify bouncing and paying the reinstall cost. Furthermore, it doesn't compensate for the fact that it still breaks subroutines 1 for 1, which is one of the major downsides this card has compared to Ika, especially against Sentries which frequently have multiple subroutines.

The last and perhaps most interesting distinction is its mobility, where Ika could be used to break any ICE anywhere, for the additional movement cost, Living Mural can break anything in the same server, but cannot be moved. This is somewhat reminiscent of the old Cyber-Cypher in its high efficiency compared to conventional breakers, limited by only being able to affect a single server. Here Living Mural can eke out some efficiency against tall Glacial servers that include multiple Sentries that Ika would otherwise have to continually bounce between. However, if you want to break sentries on multiple different servers in the same turn (such as for Deep Dive which Arissana often uses), you will either need to have multiple Living Mural's installed or use Spree to move it mid-turn.

On the whole, the comparison is not looking great, maybe this card is better against breaking multiple high-strength sentries stacked on top of the same server once Threat 4 is reached but who are we kidding, there's a very good reason that every Arissana deck I've seen runs Ika and not Living Mural. Perhaps the real question is if Arissana will use Living Mural at all, once Ika rotates or fall back on conventional breakers like Echelon or even import a breaker like Revolver or Carmen?

Well, let's compare it to Carmen, the bread-and-butter Killer from System Gateway.

From a strength perspective, Carmen is eerily reminiscent of Ika, with 2 base strength and pumps 2 for 3, which means that like with Ika, Living Mural is cheaper at pumping when it comes to 3 strength and 6 or higher strength ICE. However, as they both break 1 for 1, it can actually retain the added value and is better against 3-strength ICE while being competitive against 4 and 5-strength ICE too, unlike with Ika. And if you can reliably get the Threat 4 ability online, you can break substantially more efficiently than Carmen, while having comparable install costs (you can usually install Carmen for 3). Once again, however, the server limitation is its downfall, as Ika could move anywhere for a cost, and Carmen, like most conventional icebreakers can break any sentry anywhere without problems. Living Mural's one server limitation becomes crippling and I struggle to see how Living Mural could coexist with Deep Dive decks unless you add Spree, or include multiple copies of Living Mural, ultimately just adding to the setup and expenditure, and driving down its value proposition in the process.

Alternatively, however, cutting Deep Dive and adding more conventional multi-access such as Conduit and “Pretty” Mary da Silva (or importing a strong card like The Twinning), or even utilizing some Flux Capacitor + Cataloguer combo, while putting a Living Mural on R&D and regularly running R&D to lock the Corp could be a viable strategy. Or you could place one of these on the scoring remote to lock the Corp out of scoring and force agendas to accumulate in HQ before going in for a Spree + Cupellation run to win the game.

Ultimately, it's a very different icebreaker compared to Ika, with very different strengths, weaknesses and limitations. While it is almost certainly weaker and more limiting than Ika on the whole, it will be interesting to see what becomes of Arissana decks once Ika rotates. Will her playstyle change to fall in line with Living Mural's as she focuses on a single server or will she stop using Killers altogether and rely more heavily on Slap Vandal + Poison Vial combos, or turn to Botulus and Physarum Entangler or will she prefer to use more conventional non-Trojan Icebreakers like Carmen or Echelon to be the backbone of her deck while using Trojans like Pichação and Hush as more of an extra flourish? No one knows for sure, but it will be interesting to see.

Thematically Living Mural pretty much sells itself, the server is an alleyway and the Mural is a painted-on, living weapon that can attack anything in its path, but cannot move itself. It's very in theme with Arissana's identity as a street artist and Urban Art Connoisseur and fits perfectly with her whole character design. As for the actual text on the walls; "Mente" literally translates to mind or maybe in context mental? Perhaps calling NBN mental or mad? The text on the other side of the wall seems to read "viva livre brega" which roughly translates as live, free, strange (or quirky perhaps). I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean and I think I either read it wrong or translated it wrong, corrections would be much appreciated! Similarly, the word in the top corner of the left wall seems to read "fora" if you squint, which means outside, what that means in context and the accuracy of my reading is questionable, to say the least, and I'd love to see a full size, high-quality copy of this art just to understand the little references and world-building details better. Lastly, including an Archer walking past and getting tongue-slapped is just a really nice touch to tie the whole card together, a true weapon, worthy of the Killer name! (yet so cute!)

TLDR: A weaker replacement for Ika in Trojan-based Arissana decks, doesn't see much play at the time of writing but if you are reading this after Dawn that may well have changed dramatically.

My, my, my, yet another strong card with no review! Whatever shall we do? hehe

A wise person once told me that if you are going to play a 3/1, it had better have a crazy strong effect. Eminent Domain has a craaaaaaaazy strong effect.

When scored, you can search your deck for a card and install and rez that card IGNORING ALL COSTS, three of the most important words in the game, up there alongside End The Run and Do X Meat Damage.

In other words, you can, as part of scoring this agenda, compress the effects of an overadvanced Project Atlas, a weaker Timely Public Release and Send a Message. Yikes! That's a lot of value.

So let's cut to the chase and run through some of the best targets for this card because if you're going to use it, you'll probably want to be using it in a deck with at least a couple of expensive high-value cards. After all, money saved is money made from the perspective of total net expenditures, so the more valuable a card you can install and rez, the more value you get from Eminent Domain.

If we sort by cost a few things immediately jump out at us, first off, the most expensive cards are almost exclusively big pieces of ICE, for example, the 5 most expensive corp cards in standard at the time of writing are (tied for first place at 10 credits each):

• Seraph
• Hydra
• Tyr
• NEXT Diamond
• Cloud Eater

Unfortunately, a lot of these cards are deceptively anti-synergistic, half the value of Cloud Eater is in the rez during an encounter so rezzing it with Eminent wastes potential value. Seraph and Hydra are surprisingly weak, even within NBN and provide questionable value to Weyland. NEXT Diamond is explicitly designed to be played with a bunch of other NEXT ICE so importing it on its own is meh. Tyr is a strong card but 5 influence is a lot to ask for, and like the Diamond, this card is strongest when synergized with other bioroid cards like Hákarl 1.0, Trieste Model Bioroids or Ravana 1.0 where they can feed off of each other to maximise value and try to guarantee the core damage.

Next on the list is Tithonium, which is banned... moving on.

Conundrum is of little value in a faction that just got Hammer but Anansi and Tollbooth are interesting considerations since they are pricey yet of high value.

It's also worth noting that all of the 8 cost cards, as well the banned 9 cost Tithonium as well as Hydra and NEXT Diamond will rotate with Dawn. So it will be very interesting to see what new high-end, pricey cards enter standard to fill this niche, perhaps Weyland will get their own large monstrosity but for now, the targets are somewhat unremarkable.

Sure... you can use it to find and rez a Pharos or an Oduduwa or a Blockchain but instead of running through all of the seven costs cards and boring you to death let's get to the good stuff.

Archer, is probably the best target for this card. To answer the question that might already be running through your head, yes, sacrificing an Agenda is treated as a "cost" that Emiment ignores. This means you can search for, install and rez an Archer, without sacrificing anything.

If you're not already familiar with Archer, this card HURTS.

• Carmen does it for an excruciating 8 credits
• Num does it for 8 too
• Ika does it 8 assuming you have to move
• Echelon with 2 other Icebreakers does it for a soul-crushing 10 credits
• Revolver does it for 4 credits and 4 power counters, which means you can never fully break it more than once
• Odore does it for a surprisingly tolerable 6 credits if you have all your companions
• Mimic just cries
• Only Orca breaks it relatively efficiently for 4 credits (and that says more about Orca than Archer)

One of the most brutal things I encountered was a Weyland player who used this card to find and rez an Archer, then installed another Archer and sacrificed the Eminent to rez it. With just a single 3/1 Agenda you can now efficiently rez, not one but two Archers. Runners should be afraid, I know I was, I was playing shaper and got absolutely locked out of R&D :(.

Outside of ICE, there are a handful of other Weyland cards that require sacrificing an Agenda which you might want to consider, Corporate Town is top-tier if you can afford to protect it. Allowing you to trash a Runner resource each turn, no tags, clicks or credits required, which can wreck resource-dependent Runners cough cough Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist, but also just like Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist because of Urban Art Vernissage and Aesop’s Pawnshop. Or even just picking off Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga or Arruaceiras Crew or The Twinning or other high-value resources.

Oberth Protocol is another potent card that can serve as a kind of in-faction SanSan City Grid if you are looking for fast advance that doesn't require you to discard your entire hand, while simultaneously helping you stack your advanceable ICE sky high.

The "Expend" effect is a little bit more niche, in fact, it's one of only two expendable Agendas released ever, alongside Slash and Burn Agriculture, and one of only 5 total Expendable cards, including Tree Line, Descent and Angelique Garza Correa. The five of which are themselves a new mechanic released in the Liberation cycle. Definitely an interesting econ card, assuming you have something that'll cost 5 or more to install and rez you save yourself a net of 4 credits, aswell as the click-compression on the install, which is respectable. The real challenge of course is then getting it back out of Archives, as you'll only ever really want to use this effect so long as you have a Descent in hand or a Spin Doctor on standby.

But it's the theme of this card that is what takes it from good to perfect for me. The discarded Oliveira Family Farm sign lying off to the side, as it's stepped over. The massive floating banner descending from the sky, what almost looks like armed guards in the distance as large machinery is trucked in. "Young Gael Oliveira agreed to stay on and manage the farm, for a fee" so simple and yet so ominous, quintessential Weyland, they'll shake your hand and tell you they're doing you a favour as they milk you dry. They'll claim to be the small businesses, the wholesome family-run shop but at the end of the day, it's all just Weyland.

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

First off, I am absolutely shocked there is no review for this card, it is an incredibly powerful, archetype-defining and all but an essential auto-include in every Arissana Rocha Nahu: Street Artist deck you build. And, I assume it will only become even more important with Dawn as Ika rotates, and Living Mural is forced to take its place.

Once per turn, you can bounce a non-virus trojan back to the grip (so no Chisel, Botulus, Tranquilizer or Physarum Entangler) and gain 2 hosted credits on the UAV, which can then be spent on installing cards. Usually in Arissana decks, you will be continually installing cards from the start of the game to its end and since we can save up credits unlimited with impunity (unlike the companion Paladin Poemu) we can potentially spend multiple turns saving up and then make one big install. The lack of limitation on how these credits are spent makes me comfortable treating this as just functionally generating 2 credits per bounce.

In this way, UAV offers you the ability to do two things simultaneously:

1. Generate 2 credits per turn (2 drip)

2. Bounce an installed Trojan back to hand for repositioning (or to carefully manage MU)

2 drip, with no frills, is incredibly powerful, and the fact that this card can stack (once again unlike Paladin Poemu) means you can potentially drip up to 6 credits per turn.

Here is a list of all non-virus trojans in standard:

0 credits to install:

• Ika
• Kyuban
• Flux Capacitor

1 credit to install

• Hush
• Saci
• Pichação
• Slap Vandal

2 credits to install

• Egret
• Monkeywrench

The only 3 cost card:

• Living Mural

Almost a third of these net you the full 2 credits in profit, another 4 net you 1 credit, 2 more pay for themselves and only Living Mural will actually cost you money to continually bounce. Combine these with other effects like DZMZ Optimizer and you can pretty consistently profit that 2 credits drip per turn. On its own, 2 credits drip per turn is already extremely powerful and if you have 0 cost Trojans installed you probably want to be trying to bounce them every turn to maximise the possible profit.

Add to this the fact that Arissana can install a Trojan mid-run at no cost and you don't even have to spend a click installing a program to be able to bounce them back all over again. Add to this the fact that LilyPAD lets you draw a card the first time you install a program each turn and you realise that once per turn you can install a program at no cost, not even a click, draw a card for free and then bounce it back for the full 2 credits profit with impunity.

However, the real creative tool is bouncing the Trojans themselves, to allow you to regularly reposition them as needed, only Ika and Hush move themselves, everything else needs Spree or UAV to reposition them, and you will need to reposition them, as locking all of your Trojans into a single configurations cripples the creative adaptability that defines Arissana's playstyle.

Combined, Urban Art Vernissage is both a potent econ tool and an essential flexibility tool to allow you to constantly reposition your collection of Trojans where they are most needed.

The reason why I think this card will only be more important soon is that while most current Arissana decks utilize Ika as their Killer of choice, Ika will rotate with Dawn and unless a new Trojan Killer is released in Dawn, Living Mural will probably become the breaker of choice. Living Mural, unlike Ika, cannot reposition itself, making it all the more dependent on UAV to pick it up and reposition it, plus the Threat 4 text makes it stronger whenever it's installed, further rewarding you for constantly bouncing and reinstalling it.

Thematically this card is probably just a reference to the fact that Arissana is a street artist who likely has a day job managing an Urban Art Vernissage. A vernissage is just a French word for a specific type of art exhibition. As for the quote... I tried to search for what Gemeosianism is, let alone meta neo-Gemeosianism but my search results came up empty which leads me to believe it may just be a fictional term invented by the card designers/narrative team.

The first two adjectives/prefixes are pretty straightforward and commonly used in art parlance, neo- just means new and meta means with or after or sometimes beyond, it's from the Greek of course, in otherwise words with or after neo-Gemeosianism, sometimes beyond neo-Gemeosianism (I really hope that someone gets this joke lol!). It's entirely possible that Gemeosianism is a nonsense word used to make a light joke out of artistic jargon but if it is more than that and anyone can drop a comment below referencing what Gemeosiansism is meant to refer to in-universe that would be much appreciated!

TLDR: a really strong and incredibly valuable card that is the lynchpin in Arissana's Trojan-based strategy, if you are playing Arissana without this card and wondering why your deck feels clunky and difficult to use, please add this card, it will make your life so much easier.

A somewhat strange card, I struggle to see its use cases, and apparently so do most people as I have yet to see a deck that includes this card, be it Jinteki or otherwise. What follows is less of a structured review and simply some of my thoughts and musings. I would be very fascinated to hear the designer's thought process behind this card, so, if you are reading this please leave a comment below or even a full review explaining your thinking as I'd be fascinated to learn, perhaps there is some grand combo I'm simply missing.

Pseudo-damage is pretty much worse than damage in every way, it removes cards from the Grip, but instead of putting them in the Heap where they are hard to get to, it puts them in the Stack, where they will be drawn back into. Not only that but it cannot be used to Flatline the Runner, this card can leave the Runner at 0 cards in hand, but will never win you the game outright.

Thus, pseudo-damage is best combined with real damage to strike the finishing blow, Data Loop can be used to soften the Runner up for nasty traps or painful agendas like Fujii Asset Retrieval for example. Yet as this card is a Terminal, it cannot be used in combination with End of the Line, Mindscaping or Angelique Garza Correa, all of which would otherwise be the obvious kill combos that come to mind.

The other major example of such an effect is Daniela Jorge Inácio, who is also released in this Cycle, but who lists the pseudo-damage as a "cost," which means that if the runner has only a single card in hand for example, they cannot steal the agenda they are accessing, nor trash Daniela. Thus, keeping the Runner on low hand size, even if it does not fully Flatline the Runner, nevertheless serves as a defence in its own way.

Bring Them Home does none of these things, it's not Net Damage so it cannot kill by itself, it's a Terminal Action so it cannot be used as a set-up for a kill and it does not protect anything like Daniela does. This card does little on its own so it almost certainly has to be part of a combo, but what combo?

The only thing I can think of is that against Jinteki it's often desirable to run on a full hand, or perhaps even to be overdrawn as a contingency against the aforementioned Daniela as well as the sheer amount of Net Damage Jinteki traps, defensive upgrades and agendas themselves can do. By removing 2-3 cards from the Runners hand right before a turn you predict they intend on running you force them to spend 2-3 clicks drawing back up before they run, which in turn forces them to run on their 3rd or 4th click...

In this way, you might think of it as a kind of pseudo-lockdown (I know I've used the word "pseudo" a lot in this review), where you install an Agenda, advance it once and then play this card as a pre-emptive protective measure.

Since we're just chatting, I'll give you the rundown on Lockdowns:

• (2/1) You don't want to use a lockdown with a 2/1 since you can just score it from hand, using a Lockdown is needlessly risky to score

• (3/1 or 3/2) Half the value of these cards is that you can bluff them being assets or upgrades and the runner can't affordably check every single facedown card that is ever installed in the scoring remote

• (5/3 or other 5+ advancement counter cards like Sisyphus Protocol, Jumon and so and so forth) To score these out you almost always need to Install > Adance > Advance, then triple Advance on the next turn. If you Install > Advance > play a Lockdown, you'll need to Advance > Advance > Advance next turn and then wait another turn to Advance at least once more. Using the Lockdown delays the scoring and leaves the Agenda sitting in the remote for twice as many of the Runner's turns, and still at least one of the Runner's turns where it's not protected by a Lockdown unless you want to do some messy, inane strategy where you chain together multiple Lockdowns over multiple turns.

That means that the best situation to use lockdowns is to protect 4/2s since you can Install > Advance > play the Lockdown, then triple advance on the next turn. Some fast-advance/never-advance tools can be used to turn 5/3s into what are effectively 4/3s, like Seamless Launch, Biotic Labor, The Holo Man or SanSan City Grid. However, that's a narrow window of opportunity to get value from a Lockdown that spends the rest of the game sitting blank in your hand, it's for that reason that few Lockdowns see play, you would need your Lockdown to provide you immense amounts of value when it is used to justify its inclusion in the first place. The only Jinteki Lockdown in rotation Hyoubu Precog Manifold, fails this test and thus sees very little play.

Since this card requires the Runner to have stolen or trashed a card on their last turn it's an even narrower window of opportunity, where the Runner needs to trash or steal a card, then you Install > Advance your 4/2 then play this card. Which, is almost always just way too niche a situation to justify, because all this card does in a best-case scenario is force the Runner to run 3rd or 4th click.

The use case for this card is getting incredibly complicated and convoluted at this point:

• Step 1: Threat 3 has been reached
• Step 2: The Runner stole or trashed a card on their last turn
• Step 3: Install advance a 4/2 agenda or some kind of trap you want to bait the Runner into accessing by making it look more important than it is
• Step 4: Play Bring Them Home
• Step 5: The Runner spend 3 clicks to draw 3 cards, putting them back at 5 cards in hand
• Step 6: The Runner runs the remote you want them to, best case scenario they hit an Urtica Cypher and now they are on 1 cards in hand
• Step 7: Play that Distributed Tracing you imported for 4 Influence and just happened to have drawn into at the same time as all these other cards
• Step 8: Play that End of the Line you also imported for another 4 influence and just happened to have drawn into at the same time as all these other cards

Win the game?

That's assuming the runner has no contingencies of their own, like AirbladeX (JSRF Ed.), Stoneship Chart Room, Steelskin Scarring and so on and so forth. And that's assuming they have no compressed draw of their own like Dr. Nuka Vrolyck or Diesel which could be used around Step 5, allowing them to run on click 2 instead of click 4, thus giving them time to draw back up after the run and recover from hitting the Urtica Cypher. And that's assuming you did lay a trap and the Runner didn't just steal the game-winning agenda. And that's assuming the runner doesn't just ignore your trap and run elsewhere, such as a central server and win that way.

Not gonna lie, I'm not loving it so far...

What about using this card to fast advance a Blood in the Water? Cool idea but you can't score agendas after taking a Terminal Action so that idea dies in its cradle.

Aside from that... there's Hyobu Institute... you know, that Jinteki ID that everybody plays and that I totally didn't forget about and didn't just find when scrolling through a list of Jinteki IDs. Here it is if you're wondering: Hyoubu Institute: Absolute Clarity. Hyobu nets you a credit if you don't use the Threat 3 ability so there's that... Ah... anyway...

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme of this card and the quote above is just the absolute cherry on top, so bone-chillingly creepy, such a saccharine sentiment, like a controlling, abusive parent who "just wants what's best for you." It's sickening and such a perfect quote for Jinteki, I just can't figure out how to make this card work in an actual deck.

Edit: Something I missed on my initial review is that is card is actually one of a triplet of cards released in Liberation that all share 3 things in common.

1. They are all Terminal actions
2. They all can only be played if the runner stole an agenda or trashed a card on their last turn
3. They all have a Threat 3 effect that strengthens the initial effect for an added cost

The other 2 being Oppo Research and Active Policing. Of the three I think Oppo is probably the strongest, quickly becoming the staple in almost all NBN decklists including the World winning one. It either taxes the runner the entirety of their turn and 8 credits or forces them to float tags, enabling an arsenal of tag punishment, which in turn fuels kill decks and even causes it to be imported into Weyland tag and bag as a serious alternative to Public Trail.

Active Policing enables HB click-based mind-games visa a vie M.I.C., Jaguarundi, Manegarm Skunkworks, Ikawah Project and just generally synergizes with other forms of click consumption like Riot Suppression, Hypoxia or MCA Austerity Policy to deny the runner the ability to fight back. And even this card sees limited play.

While this card makes sense in theory as Jinteki's equivalent of pressuring cards in hand, card draw is not nearly as finite as clicks and thus removing 3 cards from hand, cannot compete with taxing the runner 2 clicks, let alone burying the runner in 4 tags. As mentioned before 1 Dr. Nuka Vrolyck charge can re-draw the runner 3 cards in a single click and there is simply no good equivalent for removing 4 tags so quickly and easily.

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

It can be difficult to give good constructive feedback because I love this game, these cards and everything I'm about to say comes from a place of love and wanting to help the designers. This card... sucks. It's probably one of the worst cards released in Liberation and sees a proportional amount of play to that power level.

The runner can just run through this, like, without breakers... with very minimal drawbacks. If you're wondering how here are some options:

• click 1: draw, click 2: draw, click 3: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• click 1: use Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
• click 1: play Diesel, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
• click 1: play Steelskin Scarring, click 2: run through Piranhas like it wasn't even there
• click 1: use Verbal Plasticity, click 2: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• start of turn: Earthrise Hotel triggers, click 1: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• last turn: play The Class Act, click 1: run through Piranhas like wasn't even there
• better yet, have a Stoneship Chart Room installed and you can face-check this ICE and still get through it

(You can also use a Botulus or Boomerang or Physarum Entangler or almost any other form of ICE cheating if you don't want to take any damage and all these options will get you in without any problems (unlike some other strong ICE like Anansi, Cloud Eater or Hammer that have special text)

This is absolutely hilarious, this card is Diviner (which is already a very weak card), yet more than twice as expensive and somehow even less consistent at ending the run. Just to be kind, the Corp then gifts the Runner a Bad Publicity to help them run through all the rest of their ICE more cheaply because why not?

This card does less damage than an Anemone, draws the Corp a card as though that's somehow worth the cost and then sits around twiddling its thumbs as the Runner moves past it, I don't know how you could have designed a less scary version of Piranhas.

Its sister program, Valentão (keep in mind the numbers are identical only the subroutine text differs), at least makes some sense, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a Weyland player would have more money than the Runner (though some Shapers will give the Corp a run for it's money, no pun intended). Even without the first two subroutines firing, the third has a legitimate threat of ending the run anyway. Let all the subroutines fire and Valentão triggers a 4-credit swing and probably bounces the runner out. If they want to get in, they have to break it, and if they are already going to interface, they might as well fully break it, and that's where these two cards shine.

• 5 credits for Unity even with 3 Icebreakers installed (even if you somehow have 4 Icebreakers installed it still costs 4 credits to break fully)
• 5 credits for Buzzsaw, and that's with K2CP Turbine support
• 5 credits for Lobisomem (which is the most expensive Decoder in Standard at the time of writing)
• 4 / 8 credits for Euler (depending on if this is the turn it was installed)
• 7/9 credits for Shibboleth (depending on the threat level)
• 8 credits for Cat's Cradle

AI does a little better:

• Audrey v2 can break it for 2 cards and 2 virus counters, or only 1 virus counter if you only need to break the pseudo-ETR sub and don't care about the corp getting a little money
• Slap Vandal interfaces neatly and can get away with only breaking the pseudo-ETR sub
• Aumakua does the worst of the 3, requiring 6 virus counters and still needing to pay up to 3 credits to fully break

That being said, against the vast majority of breaker suites, these two pieces of ICE will cost the runner a hefty sum, or require quite a bit of set-up to deal with, thanks to their amazing rez cost-to-strength ratio. The only problem is that while the runner often needs to break Valentão to get in, you'd have to mind control the Runner to convince them they're locked out by a Piranhas.

The fatal flaw of this card, of course, is to assume that credits and cards are comparable, in many ways, they are for purposes of card draw or economy calculations (i.e. Wildcat Strike or Predictive Planogram), but where credits can be stacked unlimitedly, cards usually top out at 5 in hand. This makes getting yourself as many cards as the Corp, substantially easier than getting as many credits because the Corp can't generate a hand-size lead in the same way they can create a credit lead. To achieve a hand-size lead in Faction you'd either have to play Superconducting Hub, which is a pretty bad 3/1 agenda on its own, or use something like Spin Doctor to trigger card draw mid-run, which, is hardly the best use for such a powerful card.

It would have made so much more sense for this card to be put in literally any other faction too, put it in Weyland and they can try and synergize it with The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated and Regulatory Capture without needing to pay 3 influence per copy to import it.

Put it in Haas-Bioroid and they can synergize it with Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design to make it much easier to have a higher number of cards in hand, or with Thule Subsea: Safety Below, which can also make it easier though in the opposite direction by decreasing the maximum hand size of the runner rather than increasing your own.

And of course, there's Jinteki, by combining this card with additional forms of damage you can more reliably keep the runner out, if you put this card at the root of a server with other net-damage cards on top of it, then there is an inherent synergy. Piranhas is made harder to cheat through by the net damage on top of it, and the net damage dealing ICE on top of it are made less porous by the fact there's a Piranhas after them.

But NBN has almost no way to fully utilize this card, perhaps you can generate an extra credit from Your Digital Life, but is that really enough? And pricing it at 3 Influence just makes it so much more cumbersome to import this card into any other faction who might try and do something cool with it.

The idea of Code Gates having "conditional" end-the-run effects while Barriers have "hard" end-the-run effects helps differentiate Code Gates from just seeming like a "Barrier+" (like Enigma or Hortum for example) and makes them more fascinating and complex to play around on the part of both players and I'm interested to see more cards designed in this space. But, Piranhas is just a swing and a miss that is not worth its price.

However, the fact that it also gives the Corporation Bad-Publicity is really strange and I'm not even sure Valentão warrants the bad publicity considering how potentially porous these ICE can be in the wrong situation. Illicit ICE is usually meant to be terrifying and incredibly threatening to runner, hence the stigma associated with it, compare Trebuchet which can trash any installed runner card, including expensive programs or pieces of hardware that would otherwise be hard to trash. Even older now rotated cards like Bulwark end the run dramatically, and take out a program while it's at it. Shinobi has a real chance of killing the runner off of a bad face-check, and Fenris does core damage, which used to be a rarity.

I find the current design philosophy regarding bad publicity confounding, HB ICE like Hákarl 1.0 or Jaguarundi can do core damage off of a bad face check and while Bloop or Tyr have more warning or counterplay (needing a pre-rezzed Harmonic or being able to click-through it) they can still do lasting damage to the runner yet are not illicit. Similarly, Saisentan is infamous for its ability to flatline the runner out of nowhere and while a Cloud Eater won't flatline the runner it can do a heap of damage, wreck the runners board state and bury them in tags if it fires yet both seem to fly under the radar while two conditional ETR Code Gates that do a grand total of 1 net damage are apparently intolerable to the public. Something doesn't add up here.

The tag sub-condition is even stranger, usually, you'll have gone to great lengths to land a tag, and want to use it for something valuable like Hypoxia or End of the Line, simply rezzing a moderately powerful piece of ICE is hardly the peak potential a tag has to offer. So letting you remove a tag instead of taking a bad-publicity usually only matters in the odd game against a tag-me runner. But tag-me is rare, and once again, the potential ways to punish a tag-me runner are far more serious than this. Frankly, if you are playing this piece of ICE, you should be ready and willing to take the Bad Publicity.

Beyond these practical mechanics considerations, this wasn't quite what I was expecting for such an iconic cultural icon as Piranhas. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but perhaps something that did more damage the fewer cards you had in hand, like an ICE version of Blood in the Water that's used as a finisher. Something that starts with 7 "do 1 net damage" subroutines and has one fewer subroutines for each card in hand for example. Or maybe some kind of ICE, where you can include 6 copies in the deck and it tutors other copies of itself out onto the board when you do net damage with it, like, the first Piranhas draws blood and then that attracts the rest. Or something that represents attracting other Piranhas by allowing you to rearrange your ICE behind the Piranhas if it does damage, or allowing you to move the Piranhas behind another piece of ICE when that ICE does damage, or allowing you to force the runner to encounter Piranhas when they after they take net damage or so many other cool possibilities.

TLDR: A rather weak card that sees very little play in the current meta because it can be so easily circumvented and provides very little actual taxing power despite its superficially large numbers.