Decoders. If you want some good decoder, you go to the Shapers, so no suprise that these precious little thing is burning green.

Ok, at 9 you can say anything about the Torch, but not "little thing". But if you are not running with stealth credits and Refractor or Yog.0 and Datasucker this is the most efficient universal decoder you can get.

Cyber-Cypher has the same strenght, but can be used only on one server.

At this moment, the dawn of Order and Chaos, 10 out of 33 codegates have strenght higher than 4. Torch burns thru such fan favourites like Chum, Lotus Field (something that Yog.0 can break only when installed on Dinosaurus ) or Viper for one or two creds. Tollbooth is five .

So if you are not planning on bringing D4v1d with you, this is good starting point for stronger codegates that are coming with Order and Chaos: Checkpoint, Wormhole and Orion. Criminal Leviathan can be more expensive at the middle-range ICE.

But 9 is serious money. At the cost of 4 influence, you don't really have much options but to play it only in the Shaper deck, which heave the most tools to help you out bring it fast and cheap. You could always use Self-modifying Code, but do you really want to pay 11 ?

More useful is Test Run + Scavenge combo, which lets you install it for 3 credits. If you are playing Prepaid VoicePAD, it can be even cheaper. Kate "Mac" McCaffrey: Digital Tinker can install it for 5 with Modded. And if you manage to put it in your heap, you can use Anarch Retrieval Run.

There could be also some cases when using Code Siphon has some point. But Test Run Scavenge is most reliable in-faction.

It's fat, it's expensive, but I love my little Torch. You need to build economy around this card, but when it works, it's fun and efficient.

So, six extra credits during the game with the cards from the core set don't seem so powerful? It gets better.

This identity works with:

• Beanstalk Royalties
• Commercialization
• Hedge Fund
• Restructure
• Diversified Portfolio
• Blue Level Clearance
• Green Level Clearance
• Successful Demonstration
• Medical Research Fundraiser

and last but not least, Paywall Implementation, which is a current, but currents are still Operations. If only this could give extra credits each time Implementation is activated...

So it's possible to have at least nine cards that have synergy with it in your deck (usually Beanstalks, Hedge Funds and Restructures) but if you want you can invest some influence points into Blue or Green Level Clearances to make your economy even less reliant on assets. It's important to notice, that while even without it, Restructure brings you a lot of credits, this actually makes cheaper cards like Beanstalk Royalties and Green Level Clearance more powerful. Like 33% more powerful! Math can't lie.

Add to this some recursion from Jackson Howard and you can get much more than basic six credits.

But beware of Edward Kim: Humanity's Hammer, he will be your doom! Or Imp. Or Keyhole. Or Demolition Run. Seriously, what's about those Anarchs and their hate towards corporate money making?

If you like playing Shaper, you will love playing this card. It makes your basic run on R&D three times more effective. The probability of scoring three agendas in one run is fairly low, but you will get one of the most important things in Netrunner: information.

Notable synergies:

R&D Interface - the number of cards sum up, so you can acces 4, 5 or 6 cards in one run with three RDI installed Indexing - first you run to see what's in the R&D and put cards in such order you can get to everything you want with The Maker's Eye. But remember corporation can shuffle their deck with cards like Jackson Howard Medium - Insanity. In theory, if corp allows you to, you can access many cards with Medium, RDI and TME, but in most cases you will pick either RDI or Medium.

Everytime you will want to make deck around R&D access, you will come back to this card. And sometimes you can use it to suprise corp, the same way why you could include Legwork.

But remember - accesing many cards at once against Jinteki trap decks is not always good idea!

Some newer players may think, that 1 brain damage is steep price for a succesful run. Maybe your runner will be a little dumber, but the fight against corporate secrets has its cost.

Corp may think they are safe, because you have only 10 credits at the beginning of your turn, and they need that last agenda to win. Three clicks later you have 13 credits. And then BAM with Stimhack you have 21 and you manage to run thru their defences.

1 brain damage it's not that much for a win.