This ice is expensive, expensive enough that I don't think it'll see a lot of regular play. Vampyronassa is the code gate in faction to compare to, and Mycoweb can just genuinely be useless early. It's fine, it'll lead to funny Anemone flatlines from odd angles, and if you can get a Cloud Eater on the board, for the low low price of 18 credits, you too can do 3 net damage to a runner without a decoder. That's some value right there.

Honestly, Probably in the bin for me, but it'll be funny when it works.

Phat is PE at home as an asset. He'll see regular play in A Teia and Au Co. for sure. With a trash cost of 3, Phat is slightly above the curve when it comes to trash cost, but also isn't particularly scary until a turn or two has passed. Overall, Phat's fine, capably of generating flatlines out of odd angles, and otherwise a good way to hit runner tempo and be annoying.

This Identity on its own is fine, but with Sericulture, Jinteki's new 3/2, this identity becomes wild. Having the clickless advance means you can score a Sericulture without needing the 3 credits and install click for La Costa Grid. From there the single counter on Sericulture can let you score out a 5/3 with minimal support. I think any PT Untaian will automatically have 3 Sericultures, and the Identity won't see much play otherwise. Can we appreciate the art though? It's my new Jnet background.

This card is genuinely good. In wide decks having an incredibly cheap 4 Strength code gate can serve as an effective check on the runner, with the only breaker in the current format breaking it for less than 3 credits being a Buzzsaw that's boosted with GameDragon or Leech. And honestly, I'm okay with the runner spending two clicks and 6 credits to trivially break my 3 credit ice. The subroutines are also solid, and for my wider decks, this works great as central defense in a way that's just annoying enough to dissuade the runner from certain runs.

Rising Tide is a Shaper card that shapers need to pay influence for. With DZMZ and breakers installed, Principia is functionally a "click to sell to knickknack later" card. Will I ever use this thing to break ice? Almost never, but I see it in a few decks for the econ aspect, being sold later when I don't need duplicate breakers to boost Echelon's base strength or something. That said, don't use this for breaking ice in a faction that has Propeller. It's not worth it. You deserve better.

Arissana got a new toy.

Let’s compare it to Pelangi. is this better than Pelangi? Yes. Pelangi’s once per turn requirement is not ideal, and Chromatophore wants to be slapped on a problematic ice and then you run that server over and over now that you’re free of the burden of having to actually deal with the ice.

Notably, it doesn’t work with Physarum Entangler, since Physarum depends on the ice being not a barrier, and not being a subtype other than a barrier. Speaking of which, it’d be nice to have an anti-Chromatophore, which removes all subtypes on host-ice.

With Ritual replacing Diesel, fans of energy drinks everywhere must mourn. For we have lost the baseline Diesel, the only energy drink that can fuel our caffeine jittered runs is Blueberry Diesel. Unfortunately I hate blueberry flavored drinks, so the Diesel that'll course through my veins will be underwhelming in flavor. NSG wasted a perfect opportunity to print Ultra Guava Hype Diesel, or a variety of other phenomenal flavors, and that we instead are stuck with the same tea is a sheer disappoint to me as I grow older and realize my caffeine tolerance is tanking faster than the S&P 500. On a more serious note, Ritual is a fine Diesel replacement if you play it first click. Otherwise it's remarkably mediocre and not worth playing. If you want more reliable "Draw 3 cards", Dr. Nuka is there with charge tokens ready for burst draw. But for those of us used to buying crates of Diesel from our local Costco, we mourn.

First I want to talk about the art, which fucking whips. The card looks cool, and I’m going to try my absolute hardest to get top 4 at a megacity tournament just so I can own a Clean Getaway playmat. It’ll be peak.

What about the card itself? It’s literally Dirty Laundry but in Blue with an additional influence cost if you want to play it outside of Blue. Given the additional influence, it’s probably not justifiable to run out of faction unless you want a run-based econ package. It does make sense why new Dirty Laundry was printed in Crim, since their whole econ suite is mostly run-based.

Will Clean Getaway be good? I mean yeah. It’ll be as good as Dirty Laundry was in Crim. It’s not exactly an exciting rating, but that’s okay. They put all the excitement in the art.

Probably a niche utility card? Derezzing an ice seems good, but I don’t think it’s worth a click, a credit, and a successful run on HQ. It’s one of those cards whose effect is terrible on its own, but gets upgraded to becoming merely okay once you have other cards to extract value from derezzing or rezzing ice.

This ID is absolutely bonkers good. I swear someone on the NSG team forgot the "Once per turn" flag when finalizing the text on this. But in all seriousness, Baz feels phenomenal to me. Fun fact: you can fit 3x Devil Charm and 3x Arruaceiras in a nice 15 influence. If they rez some ice, you either Boomerang it, or trash it. SDS isn't real, you don't need programs. 5/5 bringing the crime back to criminal was worth it.