With all the FFG cards going out, there was one in particular that I desperately wanted to see get a great reprint. We're saying goodbye to the goat, the OG, a piece of cardboard that my heart can't live without. Aesop’s Pawnshop is, in this girl's eyes, just the best. A real and true mf. Everything from mechanics and viability, to character, vibes and soul—this 1 credit Shaper staple is cut above everything. My absolute favorite card in the entire game.

On paper it lets you trash any card at the start of your turn to receive 3 credits. What it did actually, is it let you put in all kind of jank, off-color and niche trash, junk and (one could say) knick-knacks inside your deck at a promise that if you don't need it—you can always trade it away. And just that fact opened so many doors.

If something cost less than 3 and had a weak effect—it was worth looking at. Anything that doesn't self-heap at the end of its life becomes interesting just because of this simple interaction. It allowed for tech cards to be included in your list without feeling like you've made a bad decision. It even presented and enabled an alternate way to look at econ in green, turning you into a community-centric, mutual-aid runner roleplayer, if you were willing to hallucinate a little.

Plus dawg, that art. Just look how slick he is. The face of a guy who does not play games. No prejudice behind these eyes, no judgement, no questions. Won't ever let you down. He's gonna be there every morning, waiting for ya. He isn't interested in the actual value of what you bring, he's just happy to see you and chat, and the rest? We'll figure it out. The guy wants stuff, and for the stuff (your stuff), he has the coin. A piece of bloatware, your old toaster, ownership of your dying livestream account, even your own second-to-best friend - doesn't matter. Three credits. Take it or leave it and come back tomorrow. Glad to be doing business.

So obviously the replacement has big shoes to fill and in my eyes—it just doesn't. It barely even tries, actually. “Knickknack” O’Brian (if that really is his real nickname) lets you at the beginning of your first run to sell any card for the amount of money equal to its cost. And draw a card, I guess. Essentially, you get a refund. An effect both much less powerful (which was the point) and interesting (which I can't imagine was) compared to what the previous Junk Guy offered. No more is there a guarantee that my failed tricks will at least have some value. And while yes, there are some cards that you can install for a discount, they are nowhere near as numerous as straight up cheap ones. Its main use is to get your money back after you used up your expendable cards, which is not a lot. And Imp is dead. The Casts aren't daily, either! It's all gone! Naturally this makes it much more difficult to earn money through him, but even if it did, it forces me to run. I don't want to run, I want to build a weird engine first. It's not a free, clickless offering anymore and ends up feeling just like many other cards in the offering. I could (and many did) build a whole deck around Aesop's and even if I agree that it was too powerful - this effect is not a suitable replacement. It's just a completely different beast, rather than a simple nerf. Even the flavor doesn't tickle me, we're not even in a Location! And what a missed opportunity to call back to the peak ONR piece, first in a honorable line of pawnshops... I'm really having all the issues with this guy... I don't even want to look at his noodles, to be honest.

And the worst of all, he's lying to you! As the narrator protests in the YuGiOhian flavor text, “Bring him what he values the most: your story.”

His ass does not care about your story! The pricetag attached is the first thing he peeks at. Is your Gamedragon Pro worth 2 credits? Well I have a deal for you: 2 credits. And draw a card! Your Devadatta Drones when you're done playing? You paid 1 for it and you best believe you'll get 1 back and... draw a card!!

And true, yes, he'll pay any Timmy a nice round 10 clams (and a card!!!) for an Orca and it will feel great, but does his presence actually help me to get to that Orca? Probably not.

He is a trickster. A scamlord. Less of a gunk collector and more of a return-policy rep. He's here to make rich richer and I don't care for it! He's gonna trade you things of equal value, tease you with his soup and slip his business card in your pocket goodbye. “Get back to me when you make it big kid, heh heh.” No! I won't! I don't want to chill with him.

He's probably not even a mf either...

2/5 I wish Aesop's reopened.

now that i'm done with card reviews i can do low effort posting again :) i mean i was doing low effort posting before but still

It's been a minute¹ since the last link roundup! Since I've got the new more convenient writing flow, I thought it’d be nice to actually use this to get back to doing these again!

Gobolatula: Please Forgive Me!!!

I’m starting this off with a whole-hearted recommendation of Please Forgive Me!!! It’s the sorta-sequel sorta-reboot of my favorite webcomic, It Hurts!!, and It’s genuinely so fucking good.

Butterfree: When Rumours Come True: The Mew Trick

As someone who never had a point in my life where the Mew trick was anything other than something people used to show how glitchy gen 1 was, it’s really nice to read the experiences of someone who was on the ground floor for it.

Anna Dana Hudson: Any Percent

I think this one made the rounds on cohost way back in the day, but I finally read it recently and holy hell this is good.

Sciman101: A Price of Commodity

Nothing, absolutely nothing, didn't have a human involved in the creation process at some point.

This post from cohost alumni Sciman101 is a good reminder that, all those things you have? People made them. Even the cheap things. Refreshing to see someone point out the humanity in a world where corporations want more and more products to seem like they appeared whole cloth out of the void.

Kōdō Simone: What if we made advertising illegal?

What if tho? Wouldn’t that be awesome or what?

Okay! That's a wrap! Unfortunately, I didn't write as much as last time (65 reviews to 40 reviews, and I didn't write almost all of the reviews this time), but I still had a great time. My big lesson from this session of reviewing Netrunner cards? Get more contributors and/or bunch things up. There were way too many cards and I didn't have enough to say about all of them.

More contributors would be good. I really enjoyed seeing other people's opinions on the cards, and it would be good to set things up earlier and get more stuff involved, if that sounds neat to people. The other option would be to release reviews in batches almost entirely near launch, where I focus on talking about card packages and faction utility.

Idk this stuff is hard. Netrunner is not an easy game to talk about, although it's a great game to play! Get Elevation now! Also please follow my blog via RSS to continue seeing the stuff I put out! It's only going to get better! Or maybe i disappear off the face of the Earth for another 6 months who knows.

I love this ID. I love installing cards and I love the incentive to overdraw. A very Shaper ID through and through.

We got it y'all. The platonic shaper ID: "Oops! All Kickflips!" And just like all Shaper kickflip engines, it’ll probably be meh to bad and everyone will continue playing Lat I guess.

MuslihaT is most comparable to Prognostic Q-Loop, since the value is seeing the top card of your stack every turn, and occasionally getting some value from it. I think that’s actually quite good! Occasional free draw is great, and I have high hopes that MuslihaT will be looked upon as the “balanced” version of Hoshiko (They’re both start of turn card draw).

Bad but a niche kind of bad that means it might seen as a one-of sometimes. What did Imp do to deserve this?

Overall I think this is a fine and functional killer for Anarchs. While it's not a whole lot to write home about, being able to use GameDragon to get a base 3 strength killer will get you through a bunch of things like Drafter. Unfortunately, it also can guarantee that you eat a brutal sentry with a nicely timed Mavirus, which makes it hard to recommend on its own. Flyswatter and Mavirus being in the Standard format make it hard to recommend over its more reliable fire snake. Cookbook and Hantu would be a nice combo, but I think you'd almost always just rather prefer Audrey V2 as your breaker at that point.

Wow, this card looks extremely underwhelming doesn’t it!

A WHOLE double just to access a single card from HQ!

I’ve seen a lot of people lamenting the loss of Sneakdoor Beta. A classic card from core set, now gone from standard. It's gonna sting for some people to see that its replacement is single-use. However, the Netrunner that Sneakdoor was printed in is vastly different to current Netrunner. That 2 MU that you see on Sneakdoor? At most it would be filled with a Datasucker or a Parasite, but in early days Netrunner, there were not a lot of great utility programs worth playing besides Sneakdoor Beta, so that 2 MU was not a massive cost.

Nowadays, Crim is flush with great programs. You have Cezve, providing a recurring 2 credits, making it a giant economy card, if you can leverage it. You have Cupellation, the Legwork on a stick you want to keep and then use at the right time. You also have Malandragem, a niche and mildly expensive card that’s sometimes an Inside Job.

...And also Datasucker is still in Crim sometimes.

Enter Maintenance Access. Not only are you saving your 2 MU and your juicy 4 credits, installing and using Sneakdoor Beta is basically a double anyway! And as the game becomes faster and multi-access effects become more plentiful, such as Twinning and Cupellation, you’re going to see three, four, maybe five cards in a single Maintenance Access. And that’s on top of the money you would save from surprising your opponent and cheating the HQ ice.

See, in the old context of Sneakdoor, you could feasibly click Sneakdoor a few times in a single turn to see every card in HQ for 4 credits. not a bad deal! Nowadays, though, single accesses like that are not efficient if you also need to contest a fast paced remote.

Now we have a much more deck-building friendly version of Sneakdoor Beta in the pool that doesn’t potentially overlap with other important utility cards. Seems good.

But wait, there’s more!!

The whole suite of cards that Crim loves and feeds off of are powered by this effect. It has a natural synergy with Sable, with successful HQ run refunding the extra click needed to play a double. WAKE Implant is also a multi access card that feeds off of HQ accesses. You can charge it up and then let it rip into R&D, generating a lot of pressure from a two card combo. Ice and credits the corp is using for central servers is ice and credits they are not using for their juicy remotes.

The floor of this card is that it saves you potentially a nasty face check, maybe 3/4/5 credits for a single ice on HQ, if you don’t have the right breaker or a Boomerang. Not bad!

The ceiling of this card is an absolute knockout blow out of nowhere. Just when the corp thought they were most safe, you strike and snag an agenda, get a WAKE Implant trigger, pop your Cupellation and just clean HQ for the win.

It’s not flashy. It’s not Sneakdoor beta. It’s the most boring card that you think you’ve seen a million times over,

And every corp is still never going to respect it.