This will be a long review so strap yourself in or skip ahead to the TLDR at the bottom.
I'm going to analyze this card from 5 interconnected perspectives.
- Political Assets on the whole
- How this card fits within Weyland
- How this card fits within non-Weyland Archetypes as an import
- How runners can and should think about and play around this card
- Theming
Political Assets
First introduced in the Mumbad Cycle with the four cards (one to each Corporation) Bio-Ethics Association, Clone Suffrage Movement, Sensie Actors Union and Commercial Bankers Group, Political Assets were mired in controversy and poorly received (though in fairness that may have been the Mumbad Cycle's general funk more than anything else, or just IG being IG). Now they're back, for the first time in forever in the Liberation Cycle with many returning features such as one per Corp: Front Company, Warm Reception, Federal Fundraising and this card right here, as well as all sharing their 2 base trash cost and having a special effect that's only online when un-iced. However, there are some differences, such as having half their effect always active, and half of it only active when un-iced, presumably so that you can ice them if you want but are still incentivized to leave them un-iced.
I dislike Political Assets on a fundamental level because the only three archetypes that can synergize with Assets that are cheap to trash and can't be Iced are 1. Asset Spam, 2. Prison, and 3. Upgrade Hell. None of which are my preferred style of play, but since no one else has deigned to write a review for this card you're stuck with me for now.
To give the devil his due, Federal Fundraising and Hearts and Minds aren't that bad. Federal Fundraising preserves NBN's skill for R&D management but tones down Sensie's card draw power while only rearranging the top of the deck (thus preventing the Corp from burying agendas on the bottom of the deck) and still leaving the Corp vulnerable to deep R&D digs which Runners will appreciate. At the same time, it also allows Epiphany Analytica: Nations Undivided to set up its click triggers and know when to use their ability, which they will greatly appreciate, all around a solid but not overwhelmingly powerful Political Asset. To convince you that Hearts and Minds is more interesting than Commercial Bankers Group I need only show you the cards, anything is more interesting than "gain 3 credits."
That being said, nothing can make me love Front Company + Warm Reception, IcyHot has scarred me too deeply I'm afraid.
Weyland
Unfortunately for Weyland, Asset Spam isn't its strong suit at the moment post Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon, I've yet to see Prison Weyland either and the main Upgrade Hell deck, Venti Ob puts all it's upgrades on R&D not on Assets. It will show up occasionally in Facet Ob, but it's often used for just a single trigger before being fed to a Svyatogor. If you're looking for a value-based economic Asset then most Weyland decks go for Regolith Mining License or Wall to Wall which is like a supercharged PAD Campaign so long as it's the only rezzed Asset on the table which thus actively disincentives Weyland Asset Spam. Most Weyland decks of today thus prefer either Vertical Glacial, Rush or Combo Kill none of which have much use for this card.
Jinteki and Pravdivost (NBN)
Perhaps the most promising application of Hearts and Minds lies in Shell Game and Asset-based Combo Kill (I know what you're thinking, YiPpEe!) but I'm here to give you a review (and honest advice) and honestly, you can do some nasty things with Hearts and Minds.
Placing one advancement counter on a piece of ICE may be meagre value generation, but when combined with traps it becomes a whole different ball game. Suddenly, your failed bluffs from Urtica Cipher and Cerebral Overwriter become batteries for advancements counters, which HaM (Hearts and Minds) can reposition, while adding an extra counter of its own. Together, you can never advance a 5/3 off the table without needing to pre-advance it with Mitosis and at a fraction of the cost of The Holo Man. Now, every install, not just the double advanced ones, becomes a potential threat, you can throw an inconspicuous, unadvanced 5/3 onto the table and score it out the next turn for just 4 credits (including the rez-cost of HaM) so long as you have an unchecked Urtica Cipher lying around from a previous Mitosis.
This also works with kill combos since you can boost a Ronin or Clearinghouse at the start of your turn, allowing you to present a surprising burst of damage the runner may not be expecting or prepared to absorb. All in all, generating an advancement counter and flexibly moving one from an old trap to a new real threat is something these kinds of decks would love to have access to since it opens up so many deadly play lines and flexible and surprising kill combos. And remember, this card isn't unique, that's right, with two of these as well as just one double-advanced Urtica Cipher and one double-advanced Clearinghouse you can send a whopping six unpreventable damage at the runner on the start of the turn. Since it's all simultaneous, Steelskin Scarring won't save them, nor will Aniccam. In fact, because of the way priority works, they'll have to have somehow read that this board-state is lethal before you start rezzing the HaMs because once they're rezzed there's no window to use Stoneship Chart Room until you pass priority back, by which time they'll already have been flatlined.
The biggest problem, without question, is Influence, Trap decks are, by their very nature, tight on influence, since traps are spread around between the factions they often need to import cards like Cerebral or Clearinghouse from other factions, Pravdivost often feels the need to import Urticas from Jinteki and even if Jinteki doesn't import Chekist Scion they still usually need some Spin Doctors and maybe a The Holo Man or two. This leaves precious few Influence points to import HaM for a whopping 3 pips per copy. This... is probably for the best, because if this card was 2 or even 1 influence, let alone if it was a Jinteki card rather than a Weyland card, I'm terrified you would see this card everywhere.
I have seen a weird BtL deck that tried playing traps but while they might have this card and Clearinghouse in faction, they have the exact same problem of needing to import everything else just to have even a small fraction of the lethality of a Jinteki deck.
Runners
Trash on sight.
That's it, at two credits to trash there are very few good reasons not to trash this card. Furthermore, Standard currently has an abundance of Asset Tech, including, but not limited to, Miss Bones, Scrubber, Paricia, Fencer Fueno, Imp, Cupellation, Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra and Marathon. Most competitive runner decks I have seen include at least one and sometimes multiple of these cards. When you have the option to trash assets, sometimes clicklessly and sometimes with conditional "fake" credits then you simply have no excuses to leave this on the board. Most decks don't play this card, which just tells you that any deck that does is about to do something wild with it.
Now, I'm not saying check every unadvanced card on the table against PE, how you deal with PE is between you and whatever god you believe in, but what I am saying, is that as soon as this card is rezzed, if you've survived whatever horrific combo they've just pulled off, then trash this card, so that they can't just pull off another.
Thematic
Easily my favourite thing about this card is the theming, which is wonderfully colourful and rich.
To take the low-hanging fruit, the mech in the picture bears remarkable similarities to Working Prototype, right down to the "thumbs up" pose. I don't know whether multiple corps have been developing their own mechs in competition with one another or whether Weyland just purchased one from HB and gave it a fresh coat of paint but either way, that's a super cool reference that ties these two cards in together.
As for CEO Braganza, you can find her depicted on the Nuvem ID art and further referenced in the extended The Basalt Spire quote. To extrapolate beyond that, we know that the Braganza's were a wealthy and powerful Portuguese royal family, formally the "Most Serene House of Braganza" who ruled Portugal and Brazil from the Renaissance period through to the formation of the first Brazilian Republic in 1889. Whether CEO Braganza is a descendant of this family, or whether the name is meant merely as an allegory, it's a very interesting reference. The last emperor Pedro II was deposed by the military and political elites in a bloodless coup that was motivated, in some part, by the fact that the emperor had abolished slavery the year before and in doing so cost the slave-holding elites dearly. Read into that what you will...
Beyond this, the art is gorgeous and places us right in the middle of a violent riot, which is very on point for a set entitled Rebellion Without Rehearsal. The quote is not only pertinent for the plot of the story and often true, but it's also a great tie back to the Braganza name itself.
Besides all that, I think it's fair to say that Weyland has captured our Hearts and Minds. Sure, they might seem like mad supervillains sometimes. But they're more like that kind of loveable supervillain, you know, the one that's so laughably evil that they end up giving you money instead of actually causing you problems. And even when they've been bad, they know how to give it the human touch to make everything alright again. Sure they are evil, but they're evil in the same way Megamind's evil, they like the tension, the chase, the back and forth of fencing with Runners, it's not like they're actually trying to kill! the Runner. And even if they were trying to kill the Runner, they look so badass while doing it, like John Wick! They've even got their own Mission Impossible Team for dealing with all those pesky cyberterrorists. I mean, how can you not like Weyland?! They are the best!
TLDR: An interesting Political Asset that can advance already installed cards at the start of your turn, the floor of its power is just advancing your ICE for free but that's a pretty mediocre effect compared to some of the alternatives in faction. Its real power lies in never advancing large agendas cheaply and setting up nasty kill combos. Best used for its full effect on the turn that it's rezzed because it's probably not going to last long after that.