Get Anson up and running. Wait. Use some Trick of Light on your agendas and you are all set. And if you think he will get trashed, hide him behind advancable ice so you can transfer all his counters onto the ice and still play your Trick of Light.

As a single cost to rez, this is great. Need to go faster, Mushin No Shin him out.

Do you like travelling and/or suchi? Let Anson take you on a trip to NeoTokyo Grid. He pays for himself turn 1, then it's all gravy. Really thick, slow gravy but still gravy.

How about those stupid advancable ice, like Lycan? Never heard of it? Well get ready to doge both a Code Gate and a Sentry when you run. Or dream of a ridiculous Searchlight? All the craptastic combos you ever wanted are there for the taking... Shadow? Salvage? Mausolus? YES PLEASE. Swarm? OMG YES.

Not enough money? Maybe you can get some Commercialization going after rezzing those stupid combos above?

Anson getting lippy after the Tokyo trip? Tired of him drunk texting you at 2 in the morning "babi o iz gop n advancement in my pannts fr u"? Have him whacked in some shady parking lot by your Back Channels.

And if you really want to be a dick about it, before whacking the poor Anson, throw him a party to keep his guard down. I hear he likes Dedication Ceremonies

Anson is the man? Sure... Fuck the man.

Slot this into Gagarin, rez it and let it stew while the runner is too busy dealing everything else you got.

Then watch their face when they get killed by a Woodcutter!

Or, more realistically, you just make an Ice Wall hilariously high strength or a Mausolus instantly impossible to run through.

That, or they just fork over the 5 to trash it (or 2, if they can do magic). Either way, not a bad card.

A well designed card. It strengthens a somewhat niche strategy (advancable ice) in a somewhat niche faction () without either doing too little or going over the top.

Let's get the basics down:

• 1 to rez. Cheap.
• 4. Unless the runner plays [Whizzard(/en/card/02001) or Scrubber or other asset killers 4 is high enough to avoid being trashed unless the runner really sees Anson Rose as a threat.
• 1 influence is great. But there isn't any non-Weyland ice that can be advanced so he only works with ice from his own faction.
• Unique Asset. Vulnerable to Rumor Mill though with the MWL update that's no longer as big of a problem as before.
• Must be rezzed in order to work (since you can only start putting counters on once he's rezzed). There is no element of surprise except which ice you're going to use him for.

There are several categories of cards he works with:

• Strength-boostable barriers: Ice Wall, Fire Wall, Hadrian's Wall, Shadow. His main role here is to provide cheap strength. If you can put 5 extra counters on an ice wall that's a very cheap (1) but effective (6 strength, 1 sub) barrier. Note that with Shadow if you are able to win the trace Anson Rose can help a lot in making sure the subroutine with the trace actually resolves.
• Sub-boostable barriers: possibly Salvage, Swarm, possibly Tyrant and possibly Woodcutter (see below for the "possibly"). Anson Rose adds subroutines. Tyrant with extra subs quickly becomes quite taxing (even if still pretty expensive). Woodcutter also becomes taxing and extremely dangerous to face check to boot (no installed killer or AI means lots of net damage).
• Morph: Changeling, Lycan, Wendigo. You'll use at most 1 counter from Anson Rose for these but it does provide a nice bit of flexibility in choosing what subtype of ice you want at the moment the runner runs into it.
• Space ice: Asteroid Belt, Nebula, Orion, Wormhole. I don't think Anson Rose actually works with these. See below.
• Mausolus. If you can get 3 tokens on there it's just a much much stronger card that the runner will want to be careful about.
• Searchlight. With sufficient counters the subs are actually scary. But by the time Anson Rose has enough counters for Searchlight the runner will be able to easily break a 2 sub 3 strength sentry.

Now to the "possibly". It's a matter of rule nitpicking and I haven't found any guidance on this in the official FAQ or UFAQ yet. Salvage, Tyrant and Woodcutter have the text "can be advanced only when rezzed". If you think of Anson Rose as working during the rez these don't apply. If you think of Anson Rose as working immediately after the rez they do. Since in general A:NR seems to fully play out things before starting on the next one I think the immediately-after explanation makes most sense. If I'm wrong please leave a comment because this is something I'm definitely not sure about.

Space ice is a similar situation. The advancement tokens determine rez cost but if Anson Rose takes effect after the rez the original cost must be paid. If you were to reason that Anson Rose takes effect during a rez and there's a point in time between announcing the rez and paying the cost where he could work then a reduced cost can be paid. Because I take the view for now that the rez is done before Anson Rose takes effect it follows that the original cost applies and thus Anson Rose doesn't help with space ice, no matter how nice that would be.

Is Anson Rose worth it? In a deck built around advancable ice I think he's pretty much an auto-include. Anywhere else he doesn't seem to be worth the deck slot.