Trading Places

Exchange of Information is a great card. Why spend time, cards, and credits setting up a scoring remote just to watch Faust plow through it and take your GFI? Isn’t it better to put out a naked GFI and simply claim it later with an EoI (that is, assuming the runner even had the guts to go check an advanced naked remote in the first place)?

At its heart, this is a shell game deck that leverages the many NBN cards that give you a benefit when the runner steals agendas. With GFI, 15 Minutes, and News Team (which the runner almost always takes for the negative agenda point), the runner routinely has to score 5 of the deck’s 11 agendas to win. Franchise City allows you to score on the runner’s turn, and Haarpsichord’s ability means that you’ll have plenty of time to set up your EoI + tag combos without losing to deep Medium digs or other multi-access tactics.

Ideally, you’re laying out a couple of traps in the first two turns to see if the runner is going to check naked remotes. If they do check, scoring an early Midseason and getting a few 2/1s scored is important to ensure agenda swaps later in the game. If not, start laying out as many shells as possible. If you manage to sneak out a never advanced Astro, it’s pretty much GG. An unchecked Breaking News is often even better (since scoring a BN and playing EoI to swap it for a GFI is a three point swing that leaves the runner with two tags—one of the most satisfying plays in the game). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a Franchise City, a GFI, and a BN down with an EoI in hand, and baited the runner into taking the GFI to give me four points by the end of my next turn just for scoring a 2/1.

It’s light on ice and really only needs bursts of cash to land tags to set up the EoI play, so Sweeps + Hedge Fund is usually sufficient in terms of economy. There are some obvious hard counters (Leela, Keyhole + Employee Strike, super rich runners that can dodge tags), but it’s possible to play around most strategies. And though it tends to have only two win conditions (score small agendas and swap for bigger ones or just Astro out), it’s surprisingly versatile and fun to play, as it requires you to be incredibly responsive to the runner’s tactics.