Part of the wandering sysop quatuor, with Vovô Ozetti, Adrian Seis and The Holo Man. Of the four, Isaac Liberdade is the least used, mainly because The Holo Man is so powerful.

There are precious few cards that boost the strength of ices. There is Rime, Brasília Government Grid, Helheim Servers and Corporate Troubleshooter.

Isaac Liberdade had an advantage over all those strength booster. First, an advancement is put on the ice, which can be used for other purpose later and second, moving around means Isaac Liberdade can go protect the most vulnerable server.

In the startup format, boosting the strength count more, since breaker availability is not the same. Also, there are ice that get better the more advancement they have, such as Ice Wall, Logjam, Colossus and Mestnichestvo. Getting a free advancement on those, on top of boost to the ice strength, is precious.

Sadly for Isaac Liberdade, it will be matchup dependent. Against a runner who has Lobisomem, boosting by +2 means an extra cost of only 1 for the runner. This also does not help against bypass effect, such as Physarum Entangler, neither does it do anything against direct sub breaking, such as with Boomerang or Botulus. This is why it is not much used in standard, as it would be very much matchup dependent. Adding to this that Isaac Liberdade cost 3 to use. Making it more useful in a glacier deck, where multiple ice can get those counters, thus costing the runner much more than the price of Isaac Liberdade.

At 2 influence, the card could be imported out of faction. But since you can get Corporate Troubleshooter for 1 influence and probably a much stronger effect, then you have to evaluate how good it is in its slot. But, if the runner has to face 3 ices that are 7 strength in a row, it might be enough to secure a remote. It would also allow a corp to have lots of cheap ice that would get a decent strength.

I only wish there was a bit of space for a quote, to give us a sense of the character of Isaac Liberdade. Otherwise, the name is nice ("Libertade" = "Freedom") and the art is very much in line with the idea of a Weyland system operator (sysop). Well done.

Nanuq (🐻‍❄️) is kinda like a “Current AI”.

Unlike other temporary icebreakers (Mayfly, Revolver, Propeller, etc) it's not recurrable/rechargeable, because it RFGs (not trashes) itself.

And unlike Runner currents (Rumor Mill) or single-turn icebreakers (Chameleon), it only helps you steal agendas during a single run.

So much synergies with so many cards in Weyland. This operation is just awesome.

It synergize with :

• Every advanceable ices, especially good for ices that require 3 advancements for their boost, like Pharos, Akhet, Colossus and Hortum.
• Trick of Light
• Hearts and Minds
• Every agendas ever.
• Ressources assets like NGO Front and Charlotte Caçador.
• Traps like Urtica Cipher, Chekist Scion, Cerebral Overwriter.
• Kill assets like Ronin and Clearinghouse.

If the corp has a shell game plan, this is the cheap version of using Mitosis, nearly just as good (0 is hard to beat), but not as fast.

This makes advanceable ice outside of Weyland Consortium: Built to Last much easier to use, since this card save 2 and one click to advance two ices. This the efficiency equivalent of Red Level Clearance.

Best of all, this is only one influence, allowing any corp to import it easily. A lot of asset spam deck use some kind of advanceable threat, where Business As Usual would shine.

On top of that, it can be used as a much cheaper version of Mavirus. Yes, Reverse Infection still exist, but nobody plays it (it is an ok card though). Especially in Startup, where Mavirus is not present.

The art, the quote, the effect and the name go together completly. Wonderful!

Logjam stocks went up in the startup format with the ban of Pharos.

However, even if Pharos is present, Logjam is still good. Why is that?

First, it gets advancements for free. This synergize with Trick of Light and Hearts and Minds, which can use those advancements, without forcing the corp to first put them there.

Second, it has 3 end the run subroutines. Making it difficult for Botulus and impervious to Boomerang.

Third, on a face check, it gives back 2 to the corp, making this ice cost functionally 4.

Finally, it can have near infinite strength (helped by cards like Tree Line), contrary to Pharos, possibly making it impossible to break.

The big downside of this ice is that Hush put it at zero strength.

Art shows a log jam, in the literal sense of it. It is a bit hard to make out, because of the color saturation. It could have been a log (as in computer logs) jam also. Both work, making it a clever word play. This gives the idea of a big barrier. Ok.

I feel like this card is half of a combo that doesn't exist yet.

Obviously, it has applications in damage mitigation and safety (an overarching theme of the Borealis Cycle). You can offset the lasting downsides of Core Damage, making it harder for Thule to set up a kill with just a single End of the Line. And, with just a pinch of Charge support and a healthy dose of card draw you can keep yourself safe from even double End of the Line MAD combos.

However, this card has drawbacks, namely the self-damaging effect and reliance on Charge synergy to make the most of it. Unlike Stoneship Chart Room or No Free Lunch which have no drawbacks and can be cashed in at minimum for a little bit of credits or card draw.

Rather, this card needs something to synergize with it, something to offer you more value than just hand size for the sake of not flatlining. Compare how Anarch decks will play Steelskin Scarring regardless of whether they are expecting damage or not because of its inherent synergy with all of their trash cards.

Hippocampic Mechanocytes feels like it needs something akin to this, something like Game Day (which has rotated) or a runner version of Your Digital Life to give you some payoff for having a large hand-size or large number of cards in hand, to warrant playing this card outside of a hard-core (hehe, get it) damage tech.