Despite the enthusiastic and optimistic reviews you may read on this page, this card sees no play and saw no play historically outside of being a cheap sacrificial hardware during the days of World Tree. This review exists as a post-mortem, to break down what this card does, why it sees no play, and how similar cards can be better designed in the future.

As I see it, there are two fundamental and interlinked problems this card faces:

1. It is niche (it's a tech card)
2. It is exhaustible

Tech Cards

Being a tech card is in and of itself a limitation, tech cards will always see comparatively little play due to their niche applications when compared to something universally good like Sure Gamble, Diesel or Bravado, simply because money and card draw will always have value against every match-up while techs will, by their very nature, have fluctuating returns. Still, tech cards have their place and similarly worded tech cards for preventing damage and "when encountered" effects have seen play historically such as Hunting Grounds, Feedback Filter or Caldera.

Notably, Airblades does put some pretty serious restrictions on itself, preventing only net damage (not Core or Meat) does limit it's applications and those limitations are exacerbated by the only during run condition, so while it might mitigate the sting of Anemone or Urtica Cipher it won't help against Bladderwort, Reaper Function or Mindscaping nor will it do anything against Thule Subsea: Safety Below or tag and bag.

Still, in the matchups where it's useful, it can be quite useful, if you can prevent 3 net damage throughout the game, Feedback Filter and Caldera tells us that's worth about 3 credits of value per damage for a total of 9. And similarly, if you can prevent 3 on encountered effects like Tollbooth, Mestnichestvo or Funhouse then that should save you a similar amount of money, for a profit margin of 8, which is exceedingly good when compared to convention econ. It's so good, in fact, that in the matchups where you would want this card, such as against certain Jinteki or NBN decks, you'd probably want to include two or three since just one will quickly run out...

Exhaustible

This is where the second problem arises, all of these historical tech cards I've listed are infinite, while they might cost credits or have limitations like only being usable once per turn, they will never run out. If you are expecting a damage-heavy meta, you need only include one Feedback Filter and the money your deck already wanted to include to achieve protection, in fact, with sufficient drip economy or a Magnum Opus rig, you can outlast even the grindiest deck, causing them to deck out before you do. In it's heyday, Hunting Grounds was a popular one influence splash outside of Apex because you could pretty reliably expect it to cover it's install cost after just a couple of important runs and the longer the game goes on the more and more incidental value you'll acrue. And, critically, worst case scenario you play up against Weyland and have one dead card in your deck, or two if you felt the need to run both damage protection and Hunting Grounds.

But with Airblades, you feel pinched, in the matchups where you want this kind of effect most, you'll probably want 2 or 3, since just one will quickly run out, but in the matchups where it's useless, you want 0 as they're just dead draws. The tension of this hurts Airblade's viability from a slots perspective, as it doesn't do enough as a 1 of but isn't consistently valuable enough to warrant 2 or 3 slots.

Alternatives

Ultimately, the best tech cards are slot effienct, either simultaneously solving a multitude of common problems in one card, like how Pinhole Threading deals with Anoetic Void, or Manegarm Skunkworks or The Holo Man or Clearinghouse or Rashida Jaheem and so and so forth. Or provide incredible value throughout a game, i.e. when playing against Tollbooth, Hunting Grounds functionally drips 3 credits per turn without capping the returns at 8 credits. Or provide an alternative benefit outside of tech, i.e. having "fallback" value.

Most Shapers today will prefer to play a card like Stoneship Chart Room, which elegantly deals with all types of damage threats. So too Anarchs prefer to play Steelskin Scarring and Criminals The Class Act since these cards all provide both damage tech and alternatively thin your deck, making it more efficient, not less, in the matchups where you don't need damage protection.

Redesign

If I had to redesign Airblades without fundamentally changing it, my first order of business would be to let it recharge itself, such as gaining a power counter the first time each turn a successful run is made, by letting it self-replenish, you can feel comfortable including just one of these, knowing it can last you the whole game, without wishing you had a second copy, the instant the first runs out. To compensate, you might want to increase the install cost to 2 or 3 credits, and/or have it start with only 1 power counter instead of 3.

If this wasn't enough, you could start expanding its applications, perhaps a third option where you can spend a power counter to jack out or remove a tag, like a rechargeable Flip Switch. Or simply expand the damage protection to include Meat or Core damage and remove the only during run condition. Or you could reword the second ability to include other nasty ice abilities, like preventing "when rezzed" effects on Unsmiling Tsarevna, Ablative Barrier or Stavka/Hafrún or when encounter ends effects like Anansi or Phoneutria.

I'd be much more comfortable including a tech card like this version of Airblades that recharges itself and provides a multitude of uses against a wide variety of matchups, than the current version which is both highly specialised and painfully finite.

At the time of writing, NSG has been quite clear that they don't do errata for accessibility reasons, which I completely understand, so don't hold your breath for a new version of Airblades coming anytime soon. Rather, let Airblades serve as a lesson for future designers, on the pitfalls of tech cards, and how to ensure playability.

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.

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.

1. Political Assets on the whole
2. How this card fits within Weyland
3. How this card fits within non-Weyland Archetypes as an import
4. How runners can and should think about and play around this card
5. 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.

I have no idea why this doesn't have a review because it already shows in up 2/3s of Anarch's decks at the time of writing so here we go.

It's a card draw engine, with complexities, that can make it hard to read and hard to estimate so I'm going to break it down into 3 components:

1. Draw a card once per turn (specifically on the Corps turn)
2. Do so only if the corporation has installed a card in the root of a server
3. You must trash one card off the top of your deck

First off, drawing a card once per turn is frankly amazing, it's what makes Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist one of the best Anarchs and what makes Lat: Ethical Freelancer one of the best Shapers. In Lago's case, it's also somewhat reminiscent of MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock if that's your sort of thing. It's worth noting that outside of ID abilities, most card draw is finite, Diesel, Steelskin Scarring, Moshing even card draw you install often runs out like Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, Earthrise Hotel or The Class Act (though Class Act is a bit more complicated).

For this reason, the best analogy is Verbal Plasticity, which also functionally gives you one extra card draw per turn (assuming you click to draw at least once). At a glance, it's easy to argue that Verbal is better, it's less conditional since you can choose to activate it instead of relying on your opponent to do something, and it doesn't require you to trash your own cards at random, sure Lago's a credit cheaper and doesn't require the continual investment of a click but still, the flaws clearly outway the benefits right?

Wrong! This card is amazing! Precisely because it trashes the top card of your stack, not in spite of it. That's not inherently intuitive looking at this card in isolation, to understand why we have to look at the kinds of other cards Anarchs regularly include in their deck

1. Buffer Drive offsets half of the downsides of this card, since you can recur every card trashed off the top of your deck if you so choose. Since Lago technically triggers on the Corps turn it satisfies Buffer Drives "once per turn" phrasing, which means you can use Buffer Drive to recur cards trashed by Lago and still use it on your turn to recur cards trashed by Moshing, The Price, Patchwork, Bankhar etc. Not only that but you can choose not to recur cards instead, so if you trash a dead draw that you didn't want anyway, you can just leave it in the Heap to give you a distilled, high value second half of the deck (the opposite of Class Act where your worst draws end up clumped together at the bottom of your deck)

2. Steelskin Scarring and Strike Fund, I'm grouping these cards together because they do something very similar to each and always show up together, and by always so up together I mean they're in every Anarch deck. Since Lago trashes the top card of the deck, there's a substantial chance that whenever Lago fires, it doesn't just draw you a card, it actually draws you 3 cards, or a card and 2 credits, a nice little surprise bonus that propels you forward more than Verbal ever can, since it doesn't interact with any other cards to give you that extra value. With the help of Buffer Drive, you can do this combo multiple times per copy of Strike Fund or Steelskin if you draw through your deck multiple times.

3. Aniccam Anarch is another reason to play Lago, Aniccam Anarchs have been rising in popularity recently and I think Lago is a big reason why. Whenever you trash an Event with Lago, you'll clicklessly draw two cards with Lago instead of one, which is crazy good. And like Buffer Drive, it has a "once per turn" trigger meaning it can draw you two cards with Lago on the Corps turn and still draw you another card on your turn off of playing (or trashing) any event. If you trash a Steelskin or Strike Fund it starts to get crazy good, since you could end up clicklessly drawing 2 cards and gaining 2 credits or even clicklessly drawing 4 cards!

4. Labor Rights / Ashen Epilogue. Even if you don't want to include Buffer Drive, or if you want to install Lago before you've found your Buffer Drive then having additional sources of recursion can be very useful to salvage the most important cards you happen to trash, or recur your entire Heap back into your deck to repeat the process again. Either way, recursion always pairs nicely with decks that are prone to trashing their own cards

With all this in mind we can see that with the proper support and setup, Lago is not only as good as Verbal Plascitity but has several notable upsides and factional synergies that Verbal lacks. And since many of these cards are already common or becoming more common it's really not much of a deckbuilding burden to include Lago anyways.

That being said there are a couple limitations I want to discuss for completeness sake.

1. Per-turn effects - These are naturally better the longer games go on and the sooner you can get them started. For this reason even the identical text would be better on an ID than a Resource, once again that's part of what makes Hoshiko and Lat so good, and why someone like Smoke was worth more than just another Cloak. However since IDs and Resources innately take up very different deck slots that's less of a problem and more of an observation, and I've even seen decks with built-in card draw like Hoshiko or Loup play this card in addition to their innate card draw. Additionally, as the meta can be rather fast at the time of writing with PD games or Reeducation Azmari games being as short as 6 turns it can be hard to generate consistent value from slow cards like this over burst card draw. But that also means that this card will likely only get better if the meta slows down even a little (due to Rashida's rotation, for example). Lastly, you'll want to install this card as soon as possible, but that's not much of a problem since Anarchs are happy running three copies of a unique card an then just feeding the "dead draws" to cards like Patchwork or Moshing.

2. Counterplay - Generally you don't want to give your opponents much of an opportunity to counter-act your plans, this is part of why Wildcat Strike sees limited play while Sure Gamble is ubiquitous. Giving your opponents the option to mess up your plans if able is generally a bad idea and since Lago only fires if your opponent does something, that can be a drawback that causes it to fire less consistently than once per turn. Notably, it checks if something is installed in the root of a server, so that includes Upgrades on centrals and Upgrades or Assets in remotes. Taking a turn off installing ICE, playing Operations, Advancing an Agenda or using a card ability like Regolith Mining License won't trigger it. Furthermore, you can "batch" installs together, since Lago can only fire a maximum of once per turn. While this is some counterplay for the Corp, most Anarchs can put on enough pressure that denying them a Lago draw is the least of your worries. And several Archetypes like Rush or Asset Spam require you to install something pretty much every turn, with the occasional turn off to score an agenda. Meanwhile, the kind of decks that can afford to take turns off from installing cards in the root of a server (like Glacial) generally play slower and make games last longer, which gives you more "opportunities" for Lago to fire. Thus, Lago can provide a deceptively consistent amount of card draws over the course of a game. Though the pace and pattern can be very inconsistent and it's for this reason that I wouldn't recommend relying on this card as your only source of card draw.

Lastly, Seb does have some bonus value he can derive from this card since it is a 2-credit connection that he can install clicklessly for free off of taking a tag. But otherwise, it generally works pretty well in any Anarch deck.

I wouldn't recommend exporting it to any other faction as it's nowhere near as good without all the support cards I outlined (especially Steelskin and Strike Fund), and importing a full playset of Lago, Strike Fund and Steelskin Scarring is going to set you back your full 15 influence, leaving no room for Buffer Drive or Ashen.

Thematically, Lago Paranoa Shelter looks like a kind of animal shelter that Seb and his family/friends also use for meetings and other "insurrectionist purposes" or just generally hang out there it seems. Lago Paranoa means "lake Paranoa" in Portuguese which in turn literally translates as "lake sea cove" as derived from Paranoa River, it's an artificial lake in the capital of Brazil, Brasilia where much of the Liberation Cycles story takes place. I'm somewhat unclear as to the ludonarrative intent here, why does the corporation installing something cause the runner to trash something and then draw and what does that have to do with an animal shelter on the shore of a lake? The Corporation doing Corporate stuff incidentally hurts citizens and animals but then Lago Paranoa Shelter helps them get better perhaps, it's a bit tenuous and I'm struggling to follow along but there you go. I don't particularly like the art, I can't quite put my finger on it but it just sort of creeps me out. Anyway, that's my problem.

TLDR: This card is somewhat unintuitive, and it can be hard to appreciate its power, but in the right "trash-forward" Anarch package and with the right support cards, it can be an absolute powerhouse of clickless card draw and value generation.

NBN has an unfortunate history of impotent ICE, with criticisms ranging from "porous" to "useless" to "weak" to just plain "terrible." Capacitor isn't helping those stereotypes.

But wait! I hear you say, 4 for 5 strength is amazing, with just a little bit of support, this could be one of the most cost-efficient pieces of ICE in the game! Eli 1.0 levels of efficiency, without any of the porous drawbacks associated with Bioroid ICE.

OK... let's be objective and consider all the possibilities

1. How good is this piece of ICE without support?

2. How good is this ICE when the runner has a single tag

3. How good is this ICE when the runner is buried in tags

4. How good is this ICE when paired with guaranteed tags (such as having a Funhouse installed on top of it)

Scenario 1:

Pretty terrible. 4 for a 3 strength 1 sub barrier is atrocious, Cleaver, the gold standard Fracter eats it for a credit and you'll notice that no other 3 strength barrier sees consistent play for this exact reason. I've almost never seen Klevetnik and Maskirovka and I've only really seen Hafrún as part of Stavka Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel. combos. All good Barriers in the format fall into 2 categories: cheap, utility gear checks like Tatu-Bola, Ablative Barrier or Ping and large value ICE like Bran, Logjam, Pharos and arguably Boto. Capacitor without tags has the misfortune of falling right in the middle, where you end up paying a rez cost that is twice as much as an Ablative Barrier for the exact same taxing power, without any chance of recursion to sweeten the deal. I feel confident saying that as long as Cleaver remains the go-to Fracter you should never play Capacitor without tag support.

Scenario 2:

The runner has a single tag, you're probably playing some sort of tag punishment so the runner is almost certainly not ending their turn tagged, so we'll assume that for the sake of argument, they somehow managed to take a tag on their turn, maybe they've run a trap and then run the Capacitor without removing the tag, perhaps they're playing Seb and took a tag for Manuel, perhaps they used Eru. Whatever, it's not important, still arguably a lacklustre piece of ICE, the dominance of K2CP Turbine in the current meta ironically makes the difference between a 3-strength Barrier and a 5-strength Barrier somewhat mute, and the difference between having 2 live subs and 1 live sub equally as irrelevant when it comes to Cleaver. Perhaps if you're expecting more Shaper playing Gauss/Pressure Spike or Criminals playing Curupira then maybe you tax them an extra 2 credits, maybe an extra 3 credits if they're willing to spend a credit to deny you a credit but considering how niche a situation this is and how meagre the increase in efficiency, I'm still not about to include this ICE just because my deck happens to give a few incidental tags.

Scenario 3:

The runner is swamped in tags, we're talking Behold! into Oppo Research or AMAZE Amusements + Oracle Thinktank into Oppo Research, pick your poison but the fact of the matter is that clearing tags is no longer an option and the runner now has to go "tag me." This does 2 things, first off, the ICE is always 5 strength from now on, rather than needing a niche scenario, and the first sub is giving you 5-10 credits now so the runner really feels the need to break. It's still not very good, everything I said about Cleaver and Turbine is still true and you're still only taxing Shapers and Crims a few extra credits (unlike Starlit Knight which scales continuously with the number of tags the runner has). In total, you tax Shapers and Crims 6 credits with Pressure Spike or Gauss or Curupira (assuming they haven't hit threat, aren't flickering Gauss or aren't bypassing it). These numbers sound good on paper but when more than a third of the meta is on some form of Anarch, when runner econ is so high that even 10-strength Barriers aren't enough to consistently keep runners out and when you remember that the Runner is going tag me so you probably have much better things to do like Mindscaping + End of the Line or Shipment from Vladisibirsk or scoring out a Freedom of Information for free then this ICE really just isn't making much sense.

Scenario 4:

Paired with guaranteed tags, perhaps the most interesting and least conditional option is simply pairing this kind of ICE with guaranteed tags effects, the most obvious example of which is just to install this, then install a Funhouse on top of it, somewhat reminiscent of installing a Data Raven on top of a Data Ward. This way, you guarantee it's always 5 strength, regardless of whether the runner hit a trap the click before or is going full tag me. The only way to beat this is paid-ability window tag-removal like No Free Lunch or Flip Switch and this is probably a poor use of such powerful cards so let's a assume everything works out. This whole situation is still absolutely rubbish for you, you're now paying at least 10 credits (4 for the Capacitor, 5 for Funhouse and 1 for the added install cost) to get yourself a 5 Strength Barrier and a porous code-gate, Yikes! the Runners are just quaking in their boots I'm sure.

As you can see despite the alluring promising of 4 for a 5-strength Barrier the truth is far less glamorous and far more disappointing, this ICE just rarely makes sense, even if you're playing a tag-centric deck your ICE is probably more interested in giving tags to set up other, aforementioned pieces of tag-punishment then getting a slightly more taxing barrier.

This is really a shame because NBN has occasionally had pieces of ICE that made sense in that respect, the perfect example being Data Ward of course, even accounting for the combined install costs of Data Ward + Data Raven (only 11 credits actually) the payoff is so much better, 1 guaranteed tag, + 2 more possible tags unless the runner pays 3 and beats the trace, plus an 8 strength 4 sub barrier, all 4 subs needing to be broken for access so something like Boomerang, Botulus or Slap Vandal will still struggle with it. Capacitor is like Data Ward's little brother, Data Ward's sad, pathetic little brother no less, something that just doesn't live up to it in any respect. Which is a real shame, because the idea of making NBN ICE care about tags and be conditionally really good when supported by something like Funhouse is a cool idea, unfortunately, the simple reality is that Capacitor just isn't enough of a payoff.

This might sound hilarious and maybe I'm just being naive but I do really hope that NBN gets some genuinely good ICE next set.

Thematically a Capacitor refers to a kind of device within electrical circuits designed to temporarily store electrical energy and can be used in power transmission to smooth and stabilize the flow of electricity. How this relates to this card is eluding me as it neither gains nor stores charges or power counters or advancements and it's not like it temporarily removes tags and then releases them like some kind of modern Data Raven or something. In regards to the quote, presumably, Seb is struggling with this kind of ICE because he's exactly the kind of runner who would otherwise normally like to be running tagged but honestly if Seb is playing Cleaver + K2CP Turbine or Arruaceiras Crew or Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga or Botulus or any of the other tools Anarchs have at their disposable, it's really not all that much of a struggle.

TLDR: Yet another mediocre piece of NBN ICE that sees no play, absolutely gets shredded by Cleaver and fails to fill the big shoes left by Data Ward.