Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

Isaac Liberdade is a mobile Sysop, sometimes called a "nomadic" Sysop. This means that, unlike most upgrades, Isaac can move himself around, allowing the benefits of a single, unique card to potentially affect multiple servers across multiple turns. He's one of 4 such mobile Sysops released in the Liberation Cycle, one for each Corp, alongside The Holo Man, Vovô Ozetti and Adrian Seis, the collective of them bring a new mechanic to the game, something that is both refreshing and fascinating. Used correctly, protected, and moved around to where they are most needed these cards can provide incredible value.

At the end of your turn, you may move Isaac to a different server and whenever you do move him, he can place an advancement counter on an unadvanced piece of ICE, note: it does not specify that the ICE itself must be "advanceable" so even though you would gain additional value from advancing a piece of ICE which gains benefits from being advanced, you can advance other pieces of ICE, purely to allow Isaac to set himself up and give himself more targets to increase the strength of.

That being said, Isaac synergizes well with advanceable ICE, since placing an advancement counter on an advanceable piece of ICE is more valuable than placing it on a random piece of ICE and if you already have advanced ICE, Isaac can start increasing their strength immediately. Advanceable ICE is an almost uniquely Weyland mechanic (if we ignore Mestnichestvo) that has gone through multiple iterations throughout the game. Back from Lunar, we can see cards like Tyrant or Woodcutter which could be advanced and gained additional subroutines for each advancement counter, or the set of "space ICE" like Asteroid Belt or Wormhole that gets cheaper when advanced, or ICE that gained additional strength when advanced like Fire Wall or Ice Wall as well as the "7 wonders" archetype that gained special bonuses once they have at least 3 advancement counters like Hortum or Pharos. And, it's a mechanic still going strong today with two new pieces of advanceable ICE released in Liberation Tree Line and Logjam.

Pros / When to Use

Isaac is best played not only with lots of advanceable ICE but also with very large, vertical servers. The more pieces of ICE he can increase the strength of at once, the more value he can generate. In such a situation, he can be bounced back and forth between HQ and R&D or between centrals and the scoring remote, both to stack up advancement counters and to adapt in real-time to where you think you could most benefit from increasing the strength of the ICE to tax or dissuade the runner.

Cons

Unfortunately for Isaac, the metagame in the standard format does not favour glacial, the prevalence of Orca/Lobisomem Kit, K2CP Turbine/Takobi Lat and Arruaceiras Crew ICE destruction Anarchs hasn't been kind to glacial and most people seem to prefer playing assets spam R+ or kill based PE or Thule or just rushing the runner out with PD or Asa, plus whatever AgInfusion: New Miracles for a New World is doing. Building lots of big servers just isn't as actually taxing as you might think.

Beyond that he's expensive to rez and cheap to trash which is never a good combination, you have to try and keep him alive for at least a little while to get him to pay for himself, let alone turn a profit, and that can be hard when the whole point of his ability is that you want to put him on the server you think the runner is most likely to run.

Additionally, the identity you probably think you want to include him with Weyland Consortium: Built to Last, because they both like advanceable ICE, is a bit of a red herring, no pun intended because BTL likes to be the one placing the first advancement counter and so does Isaac. If you didn't already know, BTL has a weird piece of wording that essentially means you only get the credits if you advance it with the basic action, it doesn't give you credits if you "place an advancement counter" such as through Isaac, Wall to Wall or Priority Construction. This makes Isaac clunky to use in BTL at the best of times and actively anti-synergistic at the worst, where either Isaac places the first advancement counter and you miss out on the bonus credits or you place the first advancement counter and Isaac is left without anything to advance. Neither of which allows you to get the most value from Isaac or your identity. Perhaps he is better suited for some kind of glacial Nuvem SA: Law of the Land deck but most Nuvems I see are usually just trying to do some kind of kill combo with End of the Line or Punitive Counterstrike.

This is usually the part where I write a thematic review but since Isaac Liberdade seems to be a fictional character who is not based on anyone in real life and since we don't really have much lore to go off of (unlike The Holo Man for example) I'm just kinda going to spitball here. We know he's a bioroid in Brazil, which means he's freed, which means he's not property... which means he's been hired by and is voluntarily working for Weyland, one of the megacorporations who are secretly trying to enslave his kind all over again... which... is honestly really fascinating, but again, without even any flavour text to work with we don't know much more than that. We can see him yelling or barking orders in his art but that doesn't really tell us all that much about his philosophical standpoint, his reasons for working with Weyland or how much he actually knows.

Beyond that I decided to track down the etymology of his name, Isaac comes from Hebrew (like many Western names, think Jonathan, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, David, Adam, Benjamin, Daniel, Elijah, Gabriel, Micheal, Noah, Samuel and so on and so forth) and literally means "(he) will laugh" or perhaps in context "he who laughs." From the art alone this couldn't be further from the truth, but it's hard to say if this is intentional irony or if the designers just didn't know and don't care about etymology. Liberdade obviously means freedom, compare liberty, liberate, liberation or even Libertador (Mercury: Chrome Libertador) but once again, it's unclear if this is meant to have a deeper meaning or if someone just thought Liberdade sounded cool. Do all freed bioroids have the surname Liberdade, did Isaac choose his name for himself, did someone else give him this name and if so who? These are questions we may never know the answer to, but it's fun to speculate.

TLDR: One of 4 new nomadic Sysops, it has potential in glacial, advanced ICE decks but is somewhat finicky to integrate with the leading advanced ICE ID Weyland Consortium: Built to Last. Among the 4 Sysops, he's arguably on the lower end of the power spectrum, alongside Vovo and Adrian, which, is all to say that the Holo Man looks like the big brother who bullies all of his younger siblings, (seriously that card is powerful, and will probably be considered even more potent once SanSan City Grid rotates with Dawn)

Cluedrew has already added an exceptional flavour review above, so I wanted to provide a more logistical overview of what this card does and when to use it.

If you're unfamiliar, Netrunner is an expandable card game with a continuously updated ban list and regular set rotations. This does a lot of important things regarding balance, staleness, creative opportunities and accessibility but one of the smaller things it does is open up opportunities for what are commonly referred to as "near-prints." Cards that closely resemble prior cards that have been banned or rotated but with some critical details changed. This allows one to attempt to keep the best and most interesting parts of a card's identity while trying to fix its most problematic elements.

So notable examples include cards like Spin Doctor which closely resembles Jackson Howard but has a limited use card draw effect, recurs 2 instead of 3 cards and costs 2 instead of 3 to trash, limiting its strength and making it cheaper for the runner to trash it. Or Diversion of Funds which closely resembles Account Siphon with the additional cost of a click and a credit to play as well as reducing the amount gained so that it represents a 10 credit swing instead of 15 should it succeed (though it no longer gives the runner tags either).

Ashen Epilogue is a "near-print" of Levy AR Lab Access, a potent card that allowed you to recur the entirety of your heap back into your stack, essentially refreshing you back to the game start (while allowing you to keep all your installed cards, credits and agenda points of course). Since cards almost invariably get trashed, be that simply from playing events or from using trashable resourses, hardware or programs cards will end up in the heap. And, since those cards have value and uses, it can be important to get them all back.

And that's saying nothing about rigshooting or Net Damage, Meat Damage or Core Damage removing key cards either.

In a more abstract sense, if you were worried about running out of cards, you could simply make a larger deck, including more cards to last you longer in a more protracted game, however, due to most cards being limited to a playset of 3, this runs you into the problems of consistency and efficiency as you are forced to gradually bloat your deck with unnecessary and inferior cards to avoid running out of them. Levy Ar Access solved that problem by letting you make a tight, efficient deck with all the best cards and then just recurring them once you've gone through your whole deck. Giving you most of the potential upsides of a much larger deck, without any of the drawbacks.

Ashen Epilogue tries to preserve the potential of such a card while limiting its universal safety with one major change "remove the top 5 cards of your stack from the game." Put simply, if your goal was to try and use Ashen Epilogue as a safety blanket against key icebreakers or combo pieces getting trashed then you run the even bigger risk of accidentally removing those cards from the game, putting them even further out of reach.

A smaller change from Levy to Ashen is that Ashen is a 2 influence neutral while Levy was a 3 influence Shaper card, this change makes the card slightly more accessible for non-Shaper factions and slightly less accessible for Shapers.

When to Use

This card is ideal if your economy is particularly dependent on finite cards, event-heavy econ like Sure Gamble, Creative Commission, Dirty Laundry, or Bravado all come to mind. As well as decks that trash their own cards for money through Aesop’s Pawnshop, Spec Work or Isolation. But is markedly less useful in decks with self-sustainable econ like drip or the old Magnum Opus.

It's particularly valuable in Anarch decks where self-trashing is common Steelskin Scarring, Strike Fund, Moshing, The Price, Eye for an Eye, Audrey v2, Lago Paranoá Shelter, Friend of a Friend and many many more. It's practically a must-include for Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist where without it she would probably mill herself out long before she mills the corp.

It also has applications in run-event heavy Criminal decks, the aforementioned Bravado, Dirty Laundry and Carpe Diem all being core to high-tempo Criminal econ. Or even in a high card draw Shaper deck where you'll regularly see Dr. Nuka Vrolyck, Diesel, Aniccam and Lat get through the entirety of your deck before the end of the game.

In terms of timing, this card is best used when your deck is empty to maximise the potential number of cards recurred, but it's also best used on an empty hand if possible. Remember, spending 5 credits just to draw 5 cards is good value even if the massive recursion effect wasn't even there.

When Not to Use

As mentioned previously, if you need to recur specific, highly-valuable cards more safely and reliably, there are other better options, Harmony AR Therapy is one of the most common at the time of writing alongside Simulchip in Shaper while Anarchs have Labor Rights and Privileged Access, all of which are quite good. There are also Katorga Breakout, Rip Deal and Test Run though they see relatively little play comparative. All of these cards can more precisely and reliably recur a single card you need, allowing you to recover that one lost breaker or combo piece without risking it being removed from the game and without having to recur everything else in your Heap at the same time and sort through your deck all over again.

Edit: Something I forgot to add is that you should almost always run this as a 1 of. Since the ideal time to use this card is once you've gone through your entire deck, you're guaranteed to draw it by the time you want to use it and you almost never need to cycle through your entire deck 3 times over. Thus including multiple copies brings nothing but drawbacks, namely, that you double the odds of drawing it early in the game when it's a dead draw that will clog your hand, as well as the extra two influence cost.

TLDR: A "near-print" of Levy AR Lab Access that allows you to recur almost all cards from your Heap back into your Stack, best used in self-trashing Anarch decks but not particularly safe or reliable for recurring any specific card in your Heap.

I don't normally write hate reviews because there's a lot I love about this game, and there are a lot of good, interesting and fascinating cards, so it feels like a shame to focus on the negative, but here we go.

Strength shredding has always been a staple of the Anarch roster, from cards like Wyrm, Parasite, Datasucker and Ice Carver in the original core set to modern staples like Devil Charm, Leech and this card right here.

The underlying premise is solid, instead of pumping up icebreakers to match the ICE's strength, what if we bring the ICE's strength down to match the icebreakers? Thus all strength shredding is best paired with fixed-strength breakers like Mimic, Yog.0 and the spiritual successors to fixed-strength breakers released in System Gateway: Cleaver and Buzzsaw which can technically pump but do so with extreme inefficiency while simultaneously breaking subroutines more efficiently than your average breaker, thus incentiving not having to pump with them.

The Corp/Runner dynamic here is solid. If the runner can get set up, make smart, measured runs, manage their virus counters well, and lock centrals, then they can efficiently get into almost anywhere with Datasucker/Leech counters. Suppose they can pin the corp down with pressure. In that case, it becomes difficult to purge virus counters making not only Datasucker/Parasite valuable but also causing the Corp to lose ICE to a Parasite/Chisel giving them even more cheap and reliable access.

Alternatively however, if the Corp can get set up, use their ICE intelligently, build an econ lead and have enough tempo to reliably purge Virus counters then the runner can get locked out, unable to generate counters from central runs and either unable to break ICE due to their fixed breakers or forced to do so at a heavy tax, especially against large and powerful ICE. Thus, the Corp can open up scoring windows by playing around this weakness.

There's a clear push and pull here, this combination of strength-shredding and fixed-strength/soft fixed-strength breakers make a beautiful duet, an elegant set of complementary gameplay mechanics where the potential value of your fixed-strength breakers is held in check by the need for strength shredding and the potential for the Corp to tax and lock the Runner out without them.

Even the sources of strength-shredding themselves are respectable, the aforementioned Leech generates Virus counters through central runs, something the Runner already wants to do and is blocked by ICEing centrals, something the Corp already wants to do, while simultaneously playing into the theme of "defend your Archives" that Anarchs often have going on. The counters are expended when used too, which means that from the Corps perspective, even if your ICE isn't directly taxing the runner credits, it's never the less taxing them on a finite and valuable resource. It's also always vulnerable to Virus purges (and by extension Mavirus) should the corp decide it's worth it to do so.

Ice Carver is strong and universal but it's expensive to install and unique, limiting it's efficacy to only shredding a single strength, it takes your fixed strength breakers from effectively 3 to 4 strength but doesn't do anything against 5 or 6+ strength ICE and even for Cleaver and Buzzsaw, it helps, but super large pieces of ICE retain their ability to heavily tax the runner.

Devil Charm is incredibly strong but so emphatically "single-use" that it removes itself from the game, saving the runner in a pinch, but making it clear to the Corp that, Devil Charms are a finite resource in and of themselves.

Meanwhile, Chisel, also another ICE destruction tool, is limited by time and setup, only being able to threaten a single piece of ICE at a time, and offering the Corp a window of opportunity to purge virus counters should they decide their ICE is important enough to save. Not only that but the runner must encounter the ICE regularly to shred and destroy it, requiring further investment of time and resources to break the ICE conventionally, repeatedly, before it can be destroyed (which arguably makes it more balanced than Parasite by comparison too). It's also vulnerable to cards like Magnet and the aforementioned Mavirus (that being said, even before Arruaceiras Crew, Chisel + Devil Charm was heading in a similarly dangerous direction as well).

Trypano is similar to Chisel, though it doesn't reduce strength and standardizes the trash requirement to 5 virus counters and accumulates at the start of the turn, this means it's still vulnerable to many of the same techs like Magnet and Mavirus and takes significant time to set up, while avoiding the Devil Charm combo.

Hippo, one of the few other ICE destruction tools in standard, is limited by only being able to target the outermost piece of ICE on a server, allowing the corp to protect their potent ICE anchoring the base of their servers with weak fodder ICE on the edges. Additionally, it requires the runner to fully break the ICE in question, thus requiring the runner to have installed the necessary breakers and have the necessary econ to fully break the ICE at least once (while also being countered by cards like Akhet or Afshar). Plus, it removes itself from the game when used. The old Cutlery run events (Spooned, Knifed and Forked) were also limited by most of the same things and even then each option could only target one of the ICE types and could be countered by pre-emptive end the run effects like Bio Vault as once the run event was trashed you couldn't just run back.

Even Arruaceiras Crew's strength shredding effect is relatively tame on its own, reducing an ICE's strength by 2 and only for the duration of the encounter is useful but limited and taking a tag is a hefty investment that costs a click and 2 credits to clear, while going tag-me is actively anti-synergistic with keeping this card alive, and it also synergies with Seb and Valentina too, which is good for thematic and mechanic consistency. It can also only be used once per turn which further limits its applications and helps keep it in check.

The problem is the secondary effect, the sheer ease and universality with which Arrauceiras Crew can destroy ICE (especially in conjunction with Devil Charm) and perhaps more specifically, the lack of counterplay open to the Corp. Purging does nothing, Magnet does nothing and many of the other healthy limitations placed on other forms of ICE destruction, like only being able to target the outermost piece of ICE, only being able to target a specific type of ICE, having to fully break the ICE or requiring time to set up, simply don't apply to Arruaceiras Crew. It's ICE destruction without any drawbacks, it's the Boat of ICE destruction if you will, unconditional, universal, fast ICE destruction.

If all that wasn't bad enough this card doesn't even have the decency to remove itself from the game when used like Devil Charm or Hippo do, which means that it can be recurred by cards like Labor Rights, Katorga Breakout, Privileged Access, Harmony AR Therapy and Ashen Epilogue. This means that even after all three Arruaceiras Crews in a standard deck have been used, this card can be recurred and used to destroy even more pieces of ICE, chewing through countless defences without the corp ever really being able to shut them down. Not only that but it's not unique like Ice Carver or Hippo which means that you can have multiple of these in play at once, allowing you to stack their ICE shredding effects together or trash multiple pieces of ICE in a single run.

All of this, in turn, contributes to a swarm of Asset Spam, Rush, Fast Advance, Shell Game and Kill Decks on the Corps side (especially in the online meta-game), due to the sheer vulnerability and unreliability of ICE (and especially of good quality, high-strength, high-cost ICE). Even if you enjoy this kind of meta, it's hard to deny that a card that not only invalidates but actively punishes a player for utilizing what used to be one of the Corporation's most ubiquitous defence tools is out of place in this game.

In fairness to this card, it is not the only culprit, cards like K2CP Turbine, Takobi, Boomerang and Botulus and the sheer amount of bypass introduced in this cycle (as well as the general state of econ) must all share in the blame for undercutting ICE's capability to tax, hurt and stop the runner but I hold a special hatred for a card like this that not only lets the runner break or bypass ICE more efficiently but actively destroys ICE and with such little counterplay.

Whether this card gets banned soon or whether a new tech card is introduced in Dawn to offer some counterplay (like how Magnet can be used as a tech against Botulus and Chisel or Mavirus as a tech against Viruses more broadly) I hope that this meta does not drag on as it makes it difficult to enjoy a game I so dearly cherish.

Edit: I stand corrected! I recently rediscovered Warroid Tracker which does trigger off Arruaceiras Crew, so that's at least some counterplay if you're in HB or willing to import it, there also still exists Lotus Field, but Lotus Field is just such bad piece of ICE against every other match-up (compare Mestnichestvo or Hortum which both offer you substantially more value for the same or lower cost, and even those cards see little play). Even then, Warroid and Lotus Field will rotate with Dawn (as will Magnet for what it's worth), so I still feel strong new tech cards need to be printed, or this card needs to be banned.

Edit Number 2: Belatedly realising this whole review is a long-winded recap of the history of strength shredding, fixed strength breakers and ICE destruction when all I really want to say can be summed up in a TLDR so here you go.

TLDR: This card is ICE destruction without almost any of the limitations, conditions, weaknesses or counterplay that defined prior iterations of ICE destruction and designing cards with game-warping effects without drawbacks is bad actually.

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

Malandragem is another bypass card released in the Liberation Cycle, one of many such tools primarily designed for Mercury: Chrome Libertador, such as S-Dobrado, Alarm Clock, Laser Pointer or even Physarum Entangler. Though it's worth saying that Criminals have always had a penchant for disposable forms of bypass, Lustig, Demara and Abagnale all come to mind. While Inside Job originates from the Core Set itself and cards like Spear Phishing and Always Have a Backup Plan build off the same archetype.

Criminals are the kings of bypass. The only non-criminal bypass cards in the game's history are the one-off mini-faction cards Security Nexus and Logic Bomb, as well as the neutral run event Rigged Results. So it's not surprising that if Malandragem were to show up anywhere, it would be in Criminals. A very fitting addition to the line-up, both mechanically and thematically.

But just how good is this card, well, I figure the simplest and best comparison is probably Inside Job itself, much in the same way Sure Gamble is the classic gold standard of Econ that all other Econ cards must be compared to so too Inside Job is the classic and gold standard bypass card, originating in the Core Set, having been reprinted 3 times in the Revised Core Set, the System Core 2019 and the System Update 2021 this card is a staple by design and still sees regular play to this day.

Well, Inside Job offers you one bypass for a draw, a click to play and 2 credits while Malandrgem offers you a maximum of 2 bypasses for a draw, a click to install and 4 credits. Which averages each Malandragem bypass at about half a draw, half a click and two credits. If you account for the fact that Inside Job is a run event and by extension click compression while Malandragem needs you to spend two more clicks running to gain the full benefit (but at the same time those two runs were probably runs you wanted to make at some point anyway) then the two bypasses are roughly equivalent in value.

Malandragem is also a program that takes up precious MU, but since you'll probably dispose of it relatively quickly it shouldn't be a long-term intrusion either. Additionally, Criminals have some of the weakest recursion out of any Runner faction (Shapers have Harmony AR Therapy, Simulchip and Test Run, Anarchs have Retrieval Run and Katorga Breakout while Criminals are limited to the rather mediocre Rip Deal) so the distinction between trashing and removing Malandragem from the game is minor and we'll assume the Runner wants to use the Threat 4 Bypass if able to.

From here there are 3 different situations Bypass is useful in:

1. Early game aggression, as a way to get around gear check ICE, pressure the Corp, get some accesses and touch some cards nice and early before you find your breakers.
2. Late game efficiency, for a set price of around 2 credits and a non-fungible card you get to avoid one piece of ICE altogether, no matter its strength or subroutines, allowing you to avoid even the largest, scariest and most-taxing pieces of ICE for a convenient pre-set price (think Tyr, Bran, a late game Boto, or an advanced Logjam, Pharos or Colossus), something you could break conventionally but would cost you a substantial amount of credits, making it harder for you to run as often, something Criminals especially want to avoid due to their high speed, low to the ground econ.
3. Full break-less Crim, i.e. using Mercury: Chrome Libertador to get around ICE without technically breaking any subroutines to get her additional central accesses.

For the first one Malandragem does well as much of the early game gear check ICE the corp has the credits to rez are going to also have quite low strength, Thimblerig, Tatu-Bola, Border Control, Ping and Ablative Barrier are all weak gear checks that see common play that you can bypass for a single power counter and even against some mid-tier scarier ICE like Anemone, Unsmiling Tsarevna, Jaguarundi or Saisentan that bypass can still come in handy to prevent some damage.

Malandragem can't help against an early Bran or Tree Line though and only works against Gatekeeper after the first turn (by which point Gatekeeper has already done its job) which limits some of your early possibilities depending on the corps Faction and early econ. By contrast, Inside Job works against any single piece of ICE, regardless of strength and double stacking ICE, letting alone rezzing multiple pieces of ICE on one server in the first few turns is a risky move that can bankrupt the Corp if they're not careful and can leave other servers open to attack. While Malandragem can work early, it lacks the same universal consistency that Inside Job offers.

By contrast, in late-game board states, especially against Glacial, Malandragem is arguably favoured, with Spear Phishing rotated, a lot of Bypass comes from the outside in, not only Inside Job but also the aforementioned S-Dobrado and Alarm Clock, in this way, stacking big ICE on the inside of servers and following up with cheap ICE on the edge to eat the Bypass effects is a good idea but Malandragem can avoid this once you reach Threat 4, by allowing you to bypass anything, regardless of positioning.

In this situation Backstitching is arguably a better comparison, coming in a similar price point of 2 credits, on par with Inside Job, S-Dobrado and half a Malandragem it's very comparable and can also ignore positioning. To choose between them, consider the circumstances, Backstitching can only target central servers and even then you can't choose which central on any given turn, while Malandragem offers the more reliable option to choose and can target the scoring remote but requires Threat 4 before it can bypass anything over 3.

For Mercury, you want as much bypass as possible and some decks I see run Inside Job, S-Drobrado, Backstitching and Malandragem, though heuristically, Malandragem does seem to be the least common of the four at the time of writing.

The other limitation of Malandragem is more intangible, for a runner who starts the game with 5 credits, spending 4 of those on installing a Malandragem that may not fully pay itself off until Threat 4 is a heavy investment to leave just sitting around. It's a tempo hit, to put it simply, even if the breaks are roughly on par with Inside Job, having to invest the 4 credits upfront can be brutal for Criminals who might often prefer the speed and low price point of cards like Inside Job, S-Dobrado and Backstitching.

It will be interesting to see what will happen with Dawn arriving early next year as Inside Job itself rotates. Will another re-print/near print be issued to fill the hole, or will Criminals reappraise Malandragem with new eyes?

A somewhat tangential consideration I was theory crafting for a while was using Captain Padma Isbister: Intrepid Explorer and her associated "Charge" cards to continually refill Malandragem while using strength shredding effects like Ice Carver, Leech or Devil Charm to stretch the definition of "3-strength" and create a kind of ongoing bypass engine, rather than treating it as disposable. But it never really went anywhere due to influence and consistency problems, especially after the World Tree ban and it's just generally more efficient to use conventional breakers. But maybe someone else can cook up something interesting...

(Disclaimer: I am not Brazilian, nor do I live in Brazil, everything below is based on what I quickly found online, any clarification, corrections, context or additions from those more familiar with Brazilian culture would be much appreciated!)

Thematically, Malandragem is a Portuguese term that refers to the lifestyle of petty crime embraced by "malandros," which roughly translates to English as "bad boys," literally, mal- + -andro. Malandros like to live fast, dress well and shirk responsibilities in favour of easy living, often being synonymous with a rogue, scoundrel or hustler. They've become significant in Brazilian folklore as a kind of archetypal anti-hero who sheds society's expectations and lives as he pleases and has become significant in Brazilian literature, cinema and music, traditionally samba. If I had to extrapolate, I'd say that the Malandragem program outsmarts, outmaneuvers and cheats its way around the "petty challenges" of small ICE, but struggles with the responsibility of dealing with large powerful ICE. Why it gains the ability to bypass anything at Threat 4 is somewhat unclear, in American cinema, it's not uncommon for anti-heroes to avoid responsibility and do their own thing until a true problem comes along, when, at the final hour, they step up to the challenge and sacrifice themselves for a worthy cause, but I'm unsure how well this translates to the Brazilian conceptualisation of an anti-hero/malandro. It also seems Malandragem is related to the Brazilian concept of Jeitinho, which doesn't translate well into English but seems to refer to something akin to street-smarts, creativity or finding unconventional or perhaps even illicit means to achieve one's goals, being pragmatic, opportunistic and even cunning, to find your own way do something, so to speak, instead of just following the rules.

The art shows a Malandro shuffling a deck, though why is open to interpretation, is he engaging in gambling as a vice, is he preparing to pull a con to make a quick dollar or is he simply stacking the deck in his favour in a more abstract sense?

As a somewhat contemplative finish to this review, I can't help but wonder about the thematic dissonance between Mercury the character, her ability and the other cards in her set. She's a Liberator, her title says it plainly, a freed Bioroid who pursues the goals of bringing down the whole corrupt system, see The Powers That Be and Jeitinho and yet her faction, and the cards it contains, espouse a much less grand goal. Criminals are scrappy and sly and cunning and they use their tools to get in, get out and get paid, Malandragem suits them perfectly, I can easily imagine a world where this set included a Criminal identity who could be considered a Malandro, someone who gets in by bending the rules to his favour and simply outmaneuvering problems he doesn't want to have to deal with. Mercury honestly seems like she would be more at home in Anarch, as someone with a grand mission, someone disillusioned with the system, someone who wants to bring it all down, and someone who's willing to resort to murder to root out the corruption within the government. But she does not strike me as someone who lives their life by the principles of Malandragem, skirting responsibility in favour of an easy life.

TLDR: A cool card thematically that is very fitting for the Faction and the setting of the Cycle it was released in but struggles to find a place in Criminal decks due to the high up-front investment, tempo hit, conditionality around strength and need to wait for Threat 4 for the full power. Also very difficult to export because of the very high Influence cost.

Adding a review as there isn't one at the time of writing.

Hammer is AI hate with extra upsides. For those new to Netrunner, there are three basic types of ICE: Sentries, Barriers and Code Gates and three corresponding Icebreakers that can break subroutines on the associated ICE, Killers, Fracters and Decoders respectively. However, there are also AI programs, that can break any type of ICE, but usually have some special rules to limit their power. Still, some AI breakers are incredibly powerful and the Corps form of counterplay to these AI breakers are pieces of ICE like this, ICE with special rules to make it impractical to break it with AI. If this card were "balanced" we would expect it to be painful but not insurmountable for AI-reliant runners, but be slightly subpar against regular Killers.

Since AI programs are usually not also Killers, you can only break one subroutine on this piece of ICE using an AI breaker, which guarantees at least 2 of the subroutines firing. As long as you didn't run on your last click (you shouldn't be running on your last click anyway), a tag is removable and almost always a lot less painful than losing an already installed resource, piece of hardware or program. This means that this card comes down to the question for the runner: do you have a more valuable resource/piece of hardware you want to protect or a more valuable non-conventional breaker program you want to protect? Either way, this is terrible for the runner, if they break the program subroutine they risk losing a critical resource like the The Class Act or The Twinning or they risk losing their console or a critical MU providing tool like DZMZ Optimizer or another important piece of hardware like WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ or Docklands Pass. If they break the hardware/resource subroutine then they risk losing a program, presumably the AI breaker in question, though the Corp can also target non-breaker programs like Cezve, Paricia, Fermenter or even Self-modifying Code. Plus taking a tag in either situation to boot. Definitely a nasty surprise.

This card also has some very nice externalities due to its wording, think Boomerang, Botulus, Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman, Pelangi, Egret, you start to get the idea, a lot of the runner's creative tools to break Sentries without Killer's start to look a little sketchy.

However, bypass effects do still work, Physarum Entangler, Laser Pointer, Inside Job, S-Dobrado, Backstitching and Alarm Clock can all still completely bypass Hammer without ever needing to technically "break a subrountine."

The next major downside of this card is that it is a pretty pathetic early-game face check. If the runner has no programs, hardware or resources installed, running first click on their first turn, they're probably very happy to see this, because if you didn't already know, 6 credits is not the market rate for a tag. Quite frankly, whoever sold you this is ripping you off because you can get a tag for 1 or 2 credits: Ping, Virtual Service Agent and Vasilisa all come to mind and even something like Funhouse is much better value.

But assuming the runner does have installed cards they want to protect and assuming the runner already has their Killer, what kind of costs are we looking at?

• 5 credits for Carmen (3/5 to Install)
• 2 credits and 3 hosted power counters for Revolver (2 to Install)
• 9/6/3 credits for Echelon (depending on the number of installed Icebreakers) (3 to Install)
• 4 credits for Orca (plus you get to charge another card) (10 to Install)
• 6/4 credits for Ika (depending on if it's already hosted) (0 to Install)
• 3 credits for Afterimage (requires stealth credits) (or 2 credits to bypass, still requires stealth credits) (4 to Install)
• 6/3 credits for Na'Not'K (depending on the number of ICE protecting the server) (4 to Install)

Also worth mentioning that Mimic can't break it without assistance and Femme Fatale breaks it for 7 credits but that's somewhat beside the point of Femme. Also at the time of writing Bukhgalter is banned but if it wasn't it would break it for a net expenditure of 4 credits if that's the first Sentry.

All in all I'd say that this worked out pretty much as expected, ingnoring fringe cases like installing an Orca from hand (rather than with Spark of Inspiration) or a solitary Echelon or this being the only piece of ICE against a Na'Not'K this doesn't exactly break the bank. Against a runner with a Killer this is hardly the most taxing piece of ICE and as we've established it's pretty meek in the early game.

An advanced Colossus can tax the runner a lot more, with similar levels of damage if it's subs fire, Saisentan is still probably one of the most terriying cards in the game for just killing an overeager runner and Winchester gives you the same strength and number of subs, with similar levels of damage if they fire for 2/3s of the cost (asssuming it's over HQ).

Thematically, though, this card really hits the mark, see you can try all of your little tricks and bring all of your little AIs and you may think that you're sooooooo smart with your viruses and making my ICE think that it's something that it's not but let's see how well you deal with a freaking Hammer to the face. Plus the art is awesome, showing the thunderous moment when the Hammer strikes the Anvil. Oh wait, Anvil, despite being released in two different Cycles and having 2 very different effects and use cases, this is a nice extra little easter egg, the Anvil sets them up and the Hammer strikes them down.

If I could make one change to this card, I would probably have made the tag subroutine something else, like an End The Run or maybe dealing 3 net damage. Something just as punishing as the other two subrountines, so when you try to break it with something other than a Killer you either sacrifice a program and a hardware/resource to continue the run, or protect one and lose the other while being unable to get in. It also doesn't make a lot of thematic sense why a Hammer would be tagging you...

TLDR: Considering our starting premise, I'd say that this card pretty much hits the mark in terms of balance, there are better options against true Killers but this is quite punishing against runners relying on AI or other non-Killer tricks. On the whole, whether you choose to include this card is a matter of meta and playgroup, if the meta favours AI and Botulus and the like, this looks promising, if one of your friends you regularly play with loves Aumakua Crim then consider including this card to really mess with them, otherwise, there are probably better options for a standard Corp deck.