This is an interesting card, mechanically as well as thematically. Before addressing the various elephants in the room, it's worth thinking about the big upside the Little Engine has to offer. Against Gordian Blade and ZU.13 it's a respectable net cost to break: 2 with Gord, 3 with Zu. It also comes with a powerful kicker in the form of a large up-front cost to break. Although the runner gets most of their money back they still have to have a bunch of it to get up the hill. This means that the Engine's natural home is as the innermost ice on a server - you want to tax them a before they hit it. It also means the Engine can create scoring windows - when the runner is poor it will punch above its weight to keep them out.

The other breaker that the Engine excels against is Yog.0. Net-Ready Eyes will not help them. On the other hand, if the runner has Yog, they almost certainly have a separate answer to the Engine. D4v1d pays for itself with a profit of 2 and a power counter to spare when fighting this particular Goliath, while Knight pays the runner 1 each time they pass. Against this sort of breaker suite, the Engine is a gear check. Not useless, but more taxing on the corp than on the runner in the long run.

That's only the start of the Engine's troubles. Cyber-Cypher and Torch both break it for free providing the runner has 5, so effectively the corp is just reminding runners who use those breakers to keep enough money on hand to steal NAPD. Refractor pays a tidy profit, converting the runner's ephemeral stealth credits into hard cash. Stimhack runs enjoy a similar temporary-money-into-permanent-money boon, which is a big issue considering the common inclusion of that card in the dominant Prepaid Kate archetype. Lastly, Grappling Hook makes the Engine very sad. That's not a big issue now, but Geist might run it.

So is the Engine good enough? Given all of its problems and the obvious negative comparison with Tollbooth it's tempting to say no. It's considerably cheaper than Tollbooth though, and has a couple of admittedly minor advantages over it (Like being outside the practical range of 4tman with Datasucker). That makes it worth considering on its own merits. The fact is that not every deck will be packing the answers I've discussed. Some will just have Gordian or Zu. Some will have to break the Engine with Passport, Rex or Eater. Those decks will be unhappy to see it.

In conclusion due to its many deeply unfortunate problems the Little Engine will never be the centre piece of a codegate suite, but that doesn't make it worthless. As a one-of it has the potential to do good work in some match-ups. Sometimes you will discard it if you know or suspect the runner has a strong answer to it, but sometimes you will be glad to see it.

Eve lies on the extreme of a long curve of economy cards. Her net profit is 11. That's a totally absurd amount of money for a card and a click. Her drawbacks are equally huge. Assuming you rez her at the end of the runner's turn, you still have to wait through two more of their turns before she's even turning a profit. That's a huge delayed reaction that will put short term pressure on your economy, quite apart from the fact that any halfway decent runner will be looking to trash Eve as a high priority. Eve's high trash cost makes her a punishing tax on the runner in a naked remote, but that's offset by her equally high rez cost. In a scoring remote she's pretty much invincible, but her frustratingly slow pay-off means you run the risk of building up agendas in hand while she does her beautiful financial magic. Sometimes it's the right answer to trash eve in favour of an agenda. The more money you pass up to do this, the more it telegraphs to the runner that they should be looking to check out your remote.

The Cerberus breakers are weird, in that they look like a suite but they really aren't worth the influence to play as one. Lady is a badass, but Rex and Cuj.0 can only really be considered in their own faction. Taken in that light, Rex is actually a pretty good addition to the criminal breaker suite. If influence is tight, Rex alongside Passport can act as a not-too-awful Decoder solution. Passport does the heavy lifting on centrals, Rex steps in when there's a remote to be cracked.

I think the key thing to notice here is that card draw is strong in the right circumstances. Certainly 1 card > 1 Credit most of the time. The credit option ensures that you're never forced to over-draw. In any case, I think this will be best in decks that can leverage draw. I can see it as an outermost piece of Ice in Cerebral Imaging, for instance. Apart from that, it's in faction with re-use and could potentially be helpful in any deck that finds itself playing down to a small handsize. It also has mild synergy with Jackson, which is never a bad thing.

The comparison with Caduceus is important, because it nullifies what would be the other argument for this Ice, which is that it's cheap and taxing. Caduceus is probably better unless a) You really like the draw or b) Link becomes prevalent in your meta. That said, it costs an extra credit to break with Mimic, which isn't nothing.

Over all, I probably agree that this is second tier Ice, but I'd love to be wrong.

Okay, I'm going to make the obvious comment, in the hope that someone will have an excellent argument to prove me wrong.

This is just worse than Eli. It costs more, and it's not as strong. Sure if you hit it without clicks it's slightly harsher but even against HB few runners will be running unrezzed ice last click, especially now architect is out.

I guess that it definitely costs a click to hit, whereas you can just bounce off Eli. Nonetheless, I can't see that advantage swaying too many people.