Fairchild - Android: Netrunner LCG

Now, they have all come together.

There is actually quite a history behind Fairchild, this being the fourth card in a line that has spanned multiple sets. Before Fairchild, there was Fairchild 1.0, Fairchild 2.0, and Fairchild 3.0. How are they all connected? Let's start with something easy first: the art. Each card has art done by Liiga Smilshkalne, so all feature a similar palette and style. Now for the first three cards, each card depicts a separate figure, but here the heads of all the figures have joined together into one entity. Another quick note is that all the cards until now have be non-unique, but this version of Fairchild gets unique status, again showing the growth of the card.

Another thing is that each card serves as an upgrade of the other. The most obvious is the increasing cost and strength of each card. Even the influence cost goes up as the card gets more powerful. Next you have the first ability. With bioroid cards, most of the cards have text that allows the runner to bypass so many subroutines is they spend so many clicks, with 1.0 being one, 2.0 being two, etc. With Fairchild though, things have evolved to the point where that piece of text has dropped off completely, which really strengthens the card.

The subroutines have also evolved over time, though the last one makes some more drastic changes. Fairchild 1.0 had two subroutines that were pay 1 credit or trash a card. Fairchild 2.0 upgraded this to pay 2 credit or trash a card, plus it added another subroutine that did 1 brain damage. Fairchild 3.0 upgraded this again to 3 credit or trash a card, and added the option of ending the run to the last subroutine. But now we get to Fairchild. Now all the subroutines are about ending the run, with each one offering an alternative cost for the runner. So the first two subroutines lets you pay 4 credits, the third one lets you trash a card, and the fourth one lets you suffer brain damage. All these subroutines still call back to what came before, but they have still been completely modified.

Overall, what interests me about this card is less the card itself and more the journey it has been on.

Baba Yaga - Android: Netrunner LCG

Ba ba ya ga ga....

Baba Yaga is a witch of traditional eastern folklore. She's probably most famous for her walking chicken house, so I'm surprised the card went with something else. In folklore, witches seemed to use household objects as magic vehicles. In the Americas it became mostly the broom, but Baba Yaga did in fact use a mortar and pestle, though she still has a broom with her in the quote. As for that quote, yes, it is from a real Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev.

Now as for the card itself, I find it odd the art went with depicting the mortar and pestle as opposed to the witch herself, though we at least get some menacing figures standing around it. I like to interpret this card's ability as the AI can learn and use programs, similar to how a witch uses spells. Making the program a cyberwitch, which I find very cool.

Sapper - Android: Netrunner LCG

noun: a soldier employed in the construction of fortifications, trenches, or tunnels

I've heard the term "sapper" used before, but I couldn't exactly define what it was. I looked it up on Dictionary.com, and came up with a few results. A sapper is someone who digs trenches or other fortifications. Further digging (sorry) turned up that the word "sap" can also mean a deep, narrow trench. The term is mostly used in the military, but I have heard it connected to mining as well.

Well, vocabulary lesson over, on to why I picked this card. I'm not intimately familiar enough with the game to say these things have never been done before, but they are rarer abilities. First you have the ability where if the runner accesses the ICE, they are forced to encounter it. Equally rare is the ICE has a trash cost.

The art is fine, with smooth slabs sinking into a pit in the ground, which alongside the flavor text of the card, makes me think of Dante's structure for hell. Speaking of which, how many different things are there colloquially said to be a special place in hell for?

MKUltra - Android: Netrunner LCG

I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of this card.

Recently, Netrunner's Martial Law expansion came out, so this week I'm going to look at a few cards from it.

First, the name. MKUltra was a real project run by the CIA to discover the secrets of the human mind and how it behaved under adverse conditions. In short, they wanted the secret to mind control. What's really controversial about MKUltra was less the subject matter and more the methodology. Most of the organizations and institutes involved in MKUltra had no idea what they were really a part of, and a fair number of subjects had no idea they were being experimented on. The entire thing was kept securely in the dark, and the whole incident would become the poster child of government organizations performing sinister things behind the public's back.

All that history seems to play very little in the card mechanics, but it does set the flavor of the card and conjures feelings of civil unrest against the government. Mechanics wise, this card does a few new things. You have the recursion ability, which lets you play the program back from the heap when you encounter an ICE weak against it. And the second ability starts as a standard strength boosting ability, but with the additional effect of letting you immediately break subroutines. This entire thing is also carefully worded so that it still works if you can't break a subroutine, or can't break the maximum two.

The art is nice and psychedelic, which is standard for cards depicting the virtual world. I especially think the two different eyes fit the flavor. It calls to mind the idea of government monitoring, but also the idea that the public is looking back, trying to gaze under the surface and see what is really going on. I also like how you have one eye gazing away from the player, while the other is looking straight at them. Also, we have another quote from the Flashpoint.

Tezzeret, Master of Metal - Magic the Gathering

I can't see this name without thinking of "Magneto, Master of Magnet".

Unlike Ajani, Tezzeret has had far fewer cards dedicated to him, but there are still some comparisons, mostly to Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. I mentioned last post of the parallel between Ajani, Valiant Protector's one ability with Tezzeret's first ability, but Agent of Bolas actually has a similar ability. The difference is it only reveals the top five cards of your library then lets you cherry pick an artifact. The second ability is a downpowered version of Agent's ultimate ability, with the life loss being the number of artifacts you control as opposed to twice that number, and without any life gain. As far as I can tell though, the ultimate ability is all new to Tez, though it does make me think of Confiscation Coup, which was enacted by Tezzeret last set.

Ajani, Valiant Protector - Magic the Gathering

"Hope you have a LOT of +1/+1 counters."

Ajani Unyielding wasn't the only Ajani recently revealed. Like Kaladesh, Aether Revolt has its own Planesawlker Decks, with their own exclusive planeswalker cards.

There's honestly not too much to talk about Baby's First Ajani. It's practically the same image as Ajani Unyielding, but with a slightly different pose showing the unscarred side of his face, and the lighting is much brighter.

The first ability is an upscale version of Ajani, Caller of the Pride's first ability, with two counters instead of one. The second ability mimics Ajani's previous deck searching abilities, but what's interesting is how it foils the other Planeswalker Deck in the set. Tezzeret, Master of Metal's +1 ability is almost the same, except his ability reveals cards until you reveal an artifact, while it's a creature for Ajani.

And the ultimate ability touches what I mentioned with the last Ajani. Ajani likes you to have a big life total. Ajani Classic gave you an Avatar token with power and toughness equal to your life, and Caller of the Pride gave you X 2/2 Cat tokens, with X being equal to your life. There was also the ultimate on Mentor of Heroes, which gave you 100 life, but this card's ability is more in the vein of the first two cards. Rather than making a creature though, this one gives an existing creature X +1/+1 counters, with X being see above. And in case your opponent wasn't dead after that, the creature gains trample for a turn. It is also one of the more expensive ultimate abilities, going into double digits, but still losing to Gideon, Champion of Justice.

Ajani Unyielding - Magic the Gathering

Making planeswalkers more loyal.

It's time to breath some life into an old blog, and what better way to start than with a new card for an old character.

First note is, at the time of writing, this guy is the first preview card for the unrealeased set: Aether Revolt. Since I have not seen the full set yet, I can't tell you how Ajani fits in, other than his appearance on Kaladesh was teased with cards like Impeccable Timing.

There has been though five printed Ajani cards up to this one, so I can make some comparisons there. In terms of art, for example, he seems to mostly resemble Ajani Steadfast, with the small blue tassels. And I just realized that an anthropomorphic cat-person has attached multiple tassels to his costume. I guess his next outfit will incorporate balls of yarn.

His first ability reminds me of the second ability of Ajani, Mentor of Heroes, but it has been tweaked to reveal fewer cards but grab more of them. This card's second ability is a Swords to Plowshares, which fits considering the character. It also sort of fits the trend of previous Ajani cards. Most of the others were concerned with making your life total big, and while the ability is meant to be used more offensively, there is nothing stopping you from exiling your own creatures and collecting the life.

The third ability is where we get interesting. It is based on the second ability of Ajani Steadfast, but it has been multiplied by five and upgraded to an ultimate ability. The part of the ability I like the most though is the one that gives your other planeswalkers loyalty. Cards that affect planeswalkers tend to be rarer, both in terms of the rarities they're printed at and the number of cards printed with such abilities. So I like that this ability does something that cards don't normally do, and with the upscaled ability it makes the whole thing feel a lot more special. This ability also fits the character, since Ajani has partnered multiple times with other planeswalkers.