Rambly first thoughts inbound.
Cybernetics Court actually looks pretty playable. Helps HB hold onto a bunch of things, which is… honestly pretty useful for many of their builds. Being 0/5 isn’t shabby, either. Certainly makes the Team Sponsorship/Research Grant combo more plausible, along with Grail Ice and other things.
Chronos Protocol remains my most anticipated ID of the cycle. I dunno what all I’ll do with it, I just know it’ll be hideous. Meanwhile, Ancestral Imager and Genetics Pavillion remain tempting, and kinda preposterous.
Franchise City seems… very difficult to time, really. It’s 3/2, so you don’t want to rez it unless they’re about to access an agenda, and if you do you lost any shot at Midseasons, probably. But so long as they don’t Film Critic the agenda, this’ll trigger, and bonus AP might be worth it in this case, especially with all the asset spam stuff. This and Preview with Beales to toss into the mix? Seems decent. Still more excited for the beautiful Upgrade Trap that is Product Placement, especially with the D&D spoilers out.
Worlds Plaza still feels a bit fragile, given how if they spend 5/an Imp token to trash it they don’t have to deal with anything else, making Snare or Junebug or whatever going on top rather pointless as defense. Still, the cost reduction might be enough to make some things worthwhile, and it consolidates fragile pieces into one server to ice up.
Public Support is one such piece! Looks like it has 5 as a trash cost, which isn’t shabby. Takes a few turns to get the payoff, during which it’s pretty trashable, but getting in and trashing it almost certainly will open up a scoring window without them getting the points needed. Useful to have in the Takeover Oz decks, too, for closing out the last point or two every so often. And, of course, there’s the potential hilarity of rezzing two or three of them at once and crushing the runner’s morale. EDIT: Is apparently 4 to trash, but that’s still a PAD Campaign’s vanilla crushing and with a much higher potential payout. Seems decent.
Tour Guide will almost certainly see play so long as it isn’t 0 strength. Maybe even then. If it’s 2 or higher, it’ll actually be pretty good, but I could see running it at just 1. Multi-sub sentries tend to suck for the runner. ETR sentries tend to suck for the runner. Tour Guide is a regular Dustbuster of an ice, and cheap enough that running three of them (say, to protect some of those precious assets) makes sense. EDIT: It’s 0 strength after all. I can still almost see it, for cheap ETR and tax, but 2 is getting a bit much for Parasite-bait. Still, I guess Weyland has so much Parasite Bait now that I’d feel less bad about it, so long as I was running enough subroutines. Sucks against Switchblade, and was always going to suck against Faerie, but laughs all the way to the bank against Mimic and all the other more common killers. Maybe for a sentry-heavy deck that just wants to tax Switchblade out entirely? I dunno.
Expo Grid, though, remains kinda awful. Even if on the Worlds Plaza server, the runner doesn’t have to trash it. 0/3 sounds great, but it’s way too conditional. I’d rather either run a region or ice or something that helps keep an important asset safe, or just run more econ assets.
The Future is Now is a pretty excellent tutor, but a 3/1. It’s one of the better on-score abilities, though, as it’s basically an Agressive Negotiation that doesn’t require more than the scoring, making it the second tutor that doesn’t require a reveal (even Atlas does, though it can also find anything). But, again, 3/1. Ah, well.
Was expecting Surfer to require trashing, that it’s only 2c is kinda insane since you can just chain it all the way up or down the server, as you like. Only hits one ice type, but it’s not an uncommon one. Though pushing further out needs to happen every so often, I guess. Hello, Quetzal. DDoS remains nuts, and Power to the People remains decidedly not worth the slot due to how often it can fail to produce the result, as a priority.
Bookmark is a way to protect important cards for later against Chronos Protocol and get around handsize issues, I guess? Seems a bit underwhelming but it’s free to install, at least, and can be cracked at instant speed for Plascrete-esque protection (s’long as you do it in advance).
DaVinci is… interesting. Power counters, so virus wipes do nothing. Nice combo with all the stuff that benefits you running repeatedly/each turn. It can also install any card, which is what makes it most useful. Want to run a big, expensive console? Now it’s more doable. Want to install at instant speed for Hayley but don’t have enough cash to drop another thing? Here you go! Hey, runner, how do you like the idea of being able to pop a Shard in your hand on the Corp’s turn? Have a blast! Of course, it’s a program itself, and takes up an MU… but still. It doesn’t need to get all that many counters to become worthwhile, and it solves some of the “I drew into the Clot I wanted to SMC and don’t have a Clone Chip yet for some dumb reason” issues. Also, lets you instant-speed The Source.
Wireless Net Pavillion looks useful for DLR decks in particular, or anyone that runs a bunch of resources they’re worried about having trashed. Clever wording makes it useful against Sync, too. But Tag-Me with Resources might not be quite as impossible as it was before. Hell, a couple of those and some Fall Guys and the Corp’s probably not even going to bother trying. Though Freelancer, Character Assassination, Contract Killer, Snatch and Grab (if you’re afraid of being Scorched)… all those still work. Also makes Paparazzi more playable as a form of Scorch Protection, because it’ll actually be hard to trash them even if you’ve got other tags already, and that buys you more time.
So DLR decks are kinda looking like they might be a thing again? Or is that just me? Because the ability to turn it on without having to find a way to be tagged (though if you’re Anarch, why not Joshua B anyway?), the ability to ignore that meat damage threat, the ability to make trashing your shit really obnoxious, and (if you’re also running enough, as you probably should be) the ability to pop out a Shard with no warning… Well, that might be too many pieces to work reliably. But still!
Pre-EDIT: Noted there were details I’d guessed wrongly about that got corrected in-thread, so I added the notes about 'em, but left my original thoughts.