Let Them Dream

Before I talk about Let Them Dream, I need to talk about 5/3s. The job of the 5/3 agenda is to win you the game in 3 agendas, and decks that run 5/3s usually want to score out with any combination of two 2-pointers and one 3-pointer. But the 5/3 has one major vice: they kinda suck. They're so much harder to score out than 4/2s (or 3/2s!), and their payoff usually isn't even worth the work! This is especially true because corps vastly prefer to score out 5/3s as the game-winning agenda, so any "on score" text is irrelevant. If the corp got to choose, they would dedicate the entire power budget of a 5/3 towards hurting the Runner, and none of it on helping the corp. This is incredibly obvious when you see what 5/3s corps run, and why they run them. For example, Send a Message and Next Big Thing give the corp tempo for having an agenda scored or stolen, while SDS Drone Deployment and Méliès City Luxury Line hurt the runner's tempo in the worst case and can deny a steal in the best case, but the best thing a 5/3 could do is to guarantee the runner needs to steal more agendas than you need to score. This is what Global Food Initiative did. It did so well at this job that it was used in 99% of competitive decks when it was put on the restricted list 2 years after its release.

Let Them Dream may have the same incredibly powerful effect as Global Food Initiative but, as a 4/2 that costs one neutral influence, it’s having to compete for deck slots with 3/2s that are easier to score and strong 4/2s that have a bigger impact on the board. Does this mean it’s bad actually? Hell no! Being worth only 1 point on steal is still too powerful. I can see it being used in maybe some slower glacier decks, and definitely in some decks that only run 1 and 2 point agendas (Thule), but I don’t see Let Them Dream being anywhere near as dominant as its predecessor.