Johnny Quazar has been reporting a big market for the v1.0 rare, Laser Wire. It's a strength 2, Wall ICE with 2 subroutines: "Do 1 Net damage" and "end the run." It costs 4 bits to rez. After tossing the pros and cons of this card around, I've come to a decision: Laser Wire sucks.

The strength is important because the icebreaking programs for Sentries are more expensive than the icebreaking programs for Walls. That means the Runner must pay more to break the routines on Neural Blade. As Spiny Norman says, "Bits are everything."

Here's a chart with the cost to break each peice of ICE with some different icebreakers:

Icebreaker	Installation Cost	Cost vs. Laser Wire	Icebreaker	Installation Cost	Cost vs. Neural Blade
Jackhammer	0	2	Raptor	1	7
Pile Driver	1	3	Big Frackin' Gun	2	6
Hammer	2	2	Shaka	4	6
Corrosion	3	2	Looney Goon	4	6
Wrecking Ball	4	0	Evil Twin(!)	6	4
Ramming Piston	4	4	Black Dahlia	10	4
Boring Bit	6	4	AI Boon	12	2 (at least)
Average	2.85	2.71	Average	5.57	5.00

Ramming Piston or Boring Bit are seldom installed, and Evil Twin is even less popular (if that is possible). Leaving them off the chart, the averages are:

Average

2.00

1.80

Average

5.50

5.17

Neural Blade costs 2 extra bits for Bartmoss and 4 extra bits for Krash. Blink is even.

Laser Wire also has some "helper" cards: Jerusalem City Grid, Superior Net Barriers, and Data Masons. These are pretty unusual to see in play. I'm still waiting for someone to build a killer "Wall" corporation.

The clear winner is Neural Blade. It's also a common, which means "free" to most traders. Laser Wire is rare, and with the current demand on Rob's Netrunner Node, it may be hard to find.

You can do these kinds of comparisions with any type of ICE, and sometimes the results are surprising. In this case they aren't, so I'm going back to work to install Neural Blade.

Trust me, I'm