Stolen Contacts

Event • Cost: 1 • Influence: 1

Create 3 copies of Easy Mark and add them to your grip. (When a created card would be moved to your stack or heap, remove it from the game instead.)

"A stranger is just a fund you haven't tapped yet." -Dionysus Bagbiter
Criminal • Karl Erik Holter via DALL-E • Style and Slander 24
All sets:
Links: Decklists | ANCUR
Stolen Contacts
MWL Entries

No MWL Entries for this card.

Rulings

  • For paper play, created cards can be handled by sleeving the created copies in a differently colored sleeve (or not sleeving them at all) from the Runner's deck to avoid them being confused with non-created cards.

  • Created cards can be hosted on Bookmark or installed facedown with Apex without removing themselves from the game. However, if the cards is later trashed, e.g. by Bookmark leaving play or use of Chop Bot 3000, the card will be moved to heap and therefore removed from the game.

Reviews
1

I love this whole Create 3 copies of _ and add them to your grip. cycle (Smashing Spree, Stolen Contacts, Fuzzing). While all are flexible (by construction), "make tokens that earn credits" is the most generic (and humble) effect among them.

If you immediately play out all three token-cards you've just fake-drawn, it's like a less-profitable (rebooted) Day Job:

1[$] Event: Quadruple - Job
(criminal 1/5)

As an additional cost to play this event, spend [click][click][click].

Gain 9[$].

But it's also a modal that can be split up across 1–4 clicks however you wish, like "first two now, the last one later":

1[$] Event: Triple - Job

As an additional cost to play this event, spend [click][click].

Gain 6[$].

Create 1 copy of Easy Mark and add it to your grip.

Also, this cycle immediately gives you one extra "hit point" (w.r.t. damage) than just taking the basic click-to-draw action, like a Diesel, even if you don't care much about the cards you're drawing, or don't have the clicks left to play them. For example, if you start your last click with just this and another card in hand, you'll end your turn with four cards in hand: enough to survive a Scorched Earth, enough to keep your (say) Legwork 75% safe from a single net damage (instead of 50%), or so on.

Generally speaking, filling your hand with multiple weak cards (Easy Mark) of a single card (Stolen Contacts) can be a become a less/not weak effect. However, if you don't play the tokens out soon enough (like as a pseudo–Triple event), it will tax your max-hand-size, unlike a click-based econ resource (possibly making you discard a token). Compare, like a faster Telework Contract:

1[$] Resource: Job
(criminal 1/5)

When you install this resource, load 9[$] onto it. When it is empty, trash it.

[click]: Take 3[$] from this resource.

"Your maximum hand size is decreased by 1 for every three credits hosted."

Logistically, such token-cards can work better—even offline—in a so-called LCG than a TCG (since a seller can just put a several copies of the token-cards in the box you buy, or into a supplemental product), and works better yet for a custom/modded card game than an official/monetized one (since you can just print out nine extra Easy Mark’s on non-card-stock paper and stick them in clear sleeves).

P.S. Phonologically, I like how both the card & its tokens start with the same syllables/stress ("STOlen" and "EAsy").

(Equity and Eternity era)
2