Cyberpunk TCG just revealed an overpowered card for Night City’s most tragic Netrunner

In the Cyberpunk Trading Card Game, one of the worst things that can happen to you is for somebody to steal your Gigs (accrue enough, and you win the game). But with Alt Cunningham on your side, she’ll make sure that your Gigs stay put.

Polygon can exclusively reveal Alt Cunningham: Mother of Daemons, a new Yellow Unit from Welcome to Night City, the game’s first retail set. The rare card depicts one of the most powerful netrunners in Cyberpunk history, with an Iconic variant that captures her transformation into something that transcends her human form.

Altiera “Alt” Cunningham was a legendary Netrunner operating in Night City during the 2000s and 2010s who is most famous (or infamous) for developing the Soulkiller program. It was designed to digitize the minds of people, transforming the consciousness into an engram, but the process drained a person’s psyche. Arasaka Corporation abducted Alt in 2013 and forced her to develop a version of the program that allowed the subject to freely traverse the Net. Alt wound up as the first victim of the modified Soulkiller, which left her digitized self stranded as an AI on the Net. Johnny Silverhand, her boyfriend, later suffered the same fate — which is how he eventually wound up inside the player’s head in Cyberpunk 2077.

“Mother of Daemons” is therefore a fitting title for Alt’s card. (“Daemons” is the name given to the network programs or virus subroutines used by Netrunners to manipulate local systems.)

Alt is an expensive Unit that costs 7 Eddies and requires 3 Yellow RAM (so the three Legends you bring to the table must have at least 3 Yellow RAM between them), but she brings 8 power and two abilities that feed directly into each other:

When a friendly equipped Unit or Legend is spent, draw 1.

When a rival Unit would steal a Gig, you may discard 1 with cost equal to that Gig’s value. If you do, the Gig isn’t stolen.

Each player starts a game with six Gig Dice in their “fixer” zone. After drawing a card at the start of each turn, a player selects and rolls one die from among the d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 (though the d20 has to come last). That die then goes into the “Gigs” zone, with the cumulative value representing your overall “Street Cred.” A player wins when they have six or more dice in their possession. But you can also steal a die if a Unit is able to attack the Gig Zone.

That makes Alt’s second ability very strong as a form of defense. If a rival Unit would steal one of your Gigs, Alt lets you discard a card to prevent it. Since Gig values vary, however, an Alt deck wants you to have a wide range of card costs available. Alt’s first ability also gives you a reliable way to find the cards you need by letting you draw more.

Units are spent when they attack, but Legends can be spent as Eddies to pay for cards or to activate certain abilities. That means Alt can potentially generate draw cards over the course of a turn, depending on how much Gear you have on the board.

As a Yellow card, Alt fits the color identity of “diverge, equip, repurpose” really well. Yellow cards focus on equipment, and their strategies usually involve sacrificing resources to benefit the player in some way. The Zetatech Faceplate piece of gear, for instance, works really well with Alt. It allows you to adjust Gig values on the fly while also setting up a bit of a draw engine.

The elegant loop that she sets up involves equipping as many Units as possible and spending them to draw more cards which can then be used to protect your Gigs as needed.

WeirdCo is running demos at Gen Con from July 30 through Aug. 2, although the currently listed sessions have already sold out. Players who complete a demo will receive a Rebecca: Having a Moment promo card.

Beta Events will follow from Sept. 10-17. Participating game stores will then host Welcome to Night City prerelease events beginning the weekend of Oct. 30 before the set’s full retail release on Nov. 6.

Earlier this year, the Cyberpunk TCG’s Kickstarter campaign saw 50,773 backers pledge more than $28.3 million. For fans of Alt — or of Yellow strategies in the TCG — this particular card is starting to look like one of the more powerful chase cards to hope for in Welcome to Night City.