Hi folks,

I'm a new Android player and played my second game against my friend tonight, who's also the same experience. I was hoping if you could clarify something for me please?

I used Gordian Blade during a run on his server which was protected by Viper.

GB has strength 2 and was boosted by The Personal Touch to strength 3, I paid an extra credit to match Viper’s strength of 4.

GB has the following abilities:

Pay 1 Credit: Break code gate subroutine.

Pay 1 Credit: +1 strength for the remainder of this run.

Do I have to pay 2 credits to use GB’s first ability to break both Viper’s subroutines? (eg 1 credit per subroutine)

If a runner can normally pay a credit to bypass a subroutine when he encounters it, how is GB’s first ability any better?

For the second ability, if I pay 2 credits, can I increase GB’s strength by 2 for the remainder of the run, etc?

Thanks,

Ken

If a runner can normally pay a credit to bypass a subroutine when he encounters it, how is GB’s first ability any better?

I'm not sure where you are getting this from, but it's not a thing. Runners can't just pay a credit to break subroutines, they can only use the abilities on their program cards to break subroutines (or with Bioroid's ice, pay clicks but I'm only including this because someone will chime in that I'm wrong otherwise), in this case, paying 1 credit to break one code-gate subroutine.

Gordium blade specifically says the strength bump lasts for the whole run, but most icebreakers don't do this

If a runner can normally pay a credit to bypass a subroutine when he encounters it, how is GB’s first ability any better?

Aside from the fact that that's not a thing, as Smilingknight pointed out, be careful with your terminology here. You don't bypass subroutines, you break them -- bypass is a different mechanic.