In his otherwise extensive review, chris_walker says he's not surprise that this card didn't get a review for so long. I strongly disagree, and I'm surprise it didn't get any, since from the 3 HB identities from Creation & Control, Cerebral Imaging is the only one that have seen some success at a time.
(Also, I wrote this review a few days ago and let it sleep in a text file, expecting it to be the first CI review. Chris stole my thunder, and some commenters already made the points I will do in this. But no worries, of course.)
It is first notable to be arguably the weirdest Corp identity of the game. And when it was released, nobody gave a serious look at this one. But then after, a few cards helped it, namely Green and Blue Level Clearance. For CI, getting both draw and money is a good deal. Out of faction, Celebrity Gift has been a good help too. Also Restructure as neutral.
And soon, a CI archetype emerged that has known quite a good success with the following plan :
- protect your centrals and grow your hand,
- score an Efficiency Committee from hand with 2 Biotic Labors,
- then chain 2 other Efficiency Committee with Shipment from SanSan,
- then score your last agenda with the same shenanigan. Reclaim your Shipment, or your Biotics if you lose a Committee.
Then a second flavor of this appears :
- add 2x SEA Source and 2x Scorched Earth in your deck,
- flatline the Runner with a simple SEA Source/Scorched/Scorched if you can,
- flatline the Runner with a SEA Source/Scorched/Scorched/Efficiency counters/Recamation Order/Scorched(/Scorched) if you must.
Heck, there's stories of Runner dying while sporting 2 Plascrete Carapaces and a full hand. That’s simple, for a short time, before NEH was released, the main meat-kill archetype was this.
In case you wonder why CI is more efficient than other identities for such a plan, it’s because keeping your hand growing without bothering for remote server really helps to assemble the pieces of otherwise quite clanky combos.
That is, CI is great for combo deck. Some Power Shutdown + Accelerated Beta Test deck have seen come various success.
Then it has fallen out of flavor but in a faction that suffers to be trusted by one freaking good identity with others desperately running after, CI, not despite but thanks to its weirdness, has shown some success. I hope it will again.