With the arrival of new tagstorm deck archetypes in Data and Destiny, perhaps there will be some new value for this potentially rig-wiping card which has not seen a lot of love since there are many cheaper and generally more effective forms of tag punishment. The current pool of operation-based tag punishment includes meat damage (Scorched Earth and Traffic Accident), monetary damage (Closed Accounts), resource removal (Freelancer) and agenda acceleration (Psychographics).
So the main question becomes, why bother with such an expensive operation to cut 2 MU of programs off the runner's table when you could be dealing 4 meat damage instead? Well, in most cases, you probably shouldn't, but there may be some situations when it's a better choice. Some pros:
- 0 influence. You may not want to go all-in spending all your influence on 3x Scorched.
- Wiping a program or two reactivates Cortex Lock.
- Many runners are prepared to counter meat damage; they may be less prepared to rebuild their rig (especially if Closed Accounts also lands) which opens up late-game scoring windows.