This card provides two benefits: it works both as a tutor and an economy card.

As an economy card first. Imagine you have a Daily Casts with only two left on it. Run a server and you can replace this Daily Cast with a fresh one for free. It saves you one credit (the other cast would have earned you two, but you save 3 from installing the new one), the click to draw the next cast, and the click to install. It also thins out your deck, which is generally good. You can use it with any credit making card that is about to dry out (a Liberated Account a Miss Bones with one , a Flame-out), but also with useless cards: you have a Misdirection against Jinteki? Install it and run to get your expansive breaker with a discount! You can also recycle your empty cards: Imp/Pelangi/Cordyceps/Nyashia/Revolver/Propeller. Unfortunately, many recent cards trash themselves when their counters are down to zero.

But the real benefit is its tutoring ability. s have an easy way to get programs: SMC. Even compared to that, WT is legitimate: SMC is a one-use tutor that costs 2 to use and does not include a 3 discount. Use the Tree twice, and you made a profit. Admittedly, World Tree is more cumbersome to use: you must make a successful run, it cannot be used during the Corp's turn, you must trash another program, etc.

What is currently missing for the runner is a tutor for Resource and Hardware. One of my favourite cards of all time, Hostage, has now rotated. The only tutor for Hardware was Trade-In (are we counting Replicator). Artist Colony is also gone. Asmund Pudlat is a fresh addition, but it is very specialised and slow. Emergent Creativity is cool, but high influence. World Tree is a one-card solution to out problem. With World Tree, you can now have, in shaper, one-of stuff guaranteed to touch the table by turn 3: Miss Bones, Obelus/Knobkierie/Maw/Paragon, Caldera, The Class Act, Security Testing, Trickster Taka, The Twinning, Paladin Poemu, Citadel Sanctuary, DreamNet, Buffer Drive, Prognostic Q-Loop; cards that are either very situational or very influence-heavy, so you want only one copy in your deck.

So who should play World Tree? s of course. SMC, Wu, Ayla can guarantee that the tree will appear early. We see it a lot in Adam's decks too, thanks of Emerging Creativity. There's been a lot of decks with 2x Endurance in the recent months; I think it's totally reasonable to replace one of these with a World Tree to save one influence and enjoy some of the other benefits.

Some notable nonbos.

• You want to pair WT with run events such as Dirty Laundry or Bravado to maximise the benefits of the run. But WT encourages you to have many non-event cards in the deck. You may want to pair it with cards such as Red Team, but is that too many eggs in the same basket? Info Bounty, Security Testing maybe, but that's influence heavy. The current solution seems to be 80-size decks.
• s get benefits on the turn they install their breakers (Gauss, Euler, Cybertrooper Talut). But if you use WT to install these, you already made a run.
• If you use WT to trash a card, it is no longer here for Aesop's Pawnshop. If you use WT only for economy, good old Aesop is probably better.
• WT requires memory support. DZMZ Optimizer is the natural solution, but if you use WT to install programs, the discount of the optimizer is probably wasted. Consider Cyberdelia instead; it's also 3, so perfect to fetch with the tree.

On paper, this is a great economy card. We'll see that this is not so simple.

Economy of Divert Power

DP costs 2, but allows you to rez anything for 0 (additional costs such as forfeiting an agenda or taking bad pub still apply though). We'll assume here that we only want to rez ice (the most expensive asset to rez in standard is Lady Liberty, and the most expensive ever was The Root; technically you could use this for a SanSan City Grid, 6, and there are two rotated upgrades with cost 6: Off the Grid and Ruhr Valley).

The list of ice in standard of cost 8 or more (for a theoretical max profit of 6) is:

• cost 8:
  • Anansi
  • Conundrum
  • DNA Tracker
  • Tollbooth
• cost 9:
  • Asteroid Belt
  • Brainstorm
  • Fairchild
  • Nebula
  • Tithonium
  • Wormhole
• cost 10:
  • Bulwark
  • Hydra
  • NEXT Diamond
  • Týr
• cost 12:
  • Chiyashi
• cost 15:
  • Orion

That's 16 ice spread around all 4 factions (and 1 neutral), some of which have conditions that allows the Corp to decrease their rez cost. Let's assume that you rez a 9-cost card. Now, for DP to be worth it, you need to derez 3 cards, preferably 0 cost. What are they going to be? Most assets and upgrades, the runner will trash on sight. If not, they are probably expensive to rez (for instance, a Jeeves Model Bioroids); of course, the story was different when Breaker Bay Grid was around. You can count cards like NGO Front and Rashida Jaheem or even Prisec, but those are cards you generally want to keep hidden until you use them. The best options here would be the known traps (such as a Snare! that wasn't trashed) and annoying assets (like Tiered Subscription, Net Analytics, Nanoetching Matrix, Calvin B4L3Y). Special mention for Spin Doctor, but I'll come back to that later. There are 0-cost upgrades, my favourite is Traffic Analyzer for the best negative interaction.

Then you have ice. There are a few 0 cost ice, notably Pop-up Window, Resistor, and Vanilla (also Aimor, Loot Box, Mind Game, and Rime).

In order to gain 7 credits with DP, you need to have some expensive ice, some combination of very cheap ice and asset/upgrade, and make them stick on the table. This is a very hard sell. Even a more credible gain of 6 or 5 is hard to engineer.

Revealing Too Much

Then, we come to the main issue of the card. Even if you do manage to pull it off: you gained somehow 7. The problem is that the runner now knows what awaits them. See, the strength of Tithonium in an HB deck, it's not only that the runner will have to spend 6 credits with Corroder or 7 with Engolo, to pass it. It's also that they will lose their Bukhgalter if they run it at the wrong time. But if you telegraph what your ice is, they won't run unless that have what they need.

The primary strength of expensive ice is the threat they pose. You might not rez your Anansi now because you want to catch them with 2 cards in hand; Týr because you want them to have one click left; etc. Rezzing such expensive ice should have extra value: they might survive the rez without too much damage, but still end the run because they did not expect the run would be that expensive.

And this is also true with the stuff you had to derez. If you have to reveal that your installed card is a Rashida Jaheem in order to get a 3 creds discount, the runner will have all the information to decide whether to run or not. And they also know where your Pop-up Window and your Vanillas are (you are lucky they ran them!).

The Hidden Benefits of Rezzing

But there are additional benefits that I haven't covered. Derezzing, and re-rezzing is powerful, as we all know (Test Ground).

How can we benefit from derezzing? First, there are hidden financial benefits. Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach makes the runner lose a when you rez advertisements. Indian Union Stock Exchange gets you extra money for rerezzing. Advanced Assembly Lines is an extra 2. Traffic Analyzer can be used when you rerez your ice. Add some Aryabhata Tech and say good bye to your friends.

Recurring credits (Mumba Temple), or money assets (campaigns, Regolith Mining License) are replenished. Even better, we can overcharge some of these taxing upgrades such as Cold Site Server and Reduced Service. If you don't like netrunner, you can also play more Drudge Work.

DP lets you use the special abilities of Spin Doctor and Lily Lockwell.

Derezzing can further charge your Lakshmi Smartfabrics. A really nice interaction is with Malia Z0L0K4: if Malia is already rezzed and a better target appears, you can derez and rerez it.

Jemison Astronautics: Sacrifice. Audacity. Success. could, in theory, benefit from rezzing an Archer during their turn, or derezzing their Quarantine System to re-rez it.

You can also derez your assets (maybe your unprotected daily quest) in order to trigger Wall to Wall.

Believe it or not, there are also bad interactions, such as Urban Renewal (unless you really need to time your bombs 3 turns later). Other funny interactions: Public Support and Rex Campaign.

Ice wise, Ping could be reset. So can Magnet and Masvingo. Gatekeeper too, but it's not that good.

Special mention for rotated cards: Elizabeth Mills and Haas Arcology AI could benefit from it. Mother Goddess was happy to see some cards derezzed.

Edit

I notice I forgot to mention a number of sides aspects:

1. Derezzing allows the Corp to use once per turn abilities twice. For instance, if you have an MCA Austerity Policy with a single token, you could do: put a token, 2 DP to derez MCAAP, rerez for 1, put a token. The runner now has 2 to trash the loaded MCAAP. With MirrorMorph: Endless Iteration, you could even pop MCAAP immediately for a wooping 4 gain (which you could use for Hard-Hitting News or to install and use a new MCA Austerity Policy).

This also combos with Calvin B4L3Y, Nanoetching Matrix, Raman Rai, Vaporframe Fabricator, Whampoa Reclamation. In Eternal, you could also use it to fire twice: Shell Corporation and Midori with An Offer You Can't Refuse.

Comprehensive rules 1.5 explicitly forbids this (clearly overpowered) combo: In 1.12.5, a derez does not change the object, so that derezzing and rerezzing an MCAAP does not allow you to use MCAAP's ability twice in the same turn.

1. I only assumed the basic rez cost, but the cost can be artificially increased by the runner through a variety of methods. This includes Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter's special ability, Xanadu, and Hernando Cortez. So the economic benefit of using DP could be more than mentioned above. It can be also useful to rez your ice early if you worry about cards such as Tread Lightly, Cortez Chip, Rubicon Switch, Leave No Trace, EMP Device, Run Amok. Frankly, only the last one is a real big issue.

   In Eternal, also note Blackmail and DDoS that encourage you to rez early. Denying Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer's money is also very funny.

OK, I have to say it. I hate this card, and I hate its design.

In A:NR, tags represent the fact that the Corporation knows who the runner is. With one tag, they can already try to kill him, make him poor, take back some agenda, trash his stuff, etc. With two tags, they know enough about the runner to use a surgical strike (or two). With more tags, they can do weird things. In any case, a tag is a handicap for the runner.

Now, the runner can survive with this handicap. Strategies exist for the runner: keep the Corporation poor (Account Siphon, Vamp, Lamprey, Wireless Net Pavilion, Fall Guy), put on some protection (Plascrete Carapace, Sports Hopper, Brain Chip, etc.). I think that the tag mechanism is great because it makes for interesting timing decisions. Look at the 2016 Worlds finale to convince yourself. Floating tags is doable, but is always a tough decision.

There is a similar element on the corp side, and that's bad publicity. Getting bad publicity is annoying for the corp because you are giving the runner money to access your precious servers and trash the precious assets that you set up with all your love. And while this may not be as punishing as being blown up, there are very few ways to remove bad publicity, and it gets rid of very few of them.

So recently, the game designers decided to make tags a good thing for the runner. I think Data Leak Reversal was already a bad design. Together with Citadel Sanctuary and Power Tap, you want to get tagged, and you make money while doing so. But then, Jarogniew Mercs protects you from damage, Counter Surveillance gives you a lot of accesses, Obelus gives you the draws and the hand size protection, and Mars for Martians gives you the economy. And Valencia's bad pub protects you from The All-Seeing I.

There has been a couple of Corp cards that benefit from Bad Pub. Ireress is a very bad one: it only negates your bad pub, if the runner runs on the server where you installed this ICE. Illicit Sales gets a pass because a) it is very funny, b) it is not super powerful, c) 3-for-1s are not that great, and d) there is no good way for the Corp to negate scores of bad publicity.

Now, in my opinion, both tags and bad publicity are things that help the other side. In a sense, they could totally ignore it. The Corp could decide that, while they know the type of cereals that the runner eats for breakfast, they will dump all this information and not use it. Actually I believe that, since tags and bad pub can be beneficial to the party who has them, there should be a way for the other party to remove them at no cost.