This card probably shouldn't exist. Most strong tag-me cards shouldn't exist, because they reduce Netrunner to rock-paper scissors. Liza Talking Thunder is banned for precisely this reason. She crushes corps with no tag punishment and she gets crushed by tag-n-bag corps.

The one defense I can imagine for Counter Surveillance is that it has at least a possible purpose in a non-tag-me deck. It can serve as a last gasp for a runner who is losing to NBN badly enough to be reluctantly forced to go tag-me. Mind you, I've never actually seen it used that way...

Why was this card ever printed? What were they thinking?

Strong tag-me cards do not make for enjoyable Netrunner. When Liza Talking Thunder faces a tag-n-bag corp, she loses in a boring game... either she dies to a BOOM or she has to refrain from using half the cards in her deck. When Liza faces a corp with no tag punishment, she runs them over in an equally unbalanced game.

The principle is simple: the tag-me archetype cannot co-exist with tag-n-bag... otherwise Netrunner devolves into rock-paper-scissors.

To justify slotting this, you need to know that you're really going to want 5+ clicks on some future turn. The problem is that most of the ways to use 5+ clicks effectively are non-interactive combos... Encore, Notoriety, Apocalypse, Deep Dive, etc. You never see anyone playing Out of the Ashes for general utility, like clicking through Bioroid ICE.

IMO, this card is the last thing NR needs. It adds nothing to normal gameplay, while empowering non-interactive combo decks (e.g. one that sits around for 10 turns and then plays 3x Deep Dive). I'd love to see it banned.

Here's something I've been wondering about. As the corp, when is it worth it to purge viruses to get rid of the virus counters?

Ignore all the complicating factors. Imagine there are no agendas about to be scored, no unusually vulnerable servers, etc. Just other things being equal, when is it worth purging to take away credits?

My first thought is that the cutoff is 3 counters. I'm usually happy to spend 3 clicks as the corp to take $6 from the runner, but I wouldn't spend 3 clicks to take $4 from them. But I suspect that's an overly simplistic analysis... it doesn't sound right that putting a Fermenter on the table takes away every third turn from the corp forevermore.