Ok, so depending on how much you like those two cards from R&D this is either a worse Preemptive Action though one that isn't terminal (if you shuffle back 2 cards that you just discarded, so you only shuffle back 2 cards previously in archives), equal to Preemptive Action except for the terminal bit (3 cards shuffled back that were in archives) or better (4 cards shuffled back).

You could also see it as a way to have extra Preemptive Actions in your deck, influence free for Jinteki. Not sure why you'd want that though, typically 3 Preemptive Actions is more than enough.

One last difference with Preemptive Action and one that equals out the the not-having-terminal bit: 1 cost vs 0 for Preemptive Action.

My gut feeling is that even for Jinteki corps Preemptive Action will be the better option unless they can ensure the right cards are on top. Well, if anyone can it's Jinteki.

Well this is an interesting card. It drains credits continuously but that's something a good criminal player should be able to play around fairly easily (though beware of NBN tricks like Closed Accounts).

Reducing the corp's hand size would be meh for anarch and shapers but it's pretty good for criminals now that Jackson Howard has retired. The key is agenda flood. With sufficient remote pressure corps will either need to keep agenda's they draw in their hand (potentially pushing out other useful cards) or in archives (dangerous, very dangerous). Now normally the chance of accessing an agenda in HQ with a single access is 20% (1/5) if there's 1 agenda in there, 40% if 2, 60% if 3, etc. With hand size 4 it's 25% (1/4) if there's 1 agenda in there, 50% if 2, etc.

Assume for a moment that the corp has 2 agenda's on hand. That's a fairly common situation. That means Lewi Guilherme will increase you chance of stealing an agenda on single access by 10%.

A subtle but important side effect is that by reducing the corp's hand size you're simultaneously reducing the corp's discretionary hand size by an equal or higher degree. What I mean with discretionary hand size is the spots the corp has in their hand for cards they choose to keep in hand to play at a later moment but don't have to keep. Admittedly it's a somewhat blurry concept since the corp could just discard agenda's as well, but generally corp's will feel compelled to keep agenda's whereas keeping assets and operations and such is a tactical choice.

Assuming the corp has two agenda's on hand again. That means they've got 3 spots for all their IPO's, BOOM!'s, etc. If you reduce the hand size to 4 suddenly the space for non-agenda cards goes down to 2, meaning a 33% decrease. That forces very painful choices for the corp, e.g. it will be difficult to combine a deathblow setup with anything like economy support. Of course as a runner you will generally not know how hard this effect is hitting, but it will impact the corp's game to some degree at least.

Note that you don't have to keep Guilherme installed. You can just decide to trash him if you don't see him earning his weight or you have a replacement on hand. Beware through when playing against Skorpios if you trash him.

Although it's appealing to see this primarily through the lens of Apex' big weakness (no non-virtual resources) the bigger effect on Apex may well be to give it access to a wide range of very efficient tools cheaply. Although many of the most expensive programs have rotated out a few remain:

• Mass-Driver is rather situational (2 per sub but you get to ignore up to 3 subs on the next piece of ice) but if it works it's really quite nice. I wouldn't use it without something like Inversificator to help shape the ice though and that means a heavy import price.
• Morning Star is a very efficient (though memory hungry) fixed strength fracter: 1 for any number of barrier subs as long as that barrier has strength 5 or less (good thing for the corps that Parasite is gone, Ice Carver isn't however).
• Inversificator is on the cheap side of what I'd call expensive (the 6+ range) but it's an excellent breaker (and restricted).

Hardware has seen some of its most expensive pieces go away in the rotation as well, but the all time biggest credit eater is still there: Monolith. It doesn't synergize very well with Apex since the ability to prevent brain or net damage is worse than what Heartbeat already gives you but the 3 is nice and I guess it's at least a nice surprise during a game to turn up a hugely expensive console. Oh, wait. Console. Right... Yeah, it doesn't synergize with Apex at all unless you want to skip on Heartbeat and you don't want to skip on one of the absolute best Apex cards.

Ignoring the consoles the most expensive hardware is Adjusted Matrix. I guess it could be nice in the right deck, having the option to click through ice could help when Endless Hunger doesn't quite cut it.

On the resource side Rachel Beckman is nice. The shards (Eden, Hades and Utopia) were already available to Apex (virtual) and could already be installed without cost under certain circumstances, but having a way to buy them for a few clicks and otherwise leaving them as fuel is good for Apex. Plus the shards (and Beckman) are only 1 influence so they won't bust the budget.

Liberated Account becomes much more efficient if you only pay for it. Laguna Velasco District and Professional Contacts are also interesting, especially given Apex' need to draw cards.

A somewhat circular but slightly amusing option is to save 5 on installing Assimilator. Just in case you wanted to have a second one handy.

Aside from the expensive stuff Assimilator is perhaps even more effective just doing its thing in your deck since it lets you replace + X to install a card normally by Apex ability + . I don't expect this to be a complete game changer that will make Apex viable on a championship level, but my gut feeling is that it will make building a somewhat competitive Apex deck a lot easier.

Addendum: What I forgot to mention is that Assimilator has a small but nice effect on the game. It lets Apex have more hidden information in the form of face down cards. Normally only the corp lets their opponent play a guessing game.

Addendum 2: There's also a nice benefit with Apocalypse in that if you have an Assimilator on hand when you Apocalypse you can recover much faster from it than the corp by flipping your most valuable cards face up again.

Hunter is surprisingly economical as cheap taxing ice. Looking at somewhat popular breakers, in order to break the sub the runner pays:

• 2 with Savant, but requires 3 free MU. Same with Adept but requires 2 free MU. Dagger also breaks for 2 but one has to be a stealth credit.
• 3 with Alias (restricted to centrals) and Garrote (expensive in credits and MU).
• 4 with Ninja and Na'Not'K (1 if there's three pieces or more ice in front of the server).
• 5 with Mongoose and Femme Fatale (or 1 if Femme targets Hunter, which of course nobody does).

For the most common criminal breakers that's 4 or 5 to get through so it's often cheaper to beat the trace or to remove the tag (2+). For a 0 link runner that means a tax of roughly 3 credits whether they break, beat the trace or remove the tag (counting 1 as 1).

Taxing the runner three times the rez cost of a piece of ice is good. One major downside of Hunter is that it has no stopping power. The other major downside is that that trace is hardly scary for a runner with some link.

In terms of combos Chief Slee combines well with Hunter since she makes even a high link runner inclined to break the sub instead of beating the trace (even if you beat the trace the sub has still fired so Slee gets a counter).

Corporate Defector seems to have three things going for it:

1. It's free in terms of credits and influence.
2. It sometimes gives you a bit of information about the corp's strategy. Put otherwise: it makes click-drawing for the corp more dangerous in addition to being efficient because it could reveal an agenda or trap to the runner.
3. The Price of Freedom.

It has two major downsides:

1. Opportunity cost (you could have slotted a different card).
2. MCA Informant.

The problem with the defector is that the effect, while useful, is unreliable. If the corp doesn't need to draw extra cards or doesn't want to risk drawing extra cards or has an alternative way of drawing cards the defector is useless.

In general there are too few deck slots in a minimum size deck to justify cards that may be useful unless they're extremely useful (i.e. silver bullets like Plascrete Carapace). That leaves the defector without a ride.