This card is hilariously bad.

First off, Focus Group puts advancement tokens on cards, not advancement counters. It doesn't matter if you put 99 advancement tokens on an Project Beale, you still can't score it because it has less than three advancement counters. This makes Focus Group bad in a hilarious way.

Assuming you are playing on jinteki.net, which has a bug which causes Focus Group to place advancement counters instead of tokens, it is still an under-powered card.

Here are the hoops you have to jump through in order to use Focus Group:

First, the Runner has to have made a successful run last turn. This is a pretty common occurrence, but still an annoyance.

Second, the Runner has to have at least two cards which share a card type in the grip. This is by no means guaranteed - most Runner decks have a healthy mix of Programs, Resources, and Events, along with a lesser amount of Hardware. If the Runner is on two-three cards in hand, it's pretty common for them to be of two-three different types. Additionally, if the Runner suspects you're playing Focus Group, they can deliberately sculpt their hand to avoid enabling the card. I suppose you could try to run some net or meat damage to prevent the Runner from holding less cards in hand, but good luck crowbaring that into a deck which is already using space for a Focus Group package.

Third, you need to be able to look at the Runner's grip. Unless Oracle May is on the docket for a reprint with support, you won't be able to guess what's in the Runner's grip without just using card effects to peak at it. Which of the options for revealing the grip do you think will make your Corp deck a winner? Waiver? Ibrahim Salem?Harishchandra ent.? Standard Procedure? Peeping Tom? Hyoubu Institute? Playing Focus Group forces you to compound the mistake of playing one bad card with the mistake of playing other bad cards. (Also known as the Jemison problem). The best of this bunch is probably Engram Flush and Salem's Hospitality, both of which trash the cards you were planning to feed to Focus Group. Don't forget that if you lack your grip reveal-er, Focus Group is almost useless! I might even be easier to just bounce cards back into the Runner's grip with cards like Self-Growth Program or Jua

Biotic Labor shows what the going rate for this kind of effect is. Assuming you have already met all of its conditions, using Focus Group to fast-advance a 3-for-2 has a the total cost-to-score of 6 credits and 3 clicks . Meanwhile, Biotic Labor has no preconditions and will let you fast-advance a 3-for-2 with a total cost-to-score of 7 credits and 3 clicks. Saving 1 credit is not worth the cost of jumping through Focus Group's hoops.

Thus, the only plausible use cases for Focus Group are in-faction as a worse but less influence-heavy Biotic Labor , or attempting to get 3 or more counters to fast advance larger agendas. I suspect both of these roles are much better fulfilled by a deck attempting to land Hard-Hitting News into Psychographics

Maybe this card could be good if something is printed with very high synergy with it. Perhaps an Operation with "The Runner draws 10 cards, then reveals the grip." Until that happens, throw this card in the jank pile.

I'm quite confused by the flavor of this card.

"Hey Los, congrats on wrecking that PAD Campaign! You still on for that smuggling job tonight?"

"Sorry Kati, I just learned NBN has the draft of another Project Beale at their HQ, going to spend the rest of the night breaking in a searching around for it."

"Huh, wouldn't it have been better to rummage their HQ before breaking their PAD Campaign?"

"Oh, I learned about the Project Beale while breaking their PAD Campaign."

"How?"

"I have extremely good eyeballs."

"Enough to see things happening on other servers?"

"I have extremely good eyeballs."

"Wait, isn't running done by Brain-Machine Interface? So your meatspace eyeballs wouldn't enter into it at all?"

"I have extremely good eyeballs."

The more I try to play Mirrormorph the more I am convinced the identity is secretly terrible.

The reason for this is simple: deckbuilding space.

If you want to consistently install a card each turn, around half your deck needs to be cards you can install.

If you want to consistently play an operation each turn, around half your deck needs to be operations.

If you want to consistently advance cards, around half your deck needs to be advance-able cards.

If you want to consistently activate click abilities from cards, around half your deck needs to be install-able cards with click abilities.

There just isn't enough space to profitably use Mirrormorph every turn.

I was surprised to see only a flavor review on this card (at time of writing), as the "Tablet Asa" decks which exploit it were great in the 20.06 season and remain untouched going into the 20.09 season. There's even a decklist titled SFT is dumb.

So, why this card is good:

This agenda has the text "any number". Similar to the word "whenever", any card with the text "any number" of times has the potential to do broken things. There aren't any cards which let you gain "any number" of credits or draw "any number" of cards.

However, Successful Field Test's ability has a soft cap. You can't install more cards from HQ than there are cards in HQ. This presents a deck-building challenge, but still has the potential for incredible power. I once scored Successful Field Test (SFT) with over 20 cards in hand, which let me install more than a dozen cards in one turn.

Tablet Asa decks have one card which makes SFT absurd: Fully Operational. With helping setting up Fully Operational from Asa Group: Security Through Vigilance's ability, Fully Operational lets you easily draw 6+ cards in a single click. Often, Tablet Asa decks will Install-Advance-Advance this card, just so they can Advance-Advance-Fully-Operational-Score SFT next turn. This consistently allows the Corp to install 6-8 cards off the "when scored" ability.

I could ramble on about how Cybernetics Court and Lakshmi Smartfabrics also help exploit Successful Field Test to its full potential, but that's really the main combo - make sure you can draw a bunch of cards the turn your score SFT, gain 6+ installs.

The best comparison to this card is Quality Time.

Quality Time lets you draw 5 cards. Customized Secretary lets you look at the top 5 cards of your stack and install them later for a click, which is quite similar drawing those cards.

Except, of course, Customized Secretary is restricted to programs. In exchange for getting only programs from the top 5 cards of your stack, and taking up a point of MU, Customized Secretary costs 1 credit less than Quality Time. This comparison is very unfavorable for Customized Secretary.

It's very rare for a Netrunner deck to be more than 40% programs. If a Customized Secretary deck is less than 60% programs, you're going to get less than 60% * 5 = 3 cards on average, which makes Customized Secretary comparable to a Diesel which costs 2 more and takes up a point of MU.

If you want to go into deep theoretical situations, I'm sure there are situations where Customized Secretary is better than Quality Time or Diesel. Maybe a Runner deck which also has London Library and Aesop's Pawnshop, or if a Runner deck really needs more card draw after maxing out on Quality Time / Diesel, or against a Corp deck running Student Loans. However, in typical cases, I expect Shaper's event-based card draw to be much better.