Oh wow, what a lot has changed since 2016. Dedication Ceremony has gone from being jank, to the cornerstone of a number of different Weyland decks, and is one of the major reasons why Titan Transnational got banned.
The thing about a card like Dedication Ceremony is that as more cards are printed, it gets more cards to put counters on, and some of the more recently available synergies are really powerful.
First, the synergy that's been tearing up the tournament scene recently: Dedication Ceremony + Reconstruction Contract. We don't care about the trigger on Reconstruction Contract at all for this: we care about the trash ability. If you install Reconstruction Contract, rez it, and Dedication Ceremony on it, you get to place 3 advancement counters on anything for , , 2. So we saved a credit and a click over advancing the whatever-it-was normally. Although it requires two cards in hand, this is a lot more resilient than a typical fast-advance option because you can score out with almost no credits (e.g. spending your turn fast-advancing with Biotic Labor costs 7, and this is a whole 5 cheaper), so it's very hard to stop it using econ denial. Out of Titan, the combo made use of Project Atlas counters in order to ensure that the key pieces could be grabbed from deep in R&D (where they were fairly safe), meaning that the combo was also very hard to stop by trashing the pieces. So often you could be staring down a Titan deck and realise you actually had no counterplay in your deck other than trying to steal 7 points off R&D before the Atlastrain happened.
The other major competitive use of Dedication Ceremony is on City Works Project. In this case, the aim is normally to install your agenda and double-Dedication it on the same turn, creating a monstrosity that requires suffering 8 meat damage to steal. The plan with this is generally to leave the agenda sitting there and take advantage of synergies with having agendas installed; SSO Industries is the most obvious (and this combo has become more or less mandatory there), but more recently people have been experimenting with things like Neurospike (do you want to steal it and take 8, or leave it there and take 6 after discarding to hand size?). This sort of combo has also become standard in Jemison Astronautics decks, which can typically get away with a single Dedication because they usually have ways to forfeit an agenda and add extra counters out of nowhere. Although the City Works Project combo has technically been legal for a while, it was unplayable for most of that time due to Film Critic, and has only recently surged to prominence due to the Critic first being banned, and then rotating (Whistleblower has so many drawbacks and limitations that nobody runs it unless the metagame really forces them to, so there's basically no way to stop this short of ridiculously large levels of damage mitigation or tech cards like Because I Can).
There are some jankier uses. Some combo decks want a remote server that's impossible to survive a successful run on, and don't much care what's in it; you can rez an ambush there, and use Dedication Ceremony to advance your ambush out of the range where the Runner may consider running it intentionally to trash it. I've seen Dedication Ceremony + Clearinghouse played against me in glacier; if your deck can keep an agenda safe for a turn, it can probably also keep an asset safe for a turn, and (with a double Dedication) that one turn is enough to kill. It can trigger advanceable assets in one turn (except for Ronin); people used to use Contract Killer for this, and although that has now rotated, something similar can be done with Reversed Accounts (as the older review mentioned). I haven't spotted these combos at the top levels yet, but maybe something of this nature will end up being viable at some point; after all, ban lists change, and new cards are printed.
I expect Dedication Ceremony to only keep getting better over time, though. The numbers on this card are better than on pretty much any other fast-advance card, and the drawback is basically only a drawback when it comes to ICE and agendas, so this is going to be the card of choice for fast-advancing assets for a long time. (In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up getting banned eventually, to avoid having to limit the design space for what can safely be printed on an advanceable asset.)
I agree. I faced this situation the second time I played against that horrible Outfit deck (the first time I got killed by turn 2 because of "lucky" The Maker's Eye ), and it´s the strongest protection an agenda can have. Umm, so you wanna take 6 meat damage? Well, of course you can do it, but we really want to complete this project, so we will be very, very upset
— m.pWait, has someone already noticed that the SU reprint of Punitive has card ID (31078) exactly by one thousand higher than City Works Project (21078)?
— m.p
Note that a single copy of this on a City Works Project is already a serious threat. Especially if backed up by Punitive Counterstrike. And since it's only two clicks you can either advance it again by hand or tutor the Dedication Ceremony with Consulting Visit or play any other card, like Hedge Fond or an ICE in front of the agenda.
— Krams