I think it's about time that we revisit Nisei. I love Parzifal's flavor review, but it's been nearly two years since the last substantial review. And said review is excellent--it hits on a lot of the difficulties that Nisei faces. It's sort of an Econ ID, but not a substantial one. It supports a play style that is chancy and porous. However, some newer Psi cards have come out to support the ID (Hyoubu Research Facility, Mind Game, and Fumiko Yamamori, to name a few). Rather than dispute what tiedyedvortex claims, I'd like to offer a different approach.

Some corp IDs rely on advantage through economic denial, rather than their own gain. Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach and Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon are excellent examples of this play style. I may not gain as much money as a turn one Oversight AI Curtain Wall in Blue Sun: Powering the Future, but I can make you hurt. I think Nisei is another (janky) version of econ denial. Why is that? Because every time you fire a Psi game, money is being spent. Your job as the Corp is to make sure they are too poor to do what they want to do. Nisei accomplishes this by forcing taxes on nearly every subroutine and upgrade. Don't think of Psi Games as some random, uninteractive, "I'll roll a D6 to decide how much to spend". As a matter of fact, tell the runner "I'm spending 2 on this Snowflake; if you match me, you won't have enough to get through my Caprice Nisei, second Marcus Batty, AND spend the 2 to steal Fetal AI. NAPD Contract is also an excellent addition to the deck.

Granted, the Corp has to spend money too; there's the rub. Good econ is necessary to keep the deck going. On top of that, how do you deal with a rich runner? In today's meta, Temüjin Contract, Daily Casts, Liberated Account, or the newly released Bloo Moose (I could go on) will keep the runner quite healthy. As a matter of fact, they are highly unlikely to be too poor to ever completely be locked out. But that's the Jinteki way; embrace it. The trick to Nisei is that the other half of your deck is a classic shell game. Throw in your Project Junebugs, your Ronins; even dust off your Edge of World. Why? Stacking ICE deep on a server is a huge tell. It means, "hey, I want to score. Stay the hell away." But with Psi ICE, it's all porous. Let the runner think he's accomplishing the impossible by demolishing a 4-ICE server for that juicy agenda you IAAed last turn--only it's a trap. Naked ambushes arouse suspicion; but guarded too heavily, they may not be accessed in time. Psi ICE confuses the signals of scoring server and well-laid trap. Adding these ambushes aids your Dedicated Neural Net when they stay in HQ; scoring one of these can turn a HQ run into a dead run, or even a flatline. The runners death can be outside HQ as well; a total Psi flatline condition now exists, according to the FAQ: Fumiko Yamamori triggers AFTER Psychic Field. Thus, they lose all cards in grip, then take the meat damage from Ms. Yamamori.

I won't say it'll ever be top tier. And Psi games can exacerbate the variance inherent in Netrunner. But I think the support has arrived for what remains to be a game of hidden stakes, bluffs, and game-deciding calls.