As a general rule, 3/1s are the runts of the Agenda litter. They have the absolute worst investment-payoff ratio (excluding 2/0 agendas), and their ability to be rushed or scored through never-advance is insignificant compared to the 3/2 agendas' payoff when scored in the same manner. Therefore, whilst a 3/2 can be played on stats alone, a 3/1 has to have a pretty powerful ability. I feel like Jinteki actually run more 3/1s than any other faction; House of Knives and Chronos Project are not uncommon, and I see False Lead and Profiteering on occasion.

So I guess the two questions regarding Dedicated Neural Net are:

1) Is the ability any good?

2) Is the ability good enough to force its way into any decks?

To address the first one; yes, absolutely. As anyone who has faced Caprice or Marcus can testify, Psi games are freaking annoying when paired with hard consequences. Dedicated Neural Net isn't as powerful as either of those two, but once scored it is almost impossible to remove.

Pros

-Controlling accesses is a big thing, even if you don't have a 100% chance of pulling it off. In Jinteki especially, it isn't just agenda protection, it's also trap activation, and can be a powerful information denying tool. Don't want them to know you've got Scorched Earth? Don't let them see it!

-It also adds another layer of Psi to the possible HQ defences. Imagine a Runner going for HQ and having to defeat Caprice and work through the Neural Net, just to access The Future Perfect? That's a 3.7% chance of them getting that agenda.

-Being a 3, it's not too hard to score.

-They can stack. Each one is another psi game the runner has to win.

Cons

-Only one Agenda point! The goal is, after all, to get to 7, and these are the slowest way to do so. If you're going for a flatline, House of Knives surely takes its place.

-Only once per turn ability, and only on one server.

-Does not affect cards which replace the accesses, such as Account Siphon or Information Sifting.

The second point, whether it's worth putting in decks, is difficult to answer. If you weren't running 3/1s before this card isn't going to force its way in, just because of its nature as a 3/1. But if you were playing 3/1s anyway, I would strongly recommend giving this a go, even just as a 1-of. It isn't a replacement for a good HQ defence, but it is an extra layer of hassle that the runner has to keep dealing with.

If there was ever a flavour text that summed up a card perfectly, Woman in the Red Dress would be a strong contender.

When it was first released back in Mala Tempora, I pretty much took one look at it and said 'it's a worse Deep Thought, which I also never play'. Combined with a non-trivial cost and the joint-highest influence cost for a resource, it seemed like Shaper had better options, and everyone else had better things to spend that much influence on.

A fair bit of time has passed since then, and I have to admit that I was wrong about this card. There's a subtle power to it, all relating to the flow of information and changes in probability.

Netrunner is an asymmetric card game, and the Corp is basically holding all the hidden information. Almost everything they play is face down, and you do not know the cards in their hand or the order of their deck. Let's assume a simplistic case of 49 cards, 10 agendas. That gives every card a 20.4% chance of being an agenda. So one access gives you a 20.4% chance, a double access is 36.6%, and a triple-access run gives 49.6% of pulling at least one agenda.

Woman in the Red Dress has a number of options that can trigger. The simplest is an agenda appears on R&D, and they do not draw; you now have a 100% chance of hitting an agenda if you run R&D, barring a Jackson Howard reshuffle. But more than that, you have to consider why they didn't draw it; agenda flood, perhaps?

If they get a non-agenda card, drawing it slightly improves your chances of hitting an agenda in R&D, and not drawing it is the least negative choice for the corp. Generally they'll draw them, but don't feel that this forces you to run R&D.

The most misunderstood choice is when there is an agenda and the Corp chooses to draw it. Whilst this is basically the lesser of two evils for them, it is a fantastic opportunity for you, the runner. Previously, there was a hand of 5 unknowns, and now there are 5 unknowns and 1 certainty. This significantly shifts the maths, particularly for multi-access. 20.4 becomes 33.6% for the single, 36.6 becomes 57.8% for 2 access, and 49.6 becomes a whopping 83% to hit at least one agenda for the Legwork run.

And those are the numbers without factoring in the way the game often plays; Agendas will often accumulate in hand, particularly if there is significant remote pressure or if FA is being played.

The other facet of it is, of course, information. There are a number of 'giveaway' cards in Netrunner for the Corps, and a number of extremely unpleasant surprises. Seeing Biotic Labor, Midseason Replacements, or Scorched Earth will immediately clue you in to the deck. Seeing Archer or a Komainu, particularly as a splash, gives you time to prepare.

Because of the way it affects the statistics, it is a card well suited to decks that make limited numbers of powerful runs, as opposed to those that make numerous single-access runs. But even in those, it has a place, as it helps tell you where it would be more profitable to run.

Tl;dr: Knowledge is power, and in the game of 'find-the-agenda', knowing where an agenda is hiding is incredibly powerful

Countering your opponents' moves is an integral part of Netrunner, and one which is slightly harder for the Corporations. The Runner will have tools to disrupt the Corp in any number of ways; raising rez costs, trashing assets, milling cards, etc. By their nature as an attacking force, any time they attack you they are disrupting your plan.

The Corporations are a defensive force, and as such only have limited ways to disrupt the runner. ICE is the obvious one, and there are a lot of very powerful Operations suchlike. But almost all of these require the Runner to attack. There do exist very strong Corp counters; Sunset and Tenma Line completely counter Escher, but you will almost never see them played. This is because for all the decks that don't run Escher, those cards are useless. If a card is in your deck as a counter, it should either be good in its own right (Such as Jackson Howard countering Indexing), or it should affect almost everything (Enhanced Login Protocol will work against almost every runner, although it does not directly improve your ability to score agendas)

Cerebral Static is a card that many people look at and say 'It doesn't affect Andy, The Prof or Val, so it's a situational counter'. Technically true, but also very wrong. Against those three, yes, it's rubbish. Against everyone else in the game it is usable. It is also not dependent on game state, as with the exception of those three identities, Cerebral Static affects a card that is always in play and active.

Its effects are widely variable; at its worst it does literally nothing, but at its best, against Kit or Noise, it undercuts their entire deckbuilding effort. Against the vast majority of Runners it acts as a tax, costing them credits in several cases, or removing tools that they would otherwise use against you.

Tl;dr: Cerebral Static affects the game against almost every runner for almost every conceivable board state. It is really worth taking for a spin.

When you get right down to it, Netrunner is a game of economy. The two main ways that this manifests are in better economy, and better economy. Kate and Engineering the Future are popular for the solid advantages they provide, and NEH's card drawing provides an excellent advantage.

There is another way to approach the matter though; rather than focus solely on your own economy, you can attempt to disrupt your opponents'. Replicating Perfection is popular for this; to run certain targets, you need to run twice, which wastes both s and s. Several Anarch builds also capitalise on resource denial, which is a facet of this.

Which brings me to Haas-Bioroid: Stronger Together. The identity has the standard 45/15, and the ability to make all bioroid ICE a small bit tougher. It seems like a simple ability, and I've often heard it called underpowered, but I firmly believe that it has further-reaching consequences than one short sentence implies.

On the surface, people look at the ability and say ‘at best, it costs them 1 extra to break a piece of ICE, or they can just click through it.’ The first point perhaps seems lacklustre compared to EtF’s solid credit, but it is actually 1 extra credit per ICE, so the gap between the two is not quite as wide as imagined.

To the second point; this is true of almost all bioroids, and yet I would hazard that Eli 1.0 is the most popular barrier in the game, save perhaps Wraparound. This is because Eli 1.0 is taxing under any circumstance; to break it with a Corroder, you need to spend 4 or 2. Clicking through is ideal for the Corp here; a runner can have any amount of money, but can only have a limited number of clicks.

Using Stronger Together as an ID increases the credit cost, which slightly inclines the runner to spend clicks. Both of these options are indirectly attacking the runner’s economy, and as such it is easier to make an extremely taxing deck with ST than any other HB identity. Imagine a hypothetical server protected by Eli 1.0 and Viktor 1.0, facing a runner with Corroder and ZU.13 Key Master: It will cost you 6 to rez both. It will cost the runner 5 to break either ICE. This strategy has recently gained some excellent pieces of support, such as Enhanced Login Protocol, Heinlein Grid, and Inazuma, all of which increase the taxation exerted.

An important point often overlooked with ST are the ‘indirect’ effects; those which only appear when you include other cards in the comparison. Viktor 1.0, for example, becomes un Yoggable. Heimdall 2.0 cannot be broken by Knight. All the ICE becomes more resistant to Parasite. Atman faces a conundrum: if at 4, you start needing Datasucker tokens just to break Eli 1.0 and Ichi 1.0. If at 5, it is still expensive for conventional breakers to deal with Markus 1.0 and Viktor 1.0.

Overall, this combines to make ST a potentially very powerful ID, even though e3 Feedback Implants are quite a strong counter to bioroids

I am of the opinion that Whizzard is one of the most underrated Runner Identities going.

His basic stats are standard, 45/15 and no link. However, I have encountered several people who say that his runner ability isn't good because some decks do not run trashables. To me, this is akin to people saying plascrete is bad because not all decks run Scorched Earth. This is true, but misleading. Plascrete is common because whilst it isn't universally useful, when it is useable it will save your life.

Whizzard's ability might not always be of immediate use, but when it is, it will frequently win games for you.

I do not mean this as hyperbole. There are extremely few decks that do not run any assets or upgrades (CI being the only one that leaps to mind) and several strong archetypes (RP, NEH, etc.) that run several very powerful examples. Sundew, MHC, Jackson, Adonis... all become free to trash. PAD costs one. SanSan and Eve cost two. The runner cannot afford to leave them undefended when it is so easy for you to trash them. (well, except Jackson in certain circumstances).

This can give you a significant advantage in the economy game that is at the heart of netrunner.

The other, less obvious advantage is that his abilities do not tie him to a particular deck build. Noise, for example, is always going to be virus bombing; Ken will focus on events; Sillhouette on exploiting expose... Whizzard can run almost any deck archetype you can find the cards for, as most have no effect in any way (positive or negative) upon his ability. In that regard he is somewhat like Kate or Reina, in that the ability will be almost as helpful in any deck you make. (Although Kate's and Reina's will trigger in every game).