Serious topic is serious:

In the core set you get 2 Scorched Earth. Many people, certainly those playing semi-seriously, have two core sets. Now, with the league night handing out Scorched Earth, everyone and their brother's going to have 3 without a problem.

Maybe it's my local meta, but Weyland's the Corp to beat, and Scorch! Scorch! is top dog. I am NOT top dog by a longshot, but when I assembled my own Weyland Scorch deck, it's not been stopped yet, even by a deck or two specifically built as its counter. When Gencon, Regionals, or any real competitive tournament rolls around, how are we not expecting to see a bazillion Scorch decks? And if they're everywhere, what's the counter.

More to the point: unles we're playing more for fluff, or for some element of fun over win, is Scorched Earth even fair? Is it balanced? Broken? Can a Runner deck handle it plus all other viable Corp decks in a big tournament?

I know there's Plascrete Carapace and Muresh Bodysuit and other protectors, but are they enough and should the belong in every Runner deck every time just for the sake of Scorched?

Included in my common build are usual suspects such as 3X Scorched and Seasource (and other tag cards), as well as card draw and tutors such as Aggressive Negotian, Project Atlas, and other redundancies such as Executive Retreat, Private Contracts, and other Ice that either tag or do any damage (to drop a card out of their hand). With Posted Bounty they cannot even shake off the tag. The deck just fluidly gets the job done.

Are we missing anything on the Runner side? Is there some way they can consistently beat a Scorch deck while having all the rest of the toold to handle other corps and not end up with dead cards used against Scorch?

Scorched Earth is 4 influence. It's 12 influence to run 3x Scorch out of faction. Crash Space, Decoy, and Plascrete are all good against this sort of deck.

The deck is strong, but it's a one-trick pony with several counters available.

Scorched Earth takes money and time (aside from a lucky draw). Step one is to keep the corporation poor and to pressure them hard. Forged Activation Orders, Emergency Shutdown, Account Siphon, Kraken, Vamp, and Crecentus all keep the corporation poor and hurting for money and ice.

Medium, Maker's Eye, Never Agent, Sneakdoor Beta, and HQ Interface let you keep the pressure up (especially HQ and R&D), while Imp and Demorun let you punish them and get rid of those pesky SE and SS. Datasucker and Parasite nuke ice and force the corp to invest more in defense.

Keep the heat on the corporation, force them to focus on defending their servers and spending money to rez ice.

Decoy and Crash Space help you avoid tags so they won't even be able to connect with a Scorched Earth. Anything with link helps you against traces (Sea Source, Bernice Mai, tagging Ice).

Public Sympathy increases your hands size so you can take more hits.

Plascrete is only there as a final resort assuming that you've failed all of the above (Muresh Body suit is honestly a waste as even with 3 of them out, you can only ever stop 1 damage….not 3 damage). Two Plascrete should keep you safe for the most part if you absolutely need to, but honestly if you're depending on it to save you, you've already screwed up (not that it doesn't help).

TL;DR Runners have a LOT of ways to avoid being scorched to death, the biggest being playing well and playing aggressive.

Hand destruction is a very under-valued asset in this game. If the corp is killing you with combos, use Imp or Demolition Run and strip the offending cards out of their hand. If you're playing carefully (as you should against decks you suspect of running the tag and bag strategy), they're going to need to hit you with two scorched earths to get the job done, and even that won't do if you've included cards specifically to counter the strategy. Muresh body suit won't save you, but Crash Space and Plascrete Carapace certainly will. I'm personally running a one-of crash space as a hedge against tag and bag, but I think I'm th eonly one in my meta who's even messing with Scorched Earth, and I'm running it as a 2-of in NBN just to keep the runner honest.

I think the only faction you MIGHT want to splash 3x SE into is NBN…and even at that there's better ways to spend that influence.

I usually see NBN with only 2 SE (possibly with 2 aggessive negotiations). Other than that they tend to run Caduceus, Snare, Neural Katana.

Custom Biotics means HB will be able to splash Scorched Earth x 3, Data Raven x 3 and SEA Source x 2.

Dangerous days ahead for runners everywhere…