When I build my decks I tend to want to be as versitale as possible. I mostly play corp with NBN but I try to stick in some Ice that trashes programs, some traps that can flatline, some trickery with upgrades such as expose denial or ice-boosting. Then I also want big money assets. And tag punishing operations. The end result is that my decks are always closer to 60 than 49 cards. So is this always bad or is it just down to play style? I recently fell a little bit in love with Dedicated assault team when the runner just don't care avout the tags anymore. But I can't fit everything in there! And I'm guessing I'll want a couple of Jackson Howards when I get my hands on the new cykle of cards.

Mmm, the theory goes that it is more important to have access to the core of your deck, then to glut yourself on cards. It can work to have more, but I'd keep an eye out for how often you drew cards that weren't optimal for the situation and either replace or remove them.

Especially when your deck is bigger, you need to make sure every card is functional, especially since spending to much time drawing either sets them up for HQ runs, or worse, could force you to discard agendas, and protect archives.

Indeed; it's a trade of versatility over consistency. And increased likelihood of dead draws.

I think there's an argument to be made for some IDs going over minimum though (Professor, I'm looking at you...)

In a word, yes.

Your influence does not grow with your deck size. You have only 15 (or whatever) points of out-of-faction cards. The more cards in your deck, the less you'll see these cards.

My point is this:

The more "good" cards introduced to the game the possibility of dead draws go down, even with a larger deck. The problem with building large decks is that you have to balance, for corp players, the ratio of Ice and money assets sometimes forcing you to include less than optimal cards to keep a healthy ratio. But if all cards you pick are good ones is this still a problem? The question of influence is also dependent upon this factor. At the moment four of my influence points i n my NBN-deck are spent on Adonis Campaigns but as the card pool continues to grow I probably won't have to spend those point on something as unintresting as money-generating assets.

Your point concerning influence is certainly valid. Consider though, that dead draw isn't just 'this card is no use to me' so much as 'this card is no use to me RIGHT NOW'. After seeing turn after turn of pulling no ICE, this gets frustrating as hell, and that's with a 49-card deck.

Although if you keep the same ratio of ICE (for example) in your deck the same, your statistical probability of pulling ICE each card won't change much, the more cards in your deck, the greater chance of not pulling the card you want. An unlucky shuffle could see a dearth of ICE (or economy cards, or agendas if you're in a strong position to score right now, or anything else you might be hurting for), and the more cards in deck, the bigger a problem it becomes.

That said, TRY larger decks. If you make it work, let us know - post up the decklist, I'm sure people would spend a lot of time analysing it and looking at how to apply it to their own decks. I know I would, just to have something different to try out.

You absolutely need to increase all areas of your deck equally or at least maintain the intrinsic balance. And that is the big problem with adding more cards, it doesn't just grow by the cards you add, but also by the cards you add to maintain that balance. And on the point of dead draws; if you face an opponent who's deck's just a bad matchup for your specialized deck then ALL draws are potentially dead.

I am however a total scrub at all kinds of card games, but I do like a good discussion

If you take NBN as an example I feel they are very strong in both agendas, upgrades and operations and decent in Ice. They certainly lack money assets wich is odd for a major news network but there you go. I don't really feel it's hard for me to include more agendas because they are all very good, more operations? No problem! More Ice, well it's starting to get a bit thin. Money is the real problem but with more neutral cards coming in I think this will sort itself out.

This is what I've been playing lately. It's fun to play but please do tear it to pieces =)

I like that it's very interactive and that most agendas are treated more as powerful operations. I Love to see the runner get a tag, then discard False Lead and punish them dearly. Or just do Breaking News - Big Brother - Closed Accounts. Psychograpichs for scoring Priority Requisitions out of hand or overscoring a Project Beale. Use the Corporate Troubleshooter to buff the punishing Ice like archer or Flare. Dedicated Response Team just because its hilarious to set behind some heavy ice when the runner has like 15 tags. More to amuse me than anything else.

I like it. It's fun to play. I'm sure I would get absolutely trashed at any tournament but that's okay.

Ps. I don't have all the expansions. If I did I think I would switch one of the Adonis Campaigns for a Thomas Haas to save an Influence point and upgrade that Rototurret to a second Archer. Then Add some Howards and switch one or two of the Pad Campaigns for a Private Contractor. Probably other things as well.