The trick to Quandary's efficiency is subtle, but clever. To discover it, go do a search for 0-strength Decoders.

You'll find only three. Study Guide, which pays up-front so that it can receive permanent boosts. Sage, which pays up-front for additional power conditional on unused MU. And Crowbar, which is both temporary and never actually 0 strength in practice. In all these cases, the "basic" 0-strength Decoder is made more expensive to pay for the ability to make it permanently more powerful.

What this means is that if you use Quandary, the Runner is paying for base strength or permanent growth potential on their Decoder that they do not need. This is a subtle drain on their resources. It's a similar story for the new Vanilla.

One key point about this card is that it lets you abuse corps that can't afford to rez their ICE, and Criminals are king at knowing when that's the case (and fairly strong at MAKING it the case, too). Expose is their deal, derezzing is their deal, running a central and hitting something expensive with Crescentus, then running it again with this is just salt in the wound. Similar argument goes for Emergency Shutdown.

REALLY living the Criminal dream is Account Siphon click 1, clear tags clicks 2 and 3, and this click 4 now that they're too poor to rez the ICE over whatever server you're targeting if it's anything nastier than a Pop-up Window. Corp loses 5, Runner makes a net profit of 12 and gets an access. Not bad for a day's work. And that's assuming you have no better way to get rid of the tags.

What I'm saying is that criminals have all the tools necessary to make this work with less risk than other factions. Why gamble fairly when you can rig the game? If you're already getting into servers by making it so the corp can't rez their protection, this synergizes very nicely with things you were already doing. And if you're actively DErezzing things...well, that just guarantees the corp will have a server with unrezzed ICE on it, doesn't it?

So the obvious use of this is to use an outer Barrier to surf into a server, and this probably IS the strongest use of the card. However it says before OR after, which means you can surf a Barrier forwards OR backwards if you want. Why would you want to head OUT of the server to re-encounter ICE you've already hit? There's one main reason: positional ICE.

That's right, the classic Shaper trick of reorganizing the defenses so Chum is on the inside. Now available to Anarchs! The position shift is permanent (same unfortunate reason that unless you're packing Paintbrush or other ICE subtype tweaking you can only use a given Barrier to surf in once), so once you've backed their ICE out past Chum that two-deep server suddenly looks a whole lot funnier. Pachinko outside Data Raven! Counters Sensei if anyone actually used that! Farm the Little Engine for credits...maybe...? I don't think that last one is possible outside of stupid numbers of Parasite counters (especially given that this costs two creds to activate), but it would be pretty funny to watch.

Of course, these are niche uses. The real power of this card is surfing Curtain Wall all the way into a glacier, then breaking it with D4v1d. And, of course, importing this into Shaper for use with Paintbrush and Tinkering in a deck already built to abuse those. Or Escher, which can either let you in everywhere once or create a Barrier-dense server that can then just be surfed over every run. Again, this shouldn't be the ONLY reason you're running Escher, but if you happen to stumble across both (haha, what's this SMC doing here?) it can be entirely possible to close out a game by just making everything surfable. But even without Shaper synergy, Surfer can get you into servers you have absolutely no business being able to access.

Important note: It says ACCESS, not STEAL. That makes it a counter to NAPD Contract, Fetal AI, and Red Herrings as it provides the credits required to steal (and more!) upon accessing. It also provides a consolation prize for Agendas that can end up yielding nothing on access, such as The Future Perfect, Domestic Sleepers, and 15 Minutes. Against corps that are over-reliant on Agendas like these, this card offers powerful econ in a situation where the corp might not be as worried as usual about you accessing.

Specific interactions aside, sometimes you know you can get into a server and the corp doesn't. First click this, second click D4v1d can be extremely unpleasant, even if you have to burn off all the counters to break that outer Curtain Wall. To say nothing of Stimhack...Anarchs generally have a few tools for scoring an access that really should have been out of reach, and this card lets you capitalize on them. It's easy to categorize this card as win more, but it can also be used to turn a temporary advantage into a more permanent one.

Hit three centrals, play three Quest Completed. I guess too much video gaming really DOES rot your brain...

Of course, if you're going to do that you're probably better off with multiples of Notoriety and a single Quest. And the REAL power behind this card is being able to, out of nowhere, put down a Medium and hit a poorly defended R&D for 15 cards (instead of the paltry six that "Medium + 3 accesses" offers). This can be outright game-winning and pretty much forces a purge even if you don't hit 7 points right away (the corp can attempt to further ICE up R&D, but it's a significant risk since if you manage to slip through then they're screwed), and even without "living the dream" the escalating nature of Medium means squeezing even one extra access out of your pile of Medium counters before they get purged (maybe by spending your other bonus click on econ to get the creds you need to get in) can be very valuable indeed.

You can do it first turn, even. This costs 1, Medium costs 3, and you start with 5 creds. So woe betide any corp who doesn't put at least a nominal piece of ICE on R&D first turn against an Anarch. Luckily both cards are 3 influence so they can probably ease up a little against other factions...

Unlike other Runner click cards like All-nighter, Amped Up is also highly versatile. Sometimes it's just worth taking a brain damage to avoid having to float a tag, to build econ to foil a predicted SEA Source, to grind out an extra run for something important, or even paradoxically just to fill your hand up to avoid a flatline. These aren't ideal uses of the card, but it CAN do these things if it absolutely must and this makes it more than just combo fodder. Brain damage is no joke, but those two extra clicks can enable a whole wealth of solutions to board states where four clicks just won't cut it.

Of course, REAL Runners will spend their two clicks on Stimhacks. What are you, a wuss?