*Some options were deliberately excluded (NBN cards, celebrity gift, hedge fund) in order to make a more interesting poll. Others were accidentally missed or were judgment calls. Just choose from the available options; later, high performers from these polls could go into an ‘Actual best operation’ poll.
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I must admit that I’m confused with the way scorched earth is going. It’s a win condition, not a tool, while interns is a versatile card which increases your options a lot.
Surely exchange should be here somewhere, it’s better than interns. Arguably diagnostics / shutdown ought to be represented too.
An operation that wins you the game is pretty good, though. Perhaps the best? 
Scorched has warped, or rather defined, the meta since the game launched. That warrants some respect.
Eh, plascrete didn’t win best hardware, so I’m blithe toward handing a similar accolade to its opposite. But hey, it does win games, just not for me.
Heh, you know what I mean. Sea or Midseasons is the card that lets you leverage your gamestate, scorched is just a prerequisite (and as such part of the gamestate, you have drawn it or its tutors or you haven’t). This is different from the rest of the tag punishment, where the corp gets a choice in when and how to play it, to affect the gamestate and put you in a winning situation. Scorched Earth needs the rest of the cards of the deck to put the runner in a position where they feel they have to put themselves in a vunerable position. This pressure is how you win, and scorched can’t help you create it, it just has to be around when the runner is sufficiently vunerable.
There aren’t many cards like that, only one comes close from the top of my head (biotic), but there you do have the consideration of it’s cost, as the game isn’t over yet. However, that card is facing enforcing loyalty and who can really be bothered about that.
It stings, because interns is the polar opposite of scorched earth. Scorched earth has no interaction with you as a corp. You play it when you have the win, or you keep it in hand (Jackson shenanigans aren’t that common). There’s no choice. Interns on the other hand, is all about choice. As a corp, you get to play with 6 cards minus surplus agendas and combo parts, get to click for creds, draw a card, and that’s going to make up the majority of your turns. Interns lets you play with 5 cards and your archives, for just a click. You get to pick the best ice in your opinion vs that anarch which is trashing everything, or get to choose between getting more econ or that key upgrade/asset. Interns very much is a card that lets you show off how good you are at the game as you are enabled to make a much better choice of what card to play.
I won’t say it’s the best card out there, but seeing it in a landslide loss vs scorched makes no sense to me.
Scorched Earth opens up a Corp win condition that would be virtually nonexistent without the card’s existence. Interns does not.
I guess people aren’t interpreting “best” as “most skill-testing”.
How do we have a contest for best operation with Exchange of Information? It’s in the tagging faction, and is certainly capable of winning a game for the corp, if not quite as dramatically as Scorched Earth.
I see many more complaints about EoI than SE lately. I think it merits to at least be in the running for this one.