Which ID? Whizzard.
Legal ID? Valencia. Freedom is second-place, and after that there’s a gap between him and the next best ID, which is debatable. (I’m a fan of Leela doing work, and you can turn off CtM’s ability by just Being Sunny + Power Taps, but neither of them are better than just Valencia’s free credit every run.)
For how to play against CtM, Step One is realizing that a landed HHN is, in fact, not game over. It merely usually is. The cases where it’s Game Over are more plentiful than the cases it isn’t, but I have won games where I was HHN’d. You have three modes when playing against CtM: Deny their Win, Deny their Money, Build a Plan.
Most of the time you’re going to be in Build a Plan, because the Deny modes open you up to being hit with Bad Things and tempo hits. This means you’re building your board state and inflating your credit total. Here, the focus is on avoidance of HHN, over all else. Once you have the capital to avoid HHN and make runs, we either execute the plan we were working towards (some kind of combo win, possibly) or shift into one of the other modes.
Normally, we shift into Deny their Win at this point, because most of the time while you were building, CtM was scoring points. At this stage, the crucial card to get rid of is DBS. It allows them to dig for whatever they need to Win, and that’s the single most important thing we’re trying to prevent at this stage. After that, Jeeves is a strong contender for must-trash, as a Jeeves on board allows a Win through a facedown 4/2, not just 3/1 or Beale. We’re seeking to cut off their avenues to Victory here. One of the important things is that when we’re executing this plan, they can have as many PADs, Turtlebacks, Mumbas, and Bankers they want. All that money doesn’t get them points. (Calibration Testing notwithstanding… Another must-trash, if you can find it.) And still go ahead and trash Bankers if you’re safe to do so. Just because lots of money doesn’t Win, doesn’t mean you should just let them have it if you have the chance to stop the more broken money cards, like Bankers.
However, there is also the Deny their Money plan. This functions off the theory that they can’t do anything without money, which, while accurate, is vulnerable to them just clicking for credits and getting value from the assets you’re leaving up that aren’t Money. This mode is the most likely to go tag-me, which is generally not a good idea, for the record. This is also the most likely time you will be hit by an HHN and be okay with floating the tags. If they spend down to tag you while you can’t clear, and have managed to make themselves unable to rez ice by doing that, they’re now vulnerable in other places. Bankers are the highest priority to trash here. This is the time to go nuts and trash all their stuff in a turn. I want to be clear that this mode is not the ideal state for most Runners, but a last resort. It exists as a strategy, but it’s almost always a losing strategy.
A lot of CtM decks are weak to multi-access on the RnD. DBS usually keeps HQ clear enough, but R&D they have substantially less control over. You do want to be careful and take care of Amani Senai when doing this, but otherwise this is the default Best Strategy. It applies similarly to lots of Asset spam decks as well. (IG perhaps the least so.)
For the other asset spam decks, the earlier list is pretty spot-on.
Annoyingly, the problem is not Bankers, but HHN.
Click, click, four credits is an acceptable cost to clear a Bankers.
If you didn’t get hit with 4 tags next turn, anyway.
Like Sensie’s, though, Bankers gets the attention because it’s the card that starts the chain. (Though I have no problem with Sensie’s on the banlist and not Bankers, because as I mentioned above, having Cards to get their win condition is better than just having Credits.)
In order to identify when the problem is HHN, you just have to imagine there’s a Runner current where you get to name a card, and the Corp cannot play that card. If I could name Hard-Hitting News, I would trash Bankers turn one every game, without exception. And DBS’s. And probably Turtlebacks… If I named Bankers instead, I wouldn’t trash DBS’s or Turtlebacks. (Barring some ridiculous econ opening like Gamble Gamble Laundry.)