u/Sogamg

New to the game .Just have the three starting sets and waiting for the Liberation cycle.
Also I was looking some cards and IDs of other sets.
And I saw Esa Afontov and the deck this character has.Lots of them make the player take core damage to work.
As I said I am new to the game and I can not see the way to mitigate core damage , because not only you discard cards but also your hand limit is reduced.
That mean that if you play four of these cards you will end up with one card in hand max.
And if the Corp has some cards that do net damage you are toast.
What is the strategy behind playing thses cards , and how you can mitigate self inflicting core damage?
Or is it something I do not get rule wise?