Just do a netboot with a preseed file (have your own local cache - either with apt-cacher or something more independent)

Our server preseed has the following line

d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server build-essential iperf htop screen sysstat vim-nox

And a couple of internal packages which have their own dependencies (including lldp, snmpd etc) which do a variety of things including user management (active directory based), automatic registration into our asset database and monitoring systems