Monday 18 January 2016

Deck Club: Leela - Endless Waltz

The very third Deck Club is at hand! This time with trained pragmatism of Leela.

Edit: The results are in and you can hear us discuss your thoughts in Episode 54.

The idea of Deck Club is to get people playing classic or less well-known decks. We would like you to build the below deck and give it a few games worth of your time. Maybe you know all it's ins and outs or maybe this is the first time you have heard about it. Either way we would love to hear about your experiences:
  • What did you like/dislike about it?
  • What tweaks would you make?
  • Did it make a particularly memorable game?
  • Or send anything else you would like to share to runlastclick@gmail.com
Economy, especially Desperado, is good to see in your opening hand.

Leela has the power to unravel the corp's board state and this is most effective at the start of the game. Apply lots of pressure early. Don't worry about making them rez ICE at this stage as it's good to make them spend money and early game ICE is cheap to get through. If you have a Faerie to install that is a nice safety net while you do this.

Once the corp is set up, build your board state and get ready to do a big R&D run with a few R&D Interfaces out e.g. When the corp tries to score an agenda Inside Job/Stimhack R&D. If you score you can bounce back the Agenda to their hand OR bounce back an ICE/Upgrade on the remote to score that. If they do score next turn bounce back the ICE on R&D to make running there easier.

Sneakdoor Beta click one with Desperado out and then using it 3 times can be a great play. People tend to double ICE HQ and R&D against Leela and agendas can build up in their hand.

Your economy is mostly resources so be careful about floating tags.

Account Siphon is a good card.

For even more tips listen to Episode 48 starting about 23:15.

Endless Waltz v11

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (17)
3x Account Siphon
3x Dirty Laundry
2x Inside Job
2x Legwork
3x Special Order
1x Stimhack   •
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (7)
3x Desperado ☆☆☆
1x Plascrete Carapace
3x R&D Interface   ••••• •

Resource (11)
2x Bank Job
3x Daily Casts
2x Kati Jones
2x Security Testing
2x Symmetrical Visage

Icebreaker (9)
2x Corroder   ••••
3x Faerie
1x Femme Fatale
1x Mimic   •
1x Passport
1x Peacock

Program (2)
2x Sneakdoor Beta

12 influence spent (max 15-3=12)
46 cards (min 45)

Thanks to Dave Hoyland for building the deck.

6 comments:

  1. I find Sneakdoor will only punish bad opponents these days. The problem is they have to ice Archives to prevent Criminal economy (Dirty Laundry + Desperado + Security Testing).

    So you need 2x to see it early enough to give you a chance but if you get it mid-game it's nearly useless without multi-access.

    Running mostly centrals can sometimes get in trouble with stacked sentries. Swap a Mimic for Alias or even Ninja (Assassin, Grim, Ichi 2.0) and use Faeries/Femme for the remotes.

    Dies horribly if can't get at an open server, not sure how to deal with Foodcoats, RP, Bootcamp Blue Sun.

    1 Plascrete is a dangerous game, especially splashing Stimhack.

    Still a very good deck but Criminal just struggles against so many things at the moment.

    Obviously I'm not at the same level as Hoyland though, especially with Leela.

    Bring on Mongoose!

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  3. Having fun, but after a year playing Anarch I am struggling to get into the criminal mindset. I think I am most desperate for a Same Old Thing, and hitting an ICHI 1.0 is always sad - those Faerie only go so far. Stimhack won me a game, pleased to see it in there. Peacock makes me cringe a little when I have to pay 4 to break an Enigma on a remote, but I get a tiny bit less sad when I remember it costs the same as Gordian Blade to break a Tollbooth.

    BUT... Leela is hilarious. When the effect just chains and you take apart their board and take advantage of the gaps it is great fun.

    Kati Jones has propped up the econ nicely - she comes into her own in those games when they do lock out the Security Testing/Bank Job plays, so I think the econ balance feels right.

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  4. The deck is great, really solid. Just like adam here said, Kati is great for that moment wen you've been "locked out" of the centrals, to get started on going for the big runs. Daily casts is great anytime, quite nice on those occasion and early you can still run well with a little less money. I'm trying a version without it tho, -3 casts, +1 inside job, +1 bank job. Still works quite nice, but doing that makes me wonder why does Dave's builds always feature 46 cards.

    I had some issues with spark in the beginning, but then I realized I was running to heavily instead of setting up my economy.

    The whole strategy works really well. I've found that it's important to leave R&D unrezzed for the late game. So your first REAL R&D run, with a couple of interfaces, should leave the corp poor o show a really porous server.

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  5. The consistency of high strength sentries these days is certainly an issue that won't go away easily and might well enough cost you a game.

    Sneakdoor Beta is one of the best cards in the game! Let them ice Archives, either you will getting cheaper accesses or they will throw a lot of resources on a (mostly) useless server.

    Daily Casts and Kati Jones are enough to get you the money you need on a glacier deck.

    All in all, a solid and strong deck.

    Before MWL I run two DDoS and along with inside job they were amazing! With economy being so reliant on Desperado that is not an option now so I find my win percentage suffered but still it is pretty good against most opponents.

    Thanks for the club and wait for a more analytical review later

    GreekGeek

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