It's not that hard, and she's pretty hardcore - Leela Patel

I think Lotus field is still too powerful Yog-hate to bring it back… yet

Like @hhooo’s frequent ramblings under influences, I was in an altered state the other night, and was thinking about how Leela can do well in a post-Clot, glacier-friendly world. I started to lean towards pounding centrals, and using Quest Completed and Notoriety. First Memstrips (which did earn me a ‘Nice Post’), now this.

Help (kill) me.

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Notoriety is way better than plascrete or utopia against punitive weyland…

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Andy’s goodness has been powered mostly by the general strength of blue cards - sure, getting four more of them for free is neat (and arguably better than getting money for breaking into a server the opponent already needs to ICE heavily because of your faction). Leela triggers, on the other hand, do things that cannot actually be replicated by any other card currently in the pool.

From my experience (both sides of the table), this is not actually the case.

Because of the scoring mechanisms decks with fewer agendas tend to use, your triggers will be much more meaningful, sometimes to the point where your ability stops the corp from scoring where nothing else possibly could have.

I played an 8-agenda deck vs Leela last week, and what she does to you is this: even if you have an impenetrable remote, you cannot have certainty that you have a scoring window. My 3-pointer got bounced twice after IAA before I could score it… at which point it was way too late.

It doesn’t matter what the odds of her stealing one agenda at an inopportune moment is, what matters is that you cannot rely on it not happening.

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You never have a truly impenetrable remote though. Does the Runner have a Stimhack? Does the runner have Inside Job? Does the Runner guess which ice to Femme? And so on.

More to the point, I think this is an unfair argument. Leela’s ability obviously matters much less when it triggers less, and it matters much less to glacier than FA. Leela’s ability is good, and it may even be better than Andromeda’s, and it may even be better against glacier than Andromeda. But it’s clearly worse against decks running 6 agendas than those running 12.

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Andy does things that can’t be replicated too. The corp IDs with a similar power have much less influence and one starts with a bad pub. They also don’t get a turbocharged mulligan. I agree Leela is good. I think there are builds that are better in Leela than in Andy. However, I don’t want to play Stealth Leela, Stealth Andy is really good. I’m not sure the best Leela is better than the best Andy. It’s good that it’s close.

Andy’s power is really really good though. Every now and again I look at it, and think it shouldn’t be a big deal. The corp can stabilise, then you’re playing against a blank ID. All those times, I’m wrong.

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But that’s the very point I’m contesting - the only obviously true statement is “it triggers less”. Anything beyond that has some built-in assumptions, and my experience playing both Leela vs these decks, and these decks vs Leela indicates that they’re not actually valid.

Typing this from my cell phone, so more on this later (in the Leela thread, where it belongs), but it has to do with scoring patterns and how much your own deck actually lets you play around her.

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I think if you play a glacier deck, the threat of Leela stealing an agenda is much higher. If she doesn’t pummel you in the very early stages of the game, you can be very stable, but you can lose a lot of clicks if you IAA in a remote. If she does manage to steal an agenda with Legwork / R&D runs, you basically lost an entire turn. Also, since HQ needs to be protected to be able to score anyway (because of Siphon), you need to pray hard she doesn’t go fishing succesfully in R&D.

That said, I do think her ability is generally weaker against glacier, simply because it fires less often, and it doesn’t open up the corp to high-impact runs as much as it does non-glacier decks.

Power level of leela = numbers of activations * impact of bounce. It’s a pretty credible hypothesis that decks that play less agendas are more impacted by leela bounces. Whether or not that’s actually the case is for testing, not for theory crafting. (Well, theory crafting is fun so go for it, but you can’t just say less activations = worse).

I don’t really play leela so anyone with a lot of experience wanna jump in?

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If HB is a big worry, would a switch from 2-3 RDI to 1-2 RDI and a Medium maybe help?

I maintain that in a glacier-heavy meta 2x Corroder is nice but not necessarily an optimal use of influence when Breach can replace one of them and be about as efficient (or even better) against Blue Sun and HB. That’d free up influence to turn one RDI into a Medium, at the very least, and that feels like a useful change, to me.

One of the big advantages I see of Leela is making the corp waste time (and maybe money) every time her ability triggers. Now, ETF mitigates the second part some… but making them clear viruses might greatly extend the first. It also, in my experience playing Rincewind Whizzard, works well in conjunction with Security Testing, and makes “I can probably get into R&D once a turn” into a threat that glacier decks have to take all the more seriously, because you don’t see one new card/turn (like with RDIs), you see at least two.

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Leela would be much less appealing against decks sporting the upcoming face up agendas.

@Basoon and I have been playing 2x Medium over the 3 RDI in the @aandries build for a few weeks. It’s been awesome for us.

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I should try Medium, I played all season with RDI and liked it, but I can see Medium being even better. I also think we may be able to cut some breakers from Criminal decks and tune them a bit tighter, if clot really does remove NEHFA from the meta. There will be more space for events that hate on bigger ICE or glacier strategies.

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Weeeell… the wording on Leela says “unrezzed”, while the (spoiled) wording on the Public agendas is “face up”. It’s possible that the spoiler isn’t accurate, and it’s possible that “face up” will count as “rezzed”, but with the information we have I would say the Public agendas are not safe from Leela.

Nice, I’ve tested a ton of Medium in Criminal - I like it.

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This is a good point. Currently there is no way to rez an agenda, I dunno if the Renovations will change that.

Yeah, I don’t know how my revival of this thread with my Notoriety tales got 0 discussion. Y’all are crazy, this card is bonkers.

Scoring an agenda, or having the corp score an agenda makes it infinitely easier to use Notoriety, as you can thin out the required server.

It hits hard with Sneakdoor by allowing you to get successful runs on 2 centrals through the usually weakest defended central. It’s not necessary but it is nice. Lucky Sneakdoor into a bounce is always nice / makes it easier as well, but that’s more a merit of Sneakdoor than Notoriety.

Stealing 1 less agenda is probably the biggest advantage imo. Whether is be 6 agenda Blue Sun trying to force you to steal 9 points to win, or sitting on 6 points of NAPDs / Niseis and losing the TFP psi-game, or finally racing NEH for that final agenda, nothing beats the look on the Corp’s face when they realize what’s up and it is too late. My favourite is when Blue Sun leaves you 6 points in archives so they can punitive you next turn, only to not get a next turn.

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Notoriety doesn’t trigger Leela.

I don’t think anyone is saying that it does. @lopert is saying that Leela’s ability makes fulfilling its condition (running all three centrals in the same turn) easier.

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Not what he’s saying.

Bouncing ice from stealing makes notoriety easier to use. It is true.

It’s cute, but I really doubt it’s worth the influence, unless weyland gets really popular. Could be good for a tournament here or there, but it won’t work it’s way into a standard list.

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