I went 5-0 in Swiss with stealth Leela at Reading. Then I met RP in the cut and lost.
In the top 25 players, 3 were Crims. Out of all 52, there are about 12. That’s woeful performance. I was the only Criminal in the cut.
I barely missed the cut at last SC running Ken, and there was some kind of Andy deck right behind. Ken deck only went 2-2, but honestly it smashed the two it won (NEH fastrobiotics and Spark kill) and the other two were definitely winnable, just didn’t quite happen (RP and BS glacier). Won’t bother posting as I immediately made some serious changes afterward and hope it’s a lot better in long games now. I believe Leela and Ken have a real shot right now, their problem is just some particularly bad matchups, which Anarch doesn’t really worry about. My corp side was in fact four anarch matches… Pretty grueling. All close games, Faust and Cutlery were out in force, but all wins.
Ah, I’ve just realised who you are IRL 
Have you got a list for Stealth Leela? I’ve tried it a couple of times and it didn’t click with me.
I think the dominance of Whizz/MaxX Faust is probably a sneaky good thing for us underdog crims, especially Leela, as we’ve got a not-bad match up with Fast Advance. I’d certainly rather face a field of yellow than purple!
yeah, my Geist is mostly waiting for Tech Trader in Business First, but Democracy & Dogma for Political Operative. i’m sure i’ll probably run Reflection over Forger too
and Salsette Island has Sports Hopper, which i think is a really solid Plascrete replacement for a lot of decks, but is just one card better in Geist
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Sports Hopper is great in Geist I think. It’s meat damage protection, yeah, but it’s also an instant speed Quality Time (yeah, 4 cards… but still, no inf). One gets you to 2 link to turn on cloud breakers and drip econ, if you’re using it, the rest turn straight into more cards. Really nice card, I don’t see Geist not running it even x3.
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I actually played more purple than yellow, which was maybe for the best given my tech choices in hindsight. I ran Stealth because I didn’t have a clue what else to do. Geist isn’t cooked yet (hurry up FFG!) and there is no other sensible code gate breaker than Refractor.
I don’t have the exact list, but it’s basically Stealth Andy with a Sneakdoor and Fisk instead of Earthrise. I was hoping Leela would slow down/open up rushy corps to give me time to get Stealth online (or win in some other fashion), and having never played the deck before, guessed two Special Orders would be enough. (It wasn’t. Don’t guess this sort of thing.) I don’t know really know much of a success the deck was. I certainly had to get lucky/win psi-games in my wins against EtF.
I’ve been trying to make Leela work with FIS, I really like the idea of jamming the corp HQ full of cards and force them into Agenda flood, but I have a lot of trouble with execution.
In practice, I have difficulty keeping pressure on the board up, and even when I am able to force any sort of flood into HQ, I often stumble a turn or two later and the corp is able to jackson or otherwise play out of their jam.
I think my main problem is my own limited skill and poor reads of my opponent, how do you make this work?
I don’t think I ever made it work.
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I don’t think the main problem is your skill or your reads. I think the main problem is that strategy sounds a lot better than it actually is.
I’ve been playing FIS for a while now. I’m not convinced it’s a card that lets you establish lasting pressure like R&D Interface or Medium. The best uses of FIS for me have always been on turns where Corps do things like IAA, or Biotic/SanSan down to 0-1 credits – any time I can see that their next three clicks should be spoken for. But I’ve no illusions that it’s any kind of pressure I can maintain over more than one turn: I FIS to give them an uncomfortable choice next turn, but the turn after that they’re going to have more options, and I need to be ready for that. I don’t think it will ever set up a cascade that leads to a position of weakness for the Corp for long periods of time.
Edit: This is why I think Fisk – the identity, himself – is actually unplayably bad.
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Was just writing something similar, so I’ll rework my comment into why:
I don’t think FIS is a playable Netrunner card. Most of the time the Corp is happy to get extra cards (except if they’re flooded, a position that’s good for you anyway), and in the best case scenario it’s okay in positions you’re doing well if and only if it doesn’t help them draw Sweeps or Jackson or something else to help.
In every other case, it’s a card you can only use on one of your 4 clicks that gives you a profit of one click (in terms of fresh cards drawn) and the Corp a profit of three clicks. Of course, you could argue that you should only ever use it in the case that it’s really good and the Corp’s on 0 credits and agenda flooded, but that is not a card you want to put in your deck.
FIS looks great if you forget about the insane downside it has.
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It’s playable. I run 2 in Faust Gabe. In the super duper best case scenario, it feeds me Account Siphon and now the Corp has more problems. But even in the average case scenario, I got Faust fuel and gave them a dilemma. But it’s not a great card, and the fact that I’m using Faust gives it more viability in my particular build than I think it would otherwise have. It’s not comparable to Diesel, let alone IHW.
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I think there’s something to Fisk, so I edited my comment to be a bit less damning. I’ve been through so many Criminal matches where the game slows down to an absolute crawl, and you basically have to hope enough agendas come into play and stay in play long enough for you to steal them, before you just get totally locked out by ice you can’t efficiently break, Crisium, Caprice and sodding Batty who just wins the whole damn game with a single psi game because Criminal has no recursion. Fisk at least speeds up the game for both parties, and Criminal can often benefit from that better than the corp.
The hard part is knowing when, but I’m sure there are situations where the corp wouldn’t play a ‘draw three cards for no clicks’ card if they had it in hand. It’s just working out how to maximise those situations, and identifying them. I think I failed in this regard and I don’t know how to fix that.
One day Jackson will rotate. And then Fisk will be there. Waiting. With his seminar.
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Yes, this has been exactly my experience.
I’ve contemplated running Eater or DD/Faust (sorry, I like Faust, and I think it combos with extra cards from FIS) to land Siphon more reliably to apply better pressure on the corp, but I think the problem is the card draw is more likely to help the corp and give them new options instead of forcing them into a bad situation.
Also, DBS is popular and makes FIS much friendlier for the corp.
This is the biggest problem I’ve found. NEH will never not be popular and DBS/Jackson makes FIS counter-intuitive in most scenarios. Having a card that only really works when the corp is dead broke and flooded is dodgy at best.
I don’t entirely dislike FIS because when it’s good it’s VERY good, but those scenarios are almost exclusively win-more edge cases. Easy HQ multiaccesses, feeding Faust to land siphons, glory runs, mills against janky J-net tier decks etc. It’s a fun card.
Too bad Fisk himself is a dumpster fire.
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Does councilman help Fisk and FIS in general by preventing Jackson Rezzes? I’m hopeful that once he drops Fisk becomes good.
Edit:what is timing priority in councilman. I’m guessing since it isn’t a prevent effect on the corps turn Jackson can be rezzed and removed from the game prior to Counciman firing.
Councilman is a triggered effect (triggered by rez), so you could stop them from using Jackson for one turn. (And actually, strictly speaking, you would have to use councilman before they announced the intention to use Jackson’s paid ability.)
Political operative would trash Jackson, but the corp would have priority to use him before you got the chance.
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To be fair, it does force the corp to use their jacksons immediately rather than use him for a while behind some ice. So Pol Op is still doing work there.
Took stealth Andy to our first winter gnk last night and went undefeated against twins foundry, titan FA/kill hybrid (is that just titan FA? Sansans and Scorch in the same deck…hmm), and glasshop/butchershop (in one of the games 8 agenda points were in my opponent’s bottom 5 R&D cards, that game was a grind…). Deck is fine but would have liked to play against straight up NEH FA to test that MU more
Agreed, I can’t think of a single time as Corp when I’ve been upset - at most I’ve been mildly irritated at the embarrassment of riches and only being able to use three good cards and throw one or two away.
I was playing with Daily Business Show today and it just gets mental how good it is for the Corp.
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I don’t get the Hades Shard. Jackson trolling?
… doesn’t this more reflect the skill of the player you were against than the poor quality of the card? Look, I’m torn on the effectiveness of the card, but I think a lot of people play it thinking, “Best case scenario!” rather than, “Very particular situation I should use this in!” While just about any card can be played poorly, this particular card just happens to have a massive potential downside, be rather difficult to play correctly, and tempting when it is in your hand to just imagine the awesome possibilities and ignore those downsides. Playing it against NBN w/ DBS installed? smh
I play two in my Leela deck and I would say that one game out of 3 I fire it off in a non-desperate YOLO situation. It pays off, creating #leelabullshitturns at a pretty decent clip. I think it is particularly effective with Leela because you also get a bounce if FIS w/ newly installed agenda. My favorite play is when fired after a corp ends the turn with a non-Leela-defense-advanced agenda, and a legwork / SDB ready to go. But I never fire it early in a game, and frequently check the cards in the corps archives to make guesstimates of the disaster-cards (sweeps; celebrity gift; jackson).
Folks who want to play this card should: (1) not play it early, ever, because you need the agenda density to make it pay off; (2) check the #)($#)(# archives and think about what could come up that you care about; (3) assume it dumps one agenda in HQ (because you’re playing it mid to late game w/ decent density… right?) - whats the plan to get it? Is that worth the possible cluster downside?
That’s why I think it is acceptable in Leela, because one more agenda in HQ w/ a Legwork can just start the unraveling Leela nonsense.