I’ve been running Medium instead of RDI, and if fast decks are your concern that might me the right call for you. It ramps up the pressure much faster and cheaper than RDI and the way to counter it slows the corp down for you.
Aside from that, mulliganing for economy is what I do and run like mad in the early game before things lock up. Stealing an NAPD out of HQ is a godsend if that means you can bounce HQ ICE and siphon, or bounce RnD ICE and install medium and go to town.
EDIT: For anyone else who’s interested in Medium in Leela, I’m not decided on it yet. It really hurts against EtF glacier which feels like my worst matchup right now because they can purge and just make it ridiculously expensive to build up again. Being able to sit back, click Kati and install interfaces would be better in that situation. Medium is definitely more fun, though, and turns early success into victory easier.
I’ve done that a few times. I feel like Leela is the Criminal best designed towards that playstyle, or the more conservative running with a Faerie option. Not that it’ll happen every time, but if you get some early game luck you can keep their board state falling apart while yours just consists of money and tricks and slide your way into a victory. I feel games like that are like this game of snooker: everything just goes right and you feel like a boss.
Has anyone tried splashing Parasite in Leela? She seems to have a similar playstyle to Gabe, and it worked really well for him. It sort of takes away the benefit of making them pay install costs a ton but at the same time it makes it difficult for them to keep servers iced in the midgame.
I want to say it’s been tried, but what do I know. I think Shutdown is just as fine here. It would help v. Eli and the sort, but then one would need Suckers, too.
I’m not a high skilled player, but I was running 2x Parasite in Leela until recently. Some matchups it was really strong and I think if there was more RP in my meta it’d make a big difference. The combination of Blue Sun and NEH made it not so strong a choice and I ended up cutting the parasites to have influence available for other answers (namely Mimic and more RnD pressure). That and memory was a bit tight in drawn out games.
I’m not sure it’s a bad idea to run them, but they just didn’t feel like they were reliable value. Sometimes you’d nuke an Eli or NEXT Silver or something and you’d be glad you brought them, but most of the time you’d just rather have the money or more efficient breakers.
EDIT: Could you link to an example Gabe build you’re referring to? I was searching NetrunnerDB and couldn’t find any recent ones aside from Timmy’s from world’s, but his only ran 1 parasite so I was wondering if people were having success with Gabe running more than 1.
Thankee. Yeah, using Indexing as the only RnD pressure with Planned Assaults to bring it up… it sounds like a cool idea Might have to take a look at it in Leela.
I’ve tried Indexing, but honestly, Howard Jackson owns that card so hard. With RDI or TME I can just go to town on R&D. With Indexing I have to check that remote first (possibly iced) to make sure it’s not a Jackson.
Also, you have to make at least two succesful runs for it to pay off, which makes HB glacier a worse match up than it already is.
There are times you can just wreck a corp’s boardstate with it, but overall I feel RDI/TME is much more consistent.
I definitely agree there, but I was looking at it from an influence stand point. Even agreeing that Indexing is worse, if you can put your RnD pressure into 1 3 inf card, that saves you the space to run other cards (in this case, Parasite). It’s especially interesting to me since I’m running Medium, not RDI and am thus paying a ton for my RnD pressure package. I like Medium thus far and it was worth cutting the Parasites for, but I hadn’t thought of Indexing and it’ll be at the back of my mind when I look at the influence balance of my deck next time.
What if you look at it the other way? Instead of picking slightly worse R&D pressure for your influence, you save on ice destruction and run Kraken over Parasite. Bounce the unrezzed ice, make them discard the rezzed…certainly not better than Parasite, but could save influence on both Parasite and Datasucker.
Then again, I have no idea what to take out for it and it may very well be far too situational. I haven’t tried the card in ages, and when I did it wasn’t great, but this is Leela, it might do better here.
(Did I really just suggest to try Kraken in a deck? Hmmm)
Just out of curiousity, has anyone tried Kraken in Leela? Searching the thread I’ve seen people mention it as a possibility, but not much about testing with it.
I tried it a couple times, it’s really not that great. Most of the time I didn’t play it because I had something else to do with my clicks (Indexing/TME, Legwork, Siphon…).
I would rather play Crescentus than Kraken… and I would probably not play Crescentus at all tbh.
There was a front page article on Gabe a few months back. I basicly ran that out of Leela for a few games but but the lack of R&D pressure was a big weakness imo. Also without the Gabe ability you need another source of econ.
Might have to take a look at it in Leela.