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

How do people feel about DDoS in Leela? I feel that it might be pretty decent, especially with a Centrals Only plan like the deck directly above. Could really turn on Quest Completed or IJ on remotes. Influence is tough, though.

1 Like

Welcome to Stimhack :smile:

The Quest Completed is definitely strong against RP, but do you find it’s a dead card against NEH and HB fast advance?

Also wondering if you think pure centrals is optimal. It’s definitely cool to have influence for 3x RDI, but it doesn’t seem too expensive to play 1x Mimic (maybe instead of QT) and a Rex to have at least some capability to get into a remote.

My worry would be that they can put annoying non-agenda things like Adonis/Eve/SanSan in and you would waste Inside Jobs killing them.

It plays into the ‘power turn’ concept of Leela which I like, but the 3 influence and fact that you can’t really recur it seems like you have to make big sacrifices in other areas to fit it.

1 Like

Just got Universe, and I’m looking at Fisk. This is the first good Criminal draw without influence. 3x in Leela or 2x? I’m thinking 3 because I want it when I can press my advantage, but not sure. Thoughts?

1 Like

Three may be right at some point, but start with two. It’s a very powerful card, especially in Leela, but it’s also very hard to play effectively. It can backfire spectacularly. Something something Spiderman quote

6 Likes

I’ve been playing with this faust drug dealer crim deck recently and I really think it’s strongest out of leela. What do u guys think?not sure if it’s the correct place to post Couldn’t find an active leela thread,

Leela - Fausting for Drug Dealers

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (18)
3x Account Siphon
3x Dirty Laundry
1x Emergency Shutdown
3x Fisk Investment Seminar
1x Inside Job
1x Levy AR Lab Access •••
3x Special Order
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (9)
2x Clone Chip ••••
3x Desperado
1x HQ Interface
1x Plascrete Carapace
2x R&D Interface ••••

Resource (8)
3x Drug Dealer
2x Same Old Thing
3x Security Testing

Icebreaker (7)
1x Breach
1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
1x Corroder ••
3x Faerie
1x Faust ••

Program (3)
2x Crescentus
1x Sneakdoor Beta

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Universe of Tomorrow

Breakers: Faust breaks everything but Turin and Swordsman. 3 x Faerie and a cerb rex deal with those. Fuel the Faust with your drug dealers and Fisk Investment for power turns.

Econ: Econ runs lite. Security testing and desperado will make you money, fausting through to sec test will allow you to break even with the hungry drug dealers. Leela ability enables either a slow down in the game or windows for bounce and siphon plays.

Econ Denial: Emergency shutdown/ crescentus (and clone chip) and of course account siphon can really impact the corps money, and there ability to rez big ice without punishing them

Multi Access: RnD is where you want to be. bouncing HQ ice ready for a siphon play.

Flex Slots Breach - just so i dont waste a clone chip on getting my corroder out of the bin

Sneakdoor + HQI - I really like sneakdoor and it seemed like if i run sneakdoow i should run HQI over legwork. Not sure about this, most of the time sneakdoor and HQI are faust food. Its a good backup plan which i almost never need.

The usual problems: so a glacier HB deck with caprice is this decks worst nightmare. trashing all the assets is very hard if you dont land early siphons and there ice is big and scary enough to mean faust cant really get into a remote server twice. Next can be a pain without parasite.

All feedback is very welcome here :smiley: - went 3/5 in a GNK in oxford in the UK. both were scorch earth kills. although one of them was a turn one siphon and float the tags vs HB cus HB doesnt run scorch right? WRONG! sometimes they do, and they kill you turn 2 haha.

The shell is nice, but I’d cut the FISes for good cards and Clone Chips for second Corroder over the Breach and a Mimic + luxury. I’m not sure what the Clone Chips are doing, and additional copies of breakers is better than one copy of breakers and Clone Chips. As for the Mimic, well, 3 cards is a steep price to pay to break Architect.

It could be a bit risky to only run 1 Plascrete, even with the Dealers. The extra Plascrete allows you to dabble into Tag Me sooner against killy decks. As you’ve mentioned, trashing assets and generally econ looks pretty light, so you could try and jam in a few Bank Jobs.

4 Likes

Nice to see Leela thread coming up again,I really like her and I played with her for about a month.Unfortunately I generally don’t like Drug Dealer and Faust idea,maybe I was wrong,but I don’t think Faust is as good in Criminal as in other factions.Also,additional breakers are always better than Clone Chip in Criminal,and Breach is overkill.And Mimic,also.

Here is the deck from someone who just can’t get good use of Faust and Drug Dealer.

Desperado Leela

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (18)
3x Account Siphon
3x Dirty Laundry
1x Emergency Shutdown
2x Fisk Investment Seminar
1x Inside Job
1x Drive By
2x Special Order
3x Sure Gamble
1x Lucky Find ••
1x Stimhack •

Hardware (8)
3x Desperado
2x HQ Interface
1x Plascrete Carapace
2x R&D Interface ••••

Resource (9)
3x Bank Job
1x Same Old Thing
2x Kati Jones
2x Gang Sign
1x Hades Shard •

Icebreaker (9)
1x Mimic •
1x Passport
1x Femme Fatale
2x Corroder ••••
3x Faerie
1x Zu.13 Key Master ••

Program (1)
1x Sneakdoor Beta

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Universe of Tomorrow

But glacier is la worst,especially Foodcoat,shit.

I’ve been working on a build that might, just maybe, be able to help out with people’s glacier problems. I’m also arrogant enough to think that it’s a new sort of crim archetype, in that it plans to control both the early- and late-game.

Duck and Weave - New Crim Control?

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (20)
3x Account Siphon
1x Emergency Shutdown
1x Employee Strike •
2x Fisk Investment Seminar
2x Inside Job
1x Legwork
2x Networking
3x Special Order
3x Sure Gamble
2x Vamp ••••

Hardware (5)
3x Desperado
1x HQ Interface
1x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (11)
2x Bank Job
2x Daily Casts
2x Film Critic ••
2x Gang Sign
2x Kati Jones
1x Symmetrical Visage

Icebreaker (8)
1x Breach
1x Corroder ••
3x Faerie
1x Mimic •
1x Passport
1x ZU.13 Key Master ••

Program (2)
1x Sneakdoor Beta
1x Medium •••

15 influence spent (max 15)
46 cards (min 45)

Basic strategy is as follows:

  1. Play your standard criminal early game. Force rezzes on centrals (not on scoring remote if you can avoid it), Siphon/Shutdown/bounce with Leela to create openings, exploit them with Sneakdoor/Legwork/just running everywhere, you know the drill. Go TagMe if you want (so long as you’re sure you won’t die). Against NBN FA or a corp whose economy can’t handle an aggressive runner with Siphon, the game won’t go beyond this stage.
  2. Once the corp starts to get over your early pressure and ICE up (HB for example will inevitably get to this stage, RP will probably manage it too, and Blue Sun can get there worryingly quick with a lucky Oversight), you need to turtle hard. Use Networking to cheaply clear tags that you may have accumulated from Siphoning, then start drawing up and getting resources on the board. The main things you’re looking for are Kati to make a ton of cash and Gang Signs to (hopefully) slow down the corp’s scoring plans.
  3. When they go to score, if you have enough cash Vamp them to 0 and steal their agenda. Otherwise, assuming they haven’t managed to get to match point, let them score and hope to steal on Gang Sign to open up an opportunity with Leela’s ability. Repeat whenever they next try to score. If you get bored of waiting and the rezzed ICE on centrals isn’t too scary, Vamp them anyway and Medium dig/Legwork.

That’s the basic idea. Main problems are a wised-up corp putting protective upgrades on HQ, and never-advance plays which you can’t be sure are agendas. Vamping the corp to 0 is almost always good even if they’re bluffing you though. If you Vamp click 1, run scoring remote click 2 and find a Jackson or w/e, spend the rest of your turn killing asset economy if there is any, and running RnD, and you should come out ok.

I’ve gotta run now (minor pun not intended), but I’m interested to hear what people think.

yep as always i agree with everything your saying @Xenasis. The clone chips where to threaten cracentus as faust will almost always be able to break the ice then it makes them think twice about rezzing that toolbooth. But in retrospect its just not good enough to warrant the 2 clones.

So the mimic thing haha, yes so i found myself being very picky with my runs, you only really get 1 or 2 good runs out of faust most of the time and because the econ was so light i just never install mimic. the 3 faerie were always doing the job and the clone chips meant i could get them back. this was actually one of the most successful parts of the deck, but yet again i trust in your opinion and with more money in the deck mimic becomes much more viable.

And as for death protection, as im not really good enough to really appreciate the scorch threat (and thats how i lost my games) im going to go OTT on the scorch protection with 2 placretes and a utopia.

Thanks for the input, new list here:

Leela - Fausting for Drug Dealers

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (15)
3x Account Siphon
3x Dirty Laundry
2x Emergency Shutdown
1x Levy AR Lab Access •••
3x Special Order
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (8)
3x Desperado
1x HQ Interface
2x Plascrete Carapace
2x R&D Interface ••••

Resource (12)
2x Bank Job
3x Drug Dealer
1x John Masanori
2x Same Old Thing
3x Security Testing
1x Utopia Shard •

Icebreaker (9)
1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
2x Corroder ••••
3x Faerie
1x Faust ••
1x Mimic •
1x Passport

Program (1)
1x Sneakdoor Beta

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Old Hollywood

Lack of card draw is going to mean you often don’t have the right tool at the right time, since your deck by design has many situational card slots. That’s my primary concern looking at it, but I also worry that the better strategy might be to put more tools into keeping the Corp in the early phase where Criminal is naturally strong. Vamp is also a tough influence spend because it’s worthless unless you’re already in a great position. Maybe more derez effects like Crescentus could wage economic war for you?

1 Like

Yeah I wouldn’t include Vamp in this kind of deck for that reason. If you have any kind of credit advantage then ideally you want to be pressuring the win, not stopping the corp from winning. Or that’s how I see it out of my own Leela build.

1 Like

@linuxmaier @shanodin

A large part of my reasoning for building this deck is that the strategies you’re suggesting just don’t seem to work consistently enough against the strongest glacier archetypes that exist right now (RP and Caprice HB).

You mention that if I have a lot of money I should be keeping up the pressure instead of playing the waiting game, but if I spend clicks making pressuring runs when the corp’s economy is already set up, then I don’t get to have a lot of money, because I have less clicks to make it and I have to spend it to break/trash stuff. And on top of that, credit advantage + a normal criminal strategy is not enough against glacier these days. Caprice and Project Nisei makes it irrelevant how much money I have, and Ash requires me to have loads more money than the corp. To Vamp successfully I just need to have a slight edge on them.

1 Like

How does that fit into your flow? You mentioned that early, you’re running around and forcing rezzes and the like, ideally landing a few Siphons. That’s pretty click-intensive; do you have enough time during that phase to get the cards needed for your late game economy? Or are you really only running on the first turn or two before turtling against decks like RP and HB?

I guess my concern is that you’re trying to get the best of both late-game crim and early game crim, but ending up a Jack of All Trades. Lack of draw makes me fear that you’d not reliably see Medium and Legwork against NEH, and not see your economy fast enough against glacier. I’ve had success with Crim decks that work in both phases, but trying to bridge both has always felt like too rickety a structure for me. That said, I haven’t given your deck a try yet, so maybe I should before pontificating more about it.

1 Like

Fair points - I’ll admit that this deck is an early attempt to apply untested theory. I’ve not got to play it much yet. It has worked well in the few games I’ve played so far, but you’re right that there could be consistency issues. To address your play style questions: I tend to run aggressively for a good 5-6 turns at the start of the game. The thing I find different about this deck compared to most other runners I’ve played is that the transition to late-game mode is like flicking a switch. You’re right that you don’t have time to set up your long term econ in the early game, but you make up for that by dedicating the entirety of your mid game to doing so. That’s where the (admittedly experimental) inclusion of Networking comes in - in theory it allows you to make that transition smoothly even if you’ve had to float tags to keep up your early game pressure.

1 year later, RESURECTION!

5 Likes