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

Decklists
143

What I have had mixed success with in Leela, is a chakana, because I was feeling like no matter what R&D multiaccess I was packing, any turn that had free runs on R&D that didn’t produce an agenda was a major hit, because oftentimes, I don’t blow the server open more than once per game. With Chakana (I also play 1-2 SMC), the hope is that I CAN make that turn meaningful, even if its not snowballing me more points. I’m playing around with Keyhole right now, which can be unwieldy, and if there is a Jackson on board, since I only have 1 turn, I can be looking at maybe 2 keyhole runs? 1 if I have to go scoop the agenda up.

Anyway, the reason for that kind of strong pressure, is that it attempts to force fast decks to play at my speed, with SMC and inside Job you need 8 ICE on the board if you want to protect yourself from punishment in any server. That’s the goal anyway.

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144

very true in all my experience, as well

145

False:
Savior faire, eden, medium, surge, crescentus may enable you to leverage more.

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147

See, that’s where I disagree. I’ve found RDIs do good work for me. If nothing else, it forces them to spend a great deal of resources protecting R&D, and it’s rare to get open season without a lucky bit of multiaccess… but being able to money up and spend in with a triple-access relatively reliably has let me prevent scoring in super servers or open the corp up to siphon runs. It’s hard for me to knock what’s been quite nice for me.

I mean, yeah, whiffing sucks. But whiffing on HQ sucks, too, and I’d rather keep what I need for R&D lock and not have to worry about the extra memory.

148

I agree, but criminal has alternate avenues to leverage an opening on HQ that aren’t just legwork,and so usually I feel less beholden to land an agenda if I have any of my other tools in hand.

I think I agree with you about your reasoning on RDI, I guess I’ve just found that I get it often enough (generally once per game), but I hadn’t really considered how making them defend R&D further, which chakana doesn’t do, might better further my strategy.

That being said, against a rush/fast FA deck, RDI might still be too slow, and chakana helps create a chokepoint for you to engage HQ. Right now, I have had very good luck with standard speed decks, its been the very slow and very fast that have been hurdles.

149

Took down an 8-player tournament today with Leela, went 3-0. Not going to say it was the toughest set of matches (some of the tougher folks were unable to make it, especially the out-of-towners, though there was still some steel present) – there was a touch of luck involved, but I still really think this deck has legs. It’s a modified version of my last posted list, made to run a bit heavier on econ and be able to sustain itself more effectively.

Street Fighter II: Turbo

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist (All That Remains)

Event (18)

Hardware (8)

Resource (10)

Icebreaker (8)

Program (1)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to All That Remains

Decklist published on NetrunnerDB.

Surprisingly, never actually had Logos fire all night – the one game I saw it I managed to wrap up before they were able to score another agenda.

Will attempt to recount the games, though it’s a terrible report that just hits on where I scored, really.

First game was against ETF. Don’t remember all that much, except that I built up 24 credits on Kati and eventually Legworked into the win. Got a lucky break where I hit a 5/3 in a scoring server that they’d advanced once – hoping to signal an NAPD or something painful to score and then Biotic out the PriReq next turn, rezzing some a Heimdall on R&D. They did manage to score one at one point, but that’s why Emergency Shutdown exists.

Second game was against Blue Sun/Crisium Grid. I started with two Inside Jobs and two Katis in hand. I assume they had Mushins/Off-the-Grid, but I don’t think they ever drew them (at least, I never saw them, though they got the Crisium Grid down early for Siphon/Shutdown protection I could never manage to deal with). They tried to create a scoring server, I Inside Jobbed my way in, bounced the ice on R&D, and scored two 3-pointers in the one turn. Eventually Sneakdoored into HQ for the win.

Third game was against NEXT Design (don’t laugh, it’s a surprisingly solid deck). They got off to a roaring start with regards to ice, I used Inside Job to make them rez more than they wanted to stop me scoring. They did a clever trick with Ash (setting the trace to where I couldn’t score the NAPD in the server… except it was an ABT instead). I managed to hit a pair of agendas in hand with a couple of runs using HQI, and then keep the ice light on R&D for a follow-up run. Turns where you steal more than one agenda are nice – leaving the corp with 8 cards at beginning of turn is painful for them, and makes them make some tough choices. In the end, I had enough money to keep forcing my way in. Won on an RDI dig, but could’ve Legworked to see their whole hand and, as it happens, have won that way. Was even my plan following the RDI dig, but that obviously worked out. Got an early Kati and early Mr. Li, and, well… that helped significantly in getting me to what I needed when I needed it.

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150

Why not using the central suite + keyhole / sneakdoor + HQI + Cres + Clone chip + ES + Kraken, spam centrals and remove the scoring server ?

I’d do this.

151

In practice, its just a lot of moving pieces and being able to threaten opening up a central server for a whole turn when they score (i.e. leaving centrals unrezzed) can be your biggest asset.

152

Centrals would get derezzed, remotes would stay unrezzed since you bypass them or don’t run it (or Quest Complete them, maybe).

And still you would Keyhole the corp so most of their efforts would focus on protecting either Archives / R&D or HQ because of HQI / Siphons. It might work, maybe :slight_smile:

153

Honestly? That plan has too many moving parts for my liking. I do like Keyhole, and am tempted by it, but then I do need Alias to be able to run safely on R&D or Archives. So far, I’ve found indexing to be pretty useful against soft R&Ds and Jinteki, which is where I’d most want Keyhole. And while forcing a shuffle/plowing through ELP could be nice, I appreciate the value of a regular R&D lock too much.

Crescentus is a neat card, and maybe now that I’m down parasite I’ll consider running it – but it’s much less powerful than Shutdown, I think.

The breaker suite I use is based on wanting to be able to get in anywhere – hammering centrals alone sounds great but rarely works out for me, I’d rather present a threat all over (especially because I want to be safe while I force them to rez ice on remote servers which I’ll rarely need to run).

I think one of the mistakes a lot of folks make is going all-in on ice destruction. I might give it something of a shot, myself, but I think that tends to focus too much on a particular kind of plan that isn’t always sustainable. Crescentus and Kraken are both kind of appealing for the combo potential, but I have no idea what I’d cut for them if I wanted the deck to be reliable enough to use.

It’s easy to say “I want all these good cards that work well together” but then you end up with a 60 card deck. What do you cut to make sure those combo pieces remain?

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154

Crescentus is a surprisingly difficult card to play in criminal. First, you tip your hand that you want to crescentus something, where many of your other tools (inlcuding ES) are most powerful because as events, the corp couldn’t prepare against them. Unlike Shaper or anarch, you don’t have any mid-run answers to ICE, making me unlikely to want to play crescentus, then face check, then special order, then run again, where inside job+emergency shutdown might have sufficed.

Keyhole is very hard to use. Maybe if you take 3 and are ready to make a play for R&D asap, but otherwise, don’t plan on getting more than a couple keyhole runs in, and if you have to go through ICE in R&D and then archives as well, and it jams you up at 2 MU (I use all 5 of my memory quite often, between faeries and passport/cerberus).

One thing I always preach is to look at what a card “does”, not its card text. In the case of Leela Patel, you might try to stack derez/destruction with her ID ability, and that’s plenty fine, but what she actually does, is make the corp very insecure until there are multiple rezzed ICE on every server (and I use heavy remote punishment like security testing and bank jobs to make sure that NOT icing servers is a pretty bad idea), and I built my deck with that in mind. The Source and Inside jobs make it very easy to make runs on HQ lucrative, because there is nowhere for them to safely put agendas, even when I am not actively running, they are choking on agendas.

Hades Shard can be a huge asset if corp’s think they are going to get away with popping Jackson Howard after pitching agendas.

pro tip: if you want to play kraken, The Source is a secret MVP if the corp tries to “trick” you into paying the 3 credits

2 Likes
155

Yeah, I have to agree on people misreading Leela’s ability.

She does a lot of things, really, all of which are important, and I think all of which need emphasis in a successful Leela deck.

As you say, she puts a lot of pressure on every server. I don’t use Security Testing or Bank Job (found them too unreliable as econ against the local meta), but even then they have to ice any assets they don’t want me to trash with my Kati-powered economy, and rez things everywhere.

Which means that I can keep the corp pretty money-poor. If they try to FA around me they don’t usually have the resources to handle rezzing all their stuff, and I can get in (possibly nabbing random accesses, definitely making them miserable). If they don’t, I’m still forcing them to rez one server (usually HQ or R&D) in fear of me hitting an agenda and cracking open the OTHER server.

Which means that they have to start playing 4/2s with an IAA to keep themselves safe on my next turn, draining their set-up time and resources somewhat. And then they’ve got to spend time and money reinstalling things that I bounce rather than shoring up their position.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: forcing the corp to deal with click compression is huge. It hurts badly enough as the runner, but they don’t have as many.

It really hits on what makes Criminals successful – turning a bit of bad luck on the corp’s part into a catastrophe. If you steal more than one agenda at a time, they will need to discard down or play everything out again, likely at cost, effectively wasting the turn (which is why I wish Parasite had worked out, to make purging another means of slowing them down). If they spend too much time and money icing up you can gather the resources to punch through anyway.

Now, that’s not to say that she’s unstoppable or that no corp can compensate for her. But her ability is pretty solid, and I fully intend to keep playing with her.

Right now, Andy is the better deck for big competitions, I imagine. But Leela’s going to be here a cycle after Andy leaves, and I think she could be a pretty fun and solid Tier 2 ID for Crim along with Gabe. So I’m going to stick with her and keep trying new things and to iron out my lists, I think.

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156

Totally agreed on security testing and bank jobs. Bank job comes and goes from my deck and I rarely feel the difference, but generally, I feel like glacier decks that only protect centrals, I kind of have to spend the first half of the game doing nothing but tapping my girl Friday Kati Jones, and getting a rig together. Security testing makes them guard archives (though you could play sneakdoor for that and get a couple of accesses in), but otherwise its kind of acceptable losses so I can keep up with balls out decks like NEH

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157

Yeah, and I prefer the Sneakdoor route, myself. Extra routes to HQ are just nice against FA decks, and I feel like the accesses (especially with HQIS) are more powerful for Leela than credits alone would be.

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158

Similar to my issues with keyhole, between all the disposable breakers, 2 MU programs really clutter up the rig. maybe I’ll think about rejiggering to accommodate 6 MU

159

Time fro BoxE to shine?

Still want to make this supplier thing work.

160

This is why I like clone chip so much. I can re-use one of my Faeries, or install over something I’ll want again later and then pull it back once Sneakdoor is done.

I like the idea of Box-E, but I don’t know that Leela’s the right spot for it. I’d rather take Logos (for the synergy – and it is synergy, not just being cute) or Desperado (because you need to finance your continuous accessing somehow). The more MU and handsize is nice, but ultimately adds little that Leela’s desperate for – I’d almost rather toss a MemChip in instead.

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161

I’ve been playing Leela a lot recently, and have taken her to two tournaments (both low 20’s turnout). Where she has gone undefeated. I’m really finding that she is fun to play and her ability gives some really interesting decisions.

I had a game against Blue Sun who was running a lot of 1 point agendas where in the mid game he had no cards on the board after I stole two 1pt agendas.Her ability really can snowball.

This is the current deck list and a bit of a write up. Deck list

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162

Do you think she is really good or are people just unfamiliar with her?

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163

I think people being unfamiliar with her is definitely a key factor. But I think her ability is definitely good as well, because it is often hard to play around.

Those games where the corp just scores a Hostile Takeover or Breaking News early because it is one of the 4 agendas they need is less likely as it causes serious weaknesses. This allows for more chance at stealing them.

If the corp has to consider both scoring windows and the window for Siphon, Indexing etc that scoring an agenda will give Leela, it just makes their job so much more difficult.

In summary, a bit of both… :slight_smile:

6 Likes