Leela Patel and the pragmatic Keyhole

omegalife2002 3033

I was thinking about how to best use Leela's ability and I suddenly thought, "Man, if NEH scores an Astro, and I have Logos on the board, I can bounce their R&D ice, grab Keyhole and wreck their deck!". So I started putting it all together from there.

I threw in a Hades Shard to prevent an Jackson issues, Index for when the Corp does get Jackson to throw a bunch of Agendas back into R&D. Emergency Shutdown is just SO perfect for Leela. I'm also giving Unscheduled Maintenance a try since only having 1 piece of ice can really hurt the corp.

On the program side I decided to keep is simple and straightforward. I threw in the Sneakdoor to punish HQ (plus the HQ Interface). Nothing fancy here really except the Keyhole of course

There are more "1 of's" than I usually like to run, but with Logo's out, I can grab those situational cards a lot easier.

I haven't had a chance to run this against Blue Sun (which might be troublesome, but I think ES and UM will help a lot) but against NBN, this just wrecks. :)

19 comments
18 Nov 2014 siahofmars

my deck has a similar idea, and I was using hades for the Jackson thing but I found I didn't need it most of the time when I keyhole I ended up zapping jacksons into archives that way. I just kept HQ pressure until they had to do something about it then opened up r&d for keyhole for me. Been winning a lot with it. a problem I ran into was NEXT ice in HB it gets really expensive, so I decided to go with parasites n data suckers in my version instead. awesome job though love your deck.

heres mine : www.netrunnerdb.com

18 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

@siahofmars That's funny, right after I made this deck, I threw together a quick and dirty Parasite/Datasucker ice melt version! I like the look of yours too. Good thought on the Deja Vu and SOT. I usually hate running ice melt outside of Shaper and their recursion, but this is probably the best ID to do it with.

18 Nov 2014 skydivingninja

How's Unscheduled Maintenance working out? I thought about it but deck space is super tight.

18 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

@skydivingninja Space is tight, and I've thought about cutting it but it can really exacerbate the issue that the corp is having. If they do manage to get an agenda scored (or play their own Current), you can simply SOT the UM and keep the pressure on. It doesn't seem like much, but when the corp gets locked down to a single ice, it can really hurt. Now, it doesn't always help, but it can be clutch.

19 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

Just played another 4 games with this deck tonight and it's certain a force to be reckoned with. I only lost one game and that was because of a Philotic / Ronin PE shell game deck.

The great thing about this deck is with Logos out fast enough, you can get exactly the answer you need when they score and exploit their immediate weaknesses. I popped Keyhole a couple times after bouncing the R&D ice. Another game I bounced Archives ice, grabbed Sneakdoor and slammed into HQ for the win.

I haven't played a Criminal deck this fun or interesting in a long time! I'm really excited by this deck. :)

19 Nov 2014 Dydra

I really like the idea. I also thought how great Leela's ability combos with Logos, but I never had the time to put anything together :(

19 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

@Dydra Thanks! I'm thinking about possibly ditching the Lawyer Up and increasing Hostage up to 3 (also lowering Kati and Li down to singles). Then up AS and Plascrete each by 1. I think that might run a little smoother. Everything else has been clicking along great. Indexing paired with Keyhole and SOT has been amazing. :)

20 Nov 2014 hi_impact

I'm glad you posted this, I've been enjoying Leela on the awesome list posted by the Italian netrunner from October. It plays a like Ken, very run heavy, but simple in idea. Click up econ, make precise runs with Legwork/Indexing, and use her ability to open up more windows to do those big events again.

Leela can do a lot. She's fun and I'm glad to see lists like this.

20 Nov 2014 cranked

How is the Security Testing working out for you? Seems like it loses a lot of value without Desperado and Datasucker backing it up.

20 Nov 2014 cranked

How is the Security Testing working out for you? Seems like it loses a lot of value without Desperado and Datasucker backing it up.

20 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

@cranked It is good for a couple reasons. First, it's an econ card with a zero drop. Second, it's a click for 2 credits, which is always nice. Now, you are right about losing some of the extreme efficiency that you get with Desperado/Datasucker, but it is nice to always have around. It helps get from 3 to 5 creds for Sure Gamble nicely, or from 0 to 9 with a Bank Job assist. Admittedly, you could cut it for another econ card, but I do like that this one sticks around for the whole game. I could potentially see using Daily Casts or something, but I like having always around. Plus, there is a fun psychological effect that the Corp hates giving you a remote target for this or Bank Job, but so many corps are playing assets/traps, so you just run with this! :)

21 Nov 2014 McKindling

What I love about Leela is the click compression advantage you can get against the corp, part of the strength behind Jinteki. When I saw Leela I instantly thought she would be killer with Savoire-Faire and Autoscripter so you can play more cards than the corp for less clicks than the corp can, but I have to admit, I'm not terribly good at building decks and I haven't found a way to do it yet. I'm hoping @omegalife2002 or someone else can take the idea and run with it and share the results. I was thinking lots of cheap programs like crescentus, faerie, and grappling hook would provide cheap installs that give extra clicks and annoy the hell out of the corp, making their rez seem pointless, but alas my biggest error in deck making is keeping it to 45 cards.

Thanks for sharing your idea!

24 Nov 2014 zaknafean

Played this in 4 rounds of Swiss today, as is. I am far from a great player, but it went surprisingly well for a pure netdeck->play with no tests situation.

Round 1 I lost against a guy who ran a version of the Worlds winning RP deck. 7 to 5. Keyhole was a real winner here, but some unlucky net damage killed my Hades Shard, and I was unable to close after that.

Round 2 I won against Blue Sun (off the grid flavor). I got in the swing of her here, and the Logos as killer when he scored a couple early hostiles. I was surgical in my strikes, and was able to take unrezzed ice off the right servers at the right times.

Round 3 was versus core weyland. Again Leela came through, and was able to set up some nice combos of emergency shutdown and captures. My economy was strong due to the bank jobs on thin servers. People were just not ready for that.

Round 4 I got cocky against an NBN making news tag storm deck. They scored a breaking news round 4 that I could have stolen through a data raven, killing a 12 credit kati. Then I went and got myself scorched turn 5. On an exhibition rematch, I was way too unfocused. I won but it was sloppy, tag me, with everything on the board rezzed. I stole 3 agendas from archives, and couldn't bounce a single thing back!

Overall I like the deck quite a bit. It was REALLY fun to pay, especially with logos out. The economy was more robust than I thought, hadn't really played bank job in a long while, and it came in handy in 3 of the matches 1 of plascrete was enough mostly. Lawyer up proved its worth. I'm not 100% set on the breakers, particularly Zu, but not sure what to replace it with at the moment. All in all, I look forward to tweaking this build in the future.

24 Nov 2014 Danwarr

Thank you so much for this deck list. After playing my own spin of this, Leela is now far and away by favorite Runner to play with. The feeling you get when you bounce ICE followed by absolutely punishing the Corp is amazing. I would love to see this get some tournament play somewhere.

25 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

I'm glad to hear everybody is enjoying the deck and putting their own spin on it. I've even made some adjustments and testing has gone really well. This deck has made me love playing Criminal again, something I never thought would happen! :P

Also, give it time, I promise you will see a solid Leela deck win a tournament before too long.

28 Nov 2014 Hongkong Koma

A fine deck. Tried it yesterday against a Blue Sun deck twice and it was an absolute blast to play. Great job, @omegalife2002!

28 Nov 2014 omegalife2002

@HongKong Koma Thanks! Yeah, I finally got to run this against Blue Sun (twice even) and it just wrecked face! I feel like this is the first time in awhile that when you show the corp your ID, they go "Oh crap", which is nice! :)

6 Dec 2014 casteffens

@omegalife2002 What is your latest/favorite incarnation of this deck idea right now or you still using the same deck posted above?

8 Dec 2014 omegalife2002

@casteffens Here is the current version I am running, along with some thoughts about the changes I made and why: netrunnerdb.com