When I brought this deck to the Vancouver Megacities, I wasn't confident in anything about it. I wasn't confident if I should be trying to score in what I've been told is a kill/rush meta. I wasn't confident about many of my deckbuilding choices (2 or 3 Mercia? 2 or 3 Seamless? 8 or 9 agendas? The 1x Týr? The 15th inf?). I've only netdecked before, so there's definitely improvements that can be made to the list. But I ended up bringing the deck unchanged because I've had a lot of reps with it, I have a decent grasp of its game plan, and most of all, I just think it's fun. And in defiance of the Corp Doomerism that can sometimes settle in, I valued a Corp deck that I still found fun to jam, regardless of the matchup.

Sticking with a deck that sparked joy paid off: it went 3-1 in Swiss and 1-2 in the Top Cut, i.e. better than I could have ever imagined. My runner (DeeR's Magdalene with one change) probably did more heavy lifting, but I was so proud that my pet deck landed wins against players of the caliber of Hams (Esa), Aruzan (Ari), and Santa (Seb). And even in my two losses to Paillu in the cut, there's a lot I could have done differently now that I better understand the matchup. I'll save my personal enthusiasm about the event for the end, so let me first share why this deck is fun.

How to play this deck

1. Having money is fun. Staying on low credits to trigger Bladderworts is the Bladderworst. Sitting on your credits to threaten Measured Response is Immeasurably boring. I want to get obscene amounts of money, and rez big ice! Empty a Regolith! Camp it behind a Tatu-Bola so even if they trash it you profit. Make them Bankhar through Tatu swaps for Tatu. Greasing a Mitra onto a Tranquility Home Grid! Bait them into trashing an upgrade, and then when they're poor, empty a second Regolith! A lot of the deckbuilding choices are meant to shore up the early game econ, but as long as you mulligan for a Regolith and some econ operations, you can be surprisingly comfortable.

2. Controlling the game is fun. LEO's ID ability gives you some of the best counterplay into the many strong run events in the format right now. Are they running Transfer? Put a Bioroid (ideally Bumi) on HQ. Deep Dive? Built that shaper-U and make R&D tax Propellor/Revolver counters. Seb? ICE up Archives, ideally before the first Praxis but definitely before the second. Criminal run events? Put at least 1 ice on all centrals to make Clean Getaway more taxing, and a -3c sink if you're feeling vindictive. Run out of Bioroids? Mitra back a Bumi. This LEO can generate board states that dishearten the runner into outright discarding those strong run events, giving up hope on landing them... Or they burn through their resources in desperate plays, and then you win the long war of attrition. In some matchups, the priority is to figure out how the runner wants to win, and just say No. But if they're not playing haymaker events, and equally prepared for a long game with Twinning, Companions, Cezve, and infinite economy? That brings me to step 3.

3. Scoring points is fun. Get to game point ASAP. People think LEO is a slow glaciery deck. Which is true. But the LEO ability can often mean a 2-3 ICE remote server is already impenetrable. Bankhar only works on one run, as does Boomerang. Botulus can get swapped/purged/Bumi-ed/taxed out. Then Manegarm usually ETRs even if they manage to get through all your ICE. And if they manage to get through all of that, they're probably bankrupt now, so jam again! Getting to game point is so important, I usually pre-advance agendas in the remote, showing my hand so I can save Seamless for the NA threat in the late game. It's fun trying to predict what tools and econ the runner can assemble in clicks 1+2 before running. Sometimes they surprise you, but sometimes you're spot-on and it feels great. (In one game, I even scored an ADT to push an Offworld, cooking it in the remote for 2 whole turns while the runner tried and failed to contest it.)

4. Risks are fun. Hey if the game is totally locked, that's not fun either. Sometimes you have to make some bluffs on the remote, thinking that the runner will respect some of the beefiest ICE in the format. Then take the risk and pray that R&D holds! Your odds are good with only 8 in 49 agendas. But if the remote is impenetrable, it's only natural that centrals are where you lose the game. I don't think I'm giving away too much of the counterplay strategy considering how I lost 5 points to a Finality on stream :P. (And even then I still had outs: with 2 Botuluses accounted for, Code Gates on the innermost would have kept me safe until the Ashen Epilogue.) This is why it's important to keep jamming, even if they're just pointless upgrades. Any turn you can bait your opponent to run the remote is one turn they're probably not digging on centrals. In an ideal world, you can stop putting ICE on HQ and put it all on R&D, since anything you draw you'll immediately push. But getting R&D locked is a serious risk -- hence the 1x Scapenet to shut down the Twinning if it whiffs. (The Scapenet never mattered at the event, which means I should probably be playing 0 or 2 xD. Another reason this deck is fun: you get to learn the text on new cards!)

There's more subtleties about ICE placement and tech cards and clicking through bioroids that I'm honestly still discovering. But overall, this deck has been a blast because it reminds me of my first goes of System Gateway when I fell in love with this incredible game: scoring to 7 in an economic game of breakers vs. ICE and a psychological game of where to apply pressure and where to bluff.

(Though sometimes it's also fun to cackle like a supervillain at the board state you've concocted:

Personal Thoughts

I'm still processing what happened. The whole weekend feels surreal. This was only my third competitive standard event, so all I really wanted to do was get some more in-person experience and see how my LEO deck fared in the current meta. My only goals were to play some fun games and meet more of the amazing Netrunner community, which I knew would happen guaranteed. (Seriously y'all are so unbelievably nice! I couldn't believe it at my first meet up, at my first event, and still now.) I'm glad I didn't come in with any expectations because (1) it probably helped my play to stay more relaxed than at my previous events, and (2) the event exceeded everything I could have possibly imagined in my wildest dreams. I had a stray hope I could get the top HB mug, being one of the few players remaining committed to the purple faction, and ended up snagging a win in the final round of swiss to qualify to a top cut for my very first time! I went to day 2 in disbelief that I was still playing Netrunner, and the grateful, exhilarating feeling of "Wait, I get to play more games?!" continued for the rest of that incredible day. And it was extra special to do so well on my home soil.

Shout-outs to all my wonderful opponents for the fun games over the weekend, my siblings for coming out to spectate my slightly incomprehensible maneuverings of cardboard, and the organizers for putting together a spectacular event. No one can learn Netrunner in a vacuum, so I wanted to give a special thanks to the opponents who've generously and patiently let me sharpen my skills against them: the NYC folks cheering me on from across the coast, my new Vancouver friends, my testing partners in SCRUBS, and my other regular training buddies (imyxh, Squeeeeeege, and the one and only Diogenes).