Smooth Criminal v 1.4

mechmisfit 41

3 comments
7 Jan 2015 mechmisfit

My latest version of Leela. I wanted to focus on increasing the quality of accesses, allowing her ability to fire more frequently. Testing it this weekend.

7 Jan 2015 falseidol

You've made some cool choices:

Bank Job looks like the right choice for this deck, bearing in mind that its going to cost you 3 clicks for RP, 4 if they have ELP out, (though Doppelganger does alleviate some of the pain of RP). Especially with Bank Job, but maybe in general, have you considered dirty laundry over sure gambles (I finally found the space for both in my deck, but that will not always be the case). I found that once Mr. Li came out, drawing meant I usually had a higher priority than just money, and so the opportunity value of dirty laundry (against RP/ELP, or wanting to keep your momentum up after your ability triggers) outweighs the 1 credit difference that sure gamble has over dirty laundry. I play security testing, mainly because it provides pressure to archives as well as remotes without devoting an additional slot to ancillary pressure, but with bank job and no sec. tests, have you considered Sneakdoor Beta?

I don't know how I feel about Crescentus. Your MU is a preious commodity, and runs the catch-22 of not being helpful against ICE you can't beat--i.e. the cards I am most eager to derez. That is why I opt for emergency shutdowns in my Leela deck, but even those are being used more sparingly as I've tuned the deck to its threats, and have gone down to 2 copies. Sneakdoor provides great support to Leela, often requiring the corp to play at least 2 ICE over archives that they don't want there, a vector of getting into HQ after your ability triggers, and in a perfect world, you're juggling their ICE between archives and HQ, attacking through one while they are trying to shore up the other.

10 influence and 5 cards for R&D access feels like overkill, especially for random accesses. I would at least probably switch to like 2 indexing, 2 RDI? I don't know, its certainly worth exploring, but my deck, much like yours, has avoided the eggs-in-one-basket trap that many players fall into with Leela Patel, and it feels like this might wind up overlapping with that category.

Because of how much Leela relies on opportunism to be successful, I have found Same Old Thing quite useful, and I have a high enough event count that it is rarely a totally dead draw.

DOPPELGANGER! I have loved this little guy out of Leela, its especially great for those accidental/random access scores, that you weren't particularly expecting, to be able to follow up on that punishment.

All in all, seems like a solid first draft.

7 Jan 2015 mechmisfit

Granted Bank Job isn't optimal against RP, but then that's what RP does - forces runners into sub-optimal situations where clicks are taxed to the extreme.

Sneakdoor Beta is a good option, and most likely I'll squeeze it somehow. Trying out Crescentus to see if it works better than shutdown - since the ice is derezzed before any access, giving the option to bounce it if/when an agenda is stolen.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll let you know how it goes.