The Endless Waltz (3rd Place @ The Wizard's Chest)

CrimsonWraith 3643

I played Logos Leela when the identity first came out and was quite disappointed. It flopped and I did quite poorly with it, though that probably has more to do with my playstyle as a Runner than any flaws with the deck or identity itself. (A word on my playstyle - Iain Sterling is the only Runner in the game that I have a losing record with - patience is not my strongest virtue in Netrunner.)

Early last week, a rather aggressive Desperado/Security Testing Leela deck tore apart my Cerebral Imaging deck in a way that Andromeda simply is not capable of pulling off. I was stunned, because I hadn't seen anything like this out of Leela before... She's been relatively ignored locally, we're five weeks into league play and she hasn't been played once at my FLGS. I became excited at the prospect of building a similar deck, and started digging around.

This list and its title were inspired from an excellent article on Leela by Cerberus. I started deckbuilding with the UK National Champ's take on Leela, alongside similar aggressive Leela lists by spags and PeekaySK - ultimately coming up with this list after adjusting for my own preferences.

I started with my Criminal standard of 3 Account Siphons and 2 Inside Jobs, but quickly realized that swapping the third copy of one for the other was the right call for this Leela deck. I tried a build without Femme, but ended up adding it back in.

I went 8-0 when I grabbed a few of the better local players and tested against some of their best Corp decks. Quite pleased with the results, I sleeved it and took it to Store Champs last week. I ended up going 4-1 in the 22-player Store Championship with it, my only loss being in the final round to RP Glacier, but a timed win dropped me to third place overall. I actually ran 3x Earthrise Hotel and 2x Special Order in the tournament, but I think I prefer the third copy of Special Order instead at the moment.

I'm still relatively inexperienced with the deck, but it has ripped through every rush deck and AstroBiotics variant that I have faced. I've now amassed a 15-2 record with it, both of my losses to RP Glacier decks. The glacier match-up is problematic, but I'm playtesting some solutions and will be back with updates (or a new deck list) if they prove successful.

In the meantime, if NEH AstroBiotics is ruling your meta, give the aggressive Desperado Leela decks a shot - they are absolutely the best counter available, in my opinion. =)

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