Gleaming Bioroids - 13th at EMEA Online

This is the deck I took to 13th place at EMEA this weekend. It's exactly the same list I took to UK Nats, but as I didn't do well there, I didn't bother publishing. I'm glad the runner bans seem to have given it more of a chance to shine.

The same shell was piloted by Whiteblade to a high finish at American Conts, leaving me with less to say than I otherwise would: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/9289b6d5-13dc-4bcb-9374-76c0f222f03d/20-gourmands-14th-american-continentals-2025-

As soon as Elevation came out, LEO immediately grabbed me as an ID. It's a ridiculously powerful ability, in my favourite faction, making it one of the first decks I tried. My early iterations were based around a 9 agenda suite of tempo positive agendas, attempting to mirror my favourite PD archetype, but I didn't get the results with it. Nearly all my games against Crim seemed to suffer from massive agenda flood, and most of the wins still felt very uncomfortable or relying on good luck to get over the line. The problem with doing a PD impression, is that LEO is incentivised to play a lot of slow elements - 3 Mercia, 3 Bumi (a poor early game ice), and of course 3 Bran. We also lost Gatekeeper, one of HBs best ice, making proactive strategies much more difficult. Ultimately, we just can't pump out agendas at the rate PD could, meaning they often build up in HQ, waiting to be picked off.

The biggest breakthrough was going down to 7 agendas, accepting the truth that we simply don't want to see them at all in the early game. As described by Sam in their writeup, the primary objective early on is to fully resolve a Regolith, and ideally stick a Tranquility Home Grid as well, aiming to get lots of value over the long game. Sticking Mercia is also valuable, but not as good if we don't have enough money to rez all the ice.

Views on flex slots - Anoetic and Skunkworks aren't strictly required in an ID that functions as a defensive multiplier, but I've found them really useful for taxing out rich runners, and setting up boardstates where it's literally impossible for the runner to get any meaningful accesses. I've tried many things with the influence, including Tatu-Bolas, Isaac with some advancable ice, Mitra, even Holo Man.

Sprint is optional, but helps get rid of agendas that drift into hand before we're ready for them, and occasionally lets you dig for them as well. Scapenet is another flex slot that I almost included, but decided against, because it does nothing in the early game, where LEO is at it's most fragile.

I prefer the third MIC over playing my boi Ansel. I find it to be a better early game rez, and generally more taxing than Ansel later, apart from the occasional Buzzsaw+support rigs. I like the second Flyswatter to really troll Seb and pick up a lot of incidental value against Fermenters and Leeches, but if you really want that third Drafter, that makes sense too. Predictive Planogram was nice enough, but could be practically anything.

Thanks for a well run tournament, and to all my opponents and my testing group Snarebears. I haven't been playing especially often or especially well this year, so it was really nice to make a cut again and remind myself I can still do it when I put my mind to it. See you all at American Conts, and/or Worlds!