Leela's Day Off (LA Regional 3rd place)

This deck went 4/5 in Swiss and 0-2 in the cut, while my NEH kill deck (which was less original, I just took: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/34773/fiery-inferno-pittsburgh-regionals-1st-place) went 3/5 in Swiss and 2-0 in the cut, good for 3rd place at the LA Regional. A similar version of this deck also went 4/5 in Swiss at the NorCal regional, however there my Palana corp deck only went 2/5 which was not good enough to get into the cut there.

I've tried out Leela with Gang Sign, and with consoles other than Desperado, and I've never been happy with it at all. This deck started off as Dave Hoyland's "Endless Waltz' deck, but I added new cards like Mongoose and Political Operative, and teched against the horrible Industrial Genomics matchup with Employee Strike and John Masanori. With only a single plascrete in a 46 card deck, I was not well suited to the dominant corp of the day, NEH kill, which ended up being my downfall in Swiss. After the tourney, Timmy Wong suggested replacing plascrete with 2x Crash Space and going down to 45 cards, so you may want to try that. You may want to take out the 2 Masanoris and 1 or 2 of the Employee Strikes if you're not worried about IG, however I find Strike to be great against many other corp decks too.

Aside from making top 4 in the regionals, the things that excited me the most about this deck were: 1) Actually beating IG! 2) Being the only non-Anarch in the top 8.

Tourney report:

1. NEH.
   Early in the game I legworked, hit a snare which took out the plascrete in my hand, and also showed me that he had 24/7 News. I knew my death was coming, and wasn't able to score 7 points in time to prevent it. 1-1.
2. Argus. I'm not sure my opponent had much experience against Leela, because she scored out an no-counter Atlas that let me bounce her only ICE on HQ, which allowed me to Siphon a full 5 credits from her. I'll give you 2 points in exchange for a 15 credit swing any day! After that I employee striked so that I could steal her agendas without taking damage, and the match went pretty well. 1-1.
3. Palana Foods. I was facing Raphael, one of the most talented players from my local playgroup, who had a Store Champ win under his belt, but I was able to grab a Nisei from HQ (a bit lucky) and bounced enough ice that none of his servers were too intimidating. 2-1.
4. Industrial Genomics. I was facing Kyle, the winner of the Portland regionals, with the deck I had put in Employee Strike and John Masanori for - IG! I had a starting hand of 2x Employee Strike, 2x Desperado, and 1x Masanori, which was just perfect. I trashed all of his assets, using Desperado, Sec Testing, and Dirty Laundries to give me enough economy. I also pulled agendas most of the time I hit a central, which was definitely lucky, and managed to score 7 points with plenty of time to go. I'd like to think I would've at least gotten a timed win if I hadn't gotten so lucky with my accesses, as he was going to have a very hard time killing me with Desperado/Strike/John Masanori allowing me to keep up with his asset spam. 3-1.
5. Building a Better World I was surprised to see BABW, but my opponent was 5-3 on the day, and amassed a lot of money with 3x Beanstalk Royalties early. I don't remember much about this matchup, but I think he drew a Scorched but never had a full kill combo of Sea Source-Scorched-Scorched. 4-1.

Top 8.

1. After 2 wins with my NEH kill deck, I faced off against Alan, the eventual regional winner. He scored 2 Breaking News before I found my Plascrete, causing me to attempt to siphon to get him to 0 credits and take me out of kill range. Unfortunately he rezzed a wraparound, and I didn't have a corroder, leaving him with 3 credits to 24/7, traffic accident, and scorched earth me.

2. This time I faced Jason, the eventual second placer finisher. He was also playing NEH kill, but a different build with big ice like Tollbooth and Little Engine. He made an insane amount of money early and install-advanced a breaking news behind both of those big ice. I installed sneakdoor and hit HQ 3 times, but did not hit the 1 agenda he had in hand, so I wasn't able to bounce the breaking news with Leela. He killed me the next turn!

All in all, I had a great time, and I would recommend Leela to anyone who is bored of playing Whizzard.