Leeeeela iiiiiiiin spaaaaace (2nd at 19-person regional)

paulyg 1318

I've been playing mostly Leela throughout the MWL 3.2 meta and making tweaks to the list here and there. This version is what I landed on for the Manchester regional. It went 4-2 on the day and got me 2nd place.

The shell is the same as most other Leela decks of the era - huge Econ, efficient breakers and corp denial through DoF, "Grant" and Amina. In particular it is pretty similar to the list that @percomis did extremely well with at Euros. Criminal has had the luxury of spare influence recently and I decided it was worth trying to tech a little for the Gagarin match-up and included the Hijacked Router (the Deuces are also good for this). My mentor, Asger, also persuaded me that it was worth dropping a Blueberry Diesel to add the No One Home.

I like to run a lot and so will always take the Datasuckers over Rezekis in this meta and, even though you're on a moderate denial plan, Beth fires most of the time.

R1 was against Keith on Blue Sun. He wasn't able to get his econ going quickly (a feeling I knew all too well from R1 of Euros, and had the joy of experiencing myself later in the day in the final) and the denial plan just let me run where I wanted and take the win.

R2 I played against Craig on Titan. I wasn't fast enough to get my breakers in time to challenge an advanced GFI in a remote and my big dig on R&D saw nothing to let me bounce it back.

In R3 I played Simon on Architects of Tomorrow (can't Leela bounce the ice if it's all rezzed). I was quite worried about this match-up but, unfortunately for Simon, he was quite flooded and I sensed it after getting an agenda from Archives.

I needed to 2-4-1 in R4 to have a chance at the cut and luckily my opponent Robert was up for that. Unluckily for me I was playing against Bio-Ethics Gagarin, a deck that I had failed to beat even once when testing with @tolaasin. However, I had played the match-up enough that I knew what I needed to do and I was more patient than my instincts told me to be, building up econ to make safe runs. I got Sec Testing early on which was a real help and once Hijacked Router and No One Home came down I felt fairly confident. Robert had to resort to trying to score out (never a fun time, as I know from playing the deck) and I was able to wrap up the game.

The first round of the cut was against Simon and he chose to play his AOT deck again. This time things were a little tougher as he got a bunch of ice rezzed on every server and, though I had a good econ start, my money was starting to dwindle a bit as I tried to make the best value runs and keep my Crowdfundings going. The problem for Simon was that he didn't have a safe remote to score in, or enough money to threaten the punitive (the denial plan was in full swing) and the game ended as a timed win to me.

In the second round of the cut I corped, and beat Phil's Leela with my Blue Sun. That put me in the grand final where I faced Phil again. This time Blue Sun misfired and game 2 was against his Titan. Once again I found myself outpaced by the financial menace and Phil won a very well-deserver regional championship!

Thanks must go to @tugtetgut for gently moving me off Earthrise and onto event-based draw as well as his ongoing mentoring, to @tolaasin for some much-need Gagarin practice as well as deck building chat and encouragement, and to all my opponents for some fun games!

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