Predictive LEO (6th @Denver Megacity)

What do you do in a fresh meta after a big rotation? Do you lean hard into super popular asset spam kill deck, or do you score some honest agendas in a faction that seems to be suffering from a lack of agenda options? I chose the latter.

LEO performed well in Beijing and at the Poland Megacity, so I took a variant on that list to Summer Showdown. That tournament was a blast, but I noticed that one of LEO's weaknesses was having a slow start from drawing only ice or only money. If you rely too much on making money from assets and upgrades, the runner only needs to trash them to win. This can be a problem in a deck with a lot of expensive ice.

So my big brained solution was to just drop the second Isaac Liberdade to splash 2 Predictive Planogram in order to have some generic flexible economy. After a bit of testing, I was happy with the results. I think about adding Flyswatter, but I decide against it.

Our local meta was granted a Megacity tournament (for which I make a cursed horse alt art for a door prize!) so I have a clear goal to try to make my mark in this new cardpool.

I expected to see a lot of Sebastião Souza Pessoa: Activist Organizer (which I feel prepared for and successfully deny econ with Bumi 1.0 ETR on archives during a Privileged Access run) and reg Crim and Hoshiko. I ended up facing DeeR's Magdelene list from the Summer Showdown twice and losing both due to the slightly absurd Fermenter recursion engine. I lose another to a cool Odore Hoshiko list with 2 Leeches on the board that makes breaking big ice much easier.

Yeah I should've added a Flyswatter and/or Mavirus. I also made a fair few mistakes, like not icing R&D enough against a The Twinning list. But hindsight is 20/20.

For my runner, I decided to go with Crim since their place in the meta has improved greatly and it's my favorite faction. I tested and tweaked a Barry “Baz” Wong: Tri-Maf Veteran list for about a month without much luck. I want to win, so I take bking's Sable list to use TIME MAGIC! It's a fun deck. Or at least I thought so.

With this Sable deck, my first match in top cut is against the local former world champ Limes. I look at his list and it's full of kill lines. I start sweating. I miss a few triggers because I'm mostly worried about surviving. Later in the match, I land a Deep Dive to bring me to 6 points against his 2. I try to find agendas, but my goal at this point is just to survive. He advances a Clearinghouse to 6 behind a 9 strength Logjam. I install a Malandragem to bypass Logjam and trash the Clearinghouse. I can't breathe yet since he probably has one of his 3 Measured Response in hand. I somehow manage to install a new The Class Act when time is called and win somehow. This was one of the most tense games I've played.

A huge thanks to Lukifer, wigglestick, Grant, and Palo Malo for organizing the tournament! And a thanks to everyone who traveled near and far to make this tournament an exciting one!