Illogical Leela (Regional Winner, Liverpool, UK, 2-1)

This is the Leela deck I took to the Liverpool, UK regional on Saturday, going 2-1 on the day. Gagarin seemed to be the deck to beat, and Leela is really strong at the moment in other matchups, so @seamus and I chatted at length about ways to strengthen the Gagarin matchup, and played out a few games to test, with some extra input from @paulyg and @tugtetgut. In the end, we went for added drip with 2 Rezeki, and a spicy Hijacked Router (drawing an annoyed glance from @nemamiah along the way), and dropped the Logic Bombs and Fisks, since giving Gagarin more cards to install seems generally unwise. We also made a last minute change dropping Blueberry Diesel for Embezzle, which can buy a little time. While I do think that these changes help, as I mentioned in my corp writeup, I think the path of the game is still very much decided in the first few turns, and with your opening hand, as Leela, you either die quickly, or strangle Gagarin slowly over 45 minutes.

Anyway, this is how the deck played out.

Round 1: Bye

Round 2 Win v John Buston’s Gagarin, I had the better draw and drip, and John couldn’t find enough economy cards to get the upper hand, eventually conceding after it was clear that he had no out.

Round 3 Win v Tom Balmer’s Asa. Tom scored a Vitruvius quickly before I could challenge, I got some drip going, but then Tom went slightly too poor in scoring a Remote Enforcement that he couldn’t defend R&D, allowing me to dig, see an agenda, bounce the HQ ice and Doof him to 0 credits. I built up enough Turning Wheel tokens while he was stabilizing to allow a 7 card dig in R&D, clicking through Fairchild 3.0, and seeing the agendas I needed for the win.

Round 4 ID with @seamus.

Cut – Final Game 1: Loss to @seamus’s Blue Sun Ryper variant – a deck he and I had tweaked together the day before, and which I’d audibled off at the last moment. With no little irony, @seamus took me to the cleaners, I couldn’t find enough economy, and OAI’d HQ ice for which I had no breaker stopped any kind of Leela cascade. Thankfully, though, I killed him dead in the second game 😊.

Thanks to all my opponents for being excellent, and to Simon for organising a great tournament.