Patel's Waltz (1st Place @ The Yellow King Spring)

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Repartition by Cost
Repartition by Strength
Derived from
Waltzing Pragmatist (1st Place @ Petrie's Winter Series 3)
Inspiration for
Leela OTK
Boxing League Waltz (1st Place @ Petrie's)
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CrimsonWraith 3638

I went undefeated with this deck across three tournaments in the past week, finishing 1st at the 2015 Winter Invitational at Petrie's Family Games in Colorado Springs, CO, 2nd at the 2015 Spring Tournament at Collectormania in Parker, CO and 1st at the 2015 Spring Tournament at The Yellow King in Colorado Springs, CO.

Notable changes from the previous version:

  • Okay, I'll admit it, cutting Dirty Laundry was a huge mistake and it is back in the list, replacing Daily Casts. I made the decision previously to opt for the guaranteed credit gain of Casts over the unreliability of Laundry against glacier decks, but the tempo hit that you take for installing Casts is simply not worth it. Even without Datasuckers, Dirty Laundry is golden in a list with Desperado and Security Testing, don't cut it.
  • I removed both copies of Day Job to fit in The Maker's Eye. With a heavier reliance on several resource economy options, the burst economy that Lucky Find and Day Job once provided for this deck are significantly less necessary, and I found more multi-access options to be much better than more economy. I loved Maker's Eye so much after a few plays with it, that I went ahead and cut the third copy of R&D Interface to fit in a second copy of Maker's Eye. Maker's Eye is much more effective in taking advantage of early game scoring windows where R&D is vulnerable, and its ability to stack with an RDI or two in the late-game against a glacier build and access 4-5 cards in R&D usually closes out the game.
  • With the onset of asset-spamming ETF fast advance builds and RP glacier remaining a force to be reckoned with, I dropped the second copy of Corroder and added two copies of Scrubber. I'll regret this decision as soon as I encounter a Power Shutdown deck, but until that day, this has proven an absolutely fantastic move. The ability to take out assets without a significant tempo hit won me multiple games throughout each tournament.
  • Symmetrical Visage makes its debut, pushing aside a copy of Kati Jones and Sneakdoor Beta to fit in the deck. This card is amazing, but I think everyone knows that by now.
  • At some point a couple weeks ago, every loss I had in the past month was to a meat damage flatline, typically NEH Scorch or Blue Sun Punitive. So... I swallowed my pride and added a 46th card: A second copy of Plascrete Carapace. I don't like it, but it's worked.

Enjoy, thanks for reading!

9 comments
28 Apr 2015 TheRyanBurke

Eye-watering. A thing of beauty. I'm done building Leela decks. Just gonna use yours.

28 Apr 2015 spags

Man, that 2 Siphon been fine for you? How have you been doing v. any damage (see: PE) decks?

Great deck.

28 Apr 2015 Wesu

Where are your datasuckers ? @_@

28 Apr 2015 CrimsonWraith

Thanks for the comments guys.

With the heavier reliance on resources, I'm more prone to dropping tags, and that's made Siphon significantly less beneficial and rather situational. With Leela in this list, I've found Inside Job to be a more vital card than Siphon. In fact, in earlier versions, I was originally running 2 Siphons and 3 Inside Jobs before cutting an Inside Job for other cards.

My wife is one of the only players playing PE at a competitive level locally, and her PE deck murders all my Criminal builds (admittedly, more on the inclusion of Power Shutdown in her deck than the threat or execution of net damage) - fortunately I dodged her in each of the tournaments over the past week.

28 Apr 2015 CrimsonWraith

Datasuckers were cut for Stimhack and Utopia Shard months ago, haven't missed 'em a bit. :)

30 Apr 2015 DarlingSensei

I've played a couple nights where I switched from Andy to Leela. I have real trouble getting good mileage out of her ability. If I run all servers aggressively, which is usually very good in criminal, I lose opportunities for her ability to fire. How would you advise a new Leela player to shape their strategy to maximize the ability?

30 Apr 2015 CrimsonWraith

I traditionally play for the early-game snowball. If I have an R&D Interface and Maker's Eye in my hand, I'll focus on HQ and remotes, leaving the R&D ice unrezzed. If you happen to snatch up an agenda, you can bust R&D wide open and then start clearing everything else off the table. If I have an Account Siphon and Legwork in hand, I'll focus on R&D instead, hoping to steal an agenda and Leela bounce a clear path through HQ.

Keep in mind that, even with every ice on the table rezzed, Leela's ability remains invaluable by being able to bounce cards in servers - particularly advanced ones that you suspect are agendas. By the mid-game, the Corp probably won't have many ice unrezzed, but you should have the majority of your rig up. Your strategy then depends mostly on what the Corp is doing. If you're playing against someone like Blue Sun or Replicating Perfection that has to advance something to score out, you wait until they have something down and advanced, and then you hit the central servers with multi-access cards. Ideally, you hit an agenda and bounce the advanced card in the remote back to their hand. Follow-up with Legwork to really make them hate life.

3 May 2015 SlayerCNV

don't you have a MU problem? how is tipically ur rig? And i fell like archer is a doom for you.

4 May 2015 CrimsonWraith

@SlayerCNV The only MU problem here is that Cortex Lock may kill you because you're not using enough MU with Desperado installed. You're typically using 3 MU at a time: 1x Rex/Passport, 1x Femme/Mimic, and 1x Corroder, with a flex spot for Faerie.

Besides 3 copies of the second-best breaker in the game for dealing with Archer (Sharpshooter being the best), you also have the option of Femme'ing Archer. With the prominence of hard counters in each faction (Faerie, Sharpshooter, D4v1d) and methods of derezzing and/or destruction common in Anarch and Criminal, Archer is almost completely gone from the competitive meta on a whole right now anyway.