Leela Patel: the Witch, the Gossip, the Pragmatist

So this is my current Leela deck, an ID I've been playing and publishing decklists for since she was released. I think it's poised really well in the current meta, and it's toughest match-ups are tough match-ups for everybody. I don't know what's going to happen with Sifr, it might be the preeminent deck to beat but I'm still waiting to see how the chips fall (part of me thinks it is signaling a possible errata for parasite, but we'll see). Even if Sifr does become the deck to beat, criminals just got a cripplingly strong piece of NBN tech and it would be a shame not to give Aaron Marrón some love.

A couple new cards (Baba Yaga, Aaron Maron) have really transformed Leela's ability to build around multiple strong strategies and not be so heavily invested in one or the other (money+breakers old school criminal, HQI+gang sign). I've always felt that tempo is the name of the game with Leela, making the corp play faster/slower than they are comfortable, and now you can change gears to match pace too.

Card choice: Leela Patel: I think ID is a consideration you should make with your deck design, not because you are "predetermined" to it (that is, "are these two things working together?", as opposed to "what is the best Kit deck I can make?"). You could make the case for Rebirth Andy, but you lose a Desperado or Sacrificial Construct, and all the turn 1 pressure that Leela provides. Not to mention, there is no other ID this deck would ever want to be, so it's best to just cut out the middle man.

Criminal got a great new card from Quorum in Aaron Marrón (represented here by Angel Arena). This single-handedly gave criminal a significantly stronger NBN match-up, and works well as a pairing to Account Siphon or as kill protection (and is the first anti-tag resource that helps protect himself from trashing). We play 3 because he really is great if you can play him early, and he's also our kill protection.

Gang Sign+HQ Interface is actually a really strong form of HQ pressure, even without the Leela Patel Chain Reaction. 3x of each because waiting around for your first HQI or second gang sign is worse than just finding the deck space for them. You might not install your 2nd/3rd HQI depending on how many gang signs are down when you find them.

Desperado: I feel that with Aaron Marrón mitigating Breaking News, and Astroscript Pilot Program now being a 1x, that Turntable is no longer an auto-include for this kind of deck. And being able to divert that six influence elsewhere was worth it to me. There are still good reasons to play Turntable, but its not the fear of impending News Breaking your skull open.

Rumor Mill: your goal with your currents is not necessarily for them to dominate the board, what you want is to force them to try and score agendas. RM excels here since it blanks Jackson Howard and takes away their ability to tidy-up HQ until they score. But given that your worst match-ups are prison style kill/infinite recursion decks, hacktivist meeting or employee strikes are also considerations.

Baba Yaga: since you can target Baba Yaga with special order, she's a great piece of tech for decks that are going to make you run through a lot of ICE (decks playing 9 agendas are pretty capable of dodging gang sign hell, you're going to have to contest some of their scores if you want to win). I think this is a strong breaker suite because if they play horizontal you can just ignore BY, and even BY+Faerie is good enough to install her if you draw into it. Your breaker suite doesn't fall apart without her (no inti, no yog.0, nothing too durdly or dependent on her for the deck to function). Obviously, you lose some ability to contest remotes, but HQI+gang sign (and back-up copies of all your breakers) mean that losing her is not the end of the world.

Fisk Investment Seminar: a big part of the strategy for this deck is to reduce the amount of time the corp has to durdle their cards around, to put them on a clock that FORCES them to start scoring, and to make their scoring windows unreliable. I believe FIS accomplishes those goals well. If you have Aaron Marrón out all game, you will still draw through your deck with these two cards as your only draw. Since the only other draw options for criminal are inefficient or expensive, I think this is a solid option.

I've tried a number of different tech options for asset spam/asset kill, even so far as to play feedback filter AND net shield, but found that none of these cards A) complemented the strategy, B) were consistent enough, or C) actually made a stark enough difference in these match-ups. You could cut Medium and a Desperado for 2x Salsette Slums if you wanted to, that has been the only combination so far that has done much good, but losing medium guts your R&D pressure, and security testing is kinda meh without Desperado out too.

Strategy: I focus on keeping the remote farms under control. You don't mind if the corp rezzes ICE out here, because you can't threaten any kind of retribution by bouncing it. This is also where all the must-trash assets are, so we gotta, you know, trash them. If its just draw/economy, consider leaving it since friends in high places are just going to pull them back over, and over, and over.

You have pretty good odds of winning the game against corps that need to score 4 agendas to win, without you ever lifting a finger. Start lifting those fingers and things start to look a lot better. Since NBN can't kill you with Aaron Marrón on the board, and they will have a bad time trying to win by agenda victory, you can basically let them KEEP their assets. Your only concern is infinite recursion/decks that can build the kill without scoring agendas.

Against Glacier, you're going to need to go for a big rig setup, but you have all the tools in this deck to mitigate expensive runs into remotes (rumor mill, inside job, Baba Yaga)

HBFA can be a little tricky, because global food keeps their density down, and Fast Advance gives them a lot of control over keeping HQ light on agendas. just like CTM, you don't have to contest their assets much, team sponsorship and sandburg are probably must-trash, you will have plenty of cash from open servers (from temujin and sec test raking in money all game long) that breaking a 10+ STR ICE every now and then isn't the worst thing in the world.

Like I said, my worst match-ups are prison decks, I do my best to keep Hostile Infrastructure down (don't want two online at the same time) and bio-ethics as soon as I can after that. Don't let them get their HI's online for free--breaker bays gotta go, and don't Account Siphon when they have <8-9 credits. a Same Old Thing would really go a long way towards dialing up the AS spam, but I haven't found the space for it. Vamp could be good too.