Blood Simple--Stimhack's Last Chance Qualifier 1st Place

This is the runner deck I piloted this weekend in Stimhacks Last Chance Qualifier, and is an evolution of the deck I've been playing for a while (initial credit for this skeleton goes to Cerberus for his Leela Patel article--I had been playing a very different style of deck with Leela Patel before moving more towards something more resembling his build).

I think Leela Patel, in whatever form your deck takes (logos/desperado/doppleganger) the core strategy falls into one of two categories, remote pressure with central punishment, or central pressure with remote punishment. In the former, you want to aggressively try to claw into the scoring remote (or turn of SanSans) and use the windows the corp provides to make a play for HQ or R&D, while the latter wants to aggressively search for agendas in centrals, thus keeping any scoring server destabilized. In previous builds, I found myself usually locked into one strategy during deck construction, but was pleasantly surprised how well I was able to make that adaptation on the fly against different archetypes this weekend.

A little bit of dead weight in the form of redundancy I didn't "need", but all things being equal, its very hard to know which cards are going to be rock stars and which are going to evade you all tournament (I don't think I saw a single emergency shutdown all day).

Thoughts

Bank Job

I like having a very diverse spread of econ cards, as it means that no one deck totally shuts off my economy. However, I felt myself really struggling to keep up with NEH, taking one loss to Astrobiotics and barely being able to eek out a win over NEARPAD (or a similar derivation). I'm not sure if I'd want a 3rd Security Testing, but I never had a problem playing bank job and I will probably cut some other econ for at least 1 more BJ (heh).

Legwork

I've seen a shift recently in runner decks going down to 1 or 2 legworks, and especially in Leela where the corporation is unlikely to destabilize HQ with a bunch of agendas in hand, 2 felt like the right call. And I have noticed that I have whiffed with legworks more than I used to, and that may be a trend towards certain playstyle/decktypes on the corp side, I'm not really sure.

Still, I tend to play my Legworks more aggressively than reactively, and try to catch them setting up a remote or before they can reset their hands. Legwork is also better for trying to stop a score than Sneakdoor, since its less click intensive if you have to run the remote as well. I will probably go back to 3 copies to better suit my playstyle, but I have no idea what I would cut.

Daily Casts

were a bit of a let down since I moved from Mr. Li to Earthrise Hotel (though I still prefer them to Dirty Laundry). I think there is a stronger economy option for this slot.

Special Order

I sit on my special orders too long, and as such, I think 3 is probably the wrong number. On the other hand, you really want that first one early, so its a tough call. All told, I think the compromise is aggressively finding faeries with them if there isn't an obvious breaker to fetch, rather than sitting on them all game.

Plascrete Carapace.

Saved my bacon one game, but I still saw them a lot. Such is the perpetual struggle of Plascrete Carapace, I want to take them out...I just don't think I will. I guess swapping Lucky Find for a Bank Job frees up the influence for an I've Had Worrse? That might merit testing w/ 1x plascrete 1x IHW.

Zu.13

I'm not "mad", but it certainly wasn't used to break enough to not just be a Cerberus Rex and spare me a couple of influence. I thought about going Gordian Blade (by downgrading lucky find into a day job), but I'm glad I didn't, because I just wasn't breaking code gates over remotes enough to justify the influence I don't think.