LeeMaw: Recursion is a Crutch (Billings, MT Regional Winner)

This is my runner deck that I took to the Billings, MT regional championship at KAB Sports Cards & Collectables. It went 2-1 in Swiss, an ID win for the fourth round, and undefeated in the cut. I want to give another thanks to the MT netrunner players for being awesome hosts and for the fun games during the event! Another big thanks to Aaron for driving Alexis and I up from Denver to attend the event as well as props to them for providing the equipment and commentary during the live stream (available here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/147550072).

After the Store Championship season, we didn’t have any tournaments in Colorado until the TD release events. One of those events was at the Wizard’s Chest in Denver, which is where I came to my initial ID and deck solutions for the regional. Leela served me during the Store Championship season and Matt Dawkins pointed me to the LeeMaw: Trained Pragmawtist decklist published before MWL 1.2 hit (see the derived from decklist). He gave me Rick’s updated list cutting the Sacrificial Construct and Salsette Slums for a Political Operative and Sneakdoor Beta and keeping Temüjin Contract for the influence. Matt and I decided on going with 2x Abagnale for the decoder as the 3 credit cost was worth it for more consistent remote access by cutting passport and the Peregrine. Lustig also seemed powerful if the meta was going to go to Weyland with Archer running around sniping programs, but I decided on testing with the 1x Mongoose and 1x Lustig with Matt trying the x2 Lustig.

In testing, I always had an installed Mongoose and had low enough STR sentries that it seemed to be the right call, but a few games against Scorpios showed the value of Lusting with stacked sentries. During the regional, Lustig never left my hand so I might go back to x2 Mongoose as killer protection, but with Sandburg and Colossus, the current killer selection might be the best for Criminals who can’t stomach the tempo hit of installing Femme Fatale. This deck performs in two ways, early aggro or set everything up and wait for the Corp to finally score and then have everything go wrong for the corp. Of course, against asset spam, the plan is to get Maw online ASAP and just run those naked remotes and keep triggering Maw to cause the corp to lose their combo cards and/or agendas from hand.

Swiss:

R1 – Alex with Skorpios and Batty rig destruction. With limited icebreakers and no recursion this corp ID, I was worried with this being my first-round match, but thankfully I could get set up quickly with multi-accesses and score to 7 points before I lost everything to the Hunter Seekers. The most stressful part of this game was winning the psi game after playing Account Siphon with an installed Mongoose after Alex rezzed Cobra and Batty.

R2 – Aaron with Titan FA. The three of us from Colorado all swept in R1 so of course the probability that two of us would be facing each other was rather high, and of course with Aaron testing his Titan deck against my LeeMaw deck the night before in our hotel room we knew what each other’s decks did. He managed to get the Atlas train going and I failed to see Maw, Medium, or either HQ Interface so not getting any accessing on the runs I did make left for me setting there while he scored out and won. Also, Colossus really made for taxing runs on R&D since it had a few advancement counters on it boosting the strength and I didn’t see much economy either. It was a fun game, but we were happy to split after I blew up his Leela.

R3 – Jeremy with Sol. He installed ICE on HQ and installed two assets in remote servers (or clicked for a credit for his last click). So, I started with a medium install and Dirty Laundry into R&D with two more runs on R&D. I got a 2 pointer with the medium dig bouncing the HQ ICE. He then rezzes daily business show and protects HQ and R&D, while installing an asset in a new remote. I bring out maw and access reversed accounts, which I leave so I can start using Maw and build up funds. Then more ICE comes out over the two open remotes. I get up to 8 or 9 credits and then Jeremy uses the reversed accounts to siphon my money so he can continue to build up funds and protect HQ with more ICE. A couple of turns of building up by both of us and I finally get enough credits to install Sneakdoor Beta with HQI out and Temüjin Contract on HQ where I get an agenda bounce the R&D ICE, dig further with medium, and then close the game shortly after that.

R4 – Koby is at 17 points with RP and Andy. I’ve got 15 points and 3 or 4 other players had 12 points so we both do IDs securing us for the cut to top 4 and both agree to have the runners “win.” Aaron swept his last round to put him at 5th place, bump Alexis to 6th place, and boosting my SoS to 2nd seed in Swiss.

Cut: Going all the way to Montana, we had no idea what the meta would be (except Rick who predicted Jinteki would be strong) and the cut is all Criminal runners with 2 Leela and 2 Andy. The corps are my SYNC, 2 RP, and 1 Biotech.

John was the SC winner at KAB and had Leela and the Biotech. Since I hadn’t played him in Swiss, I didn’t know what to expect. However, my SYNC deck had managed to already kill (#boom!) two Andy and a Leela in Swiss so I decided to corp first. Mark runs into HHN territory and I’m able to add another Leela to my collection of crispy runners for the day. After our game, I said I hoped to see Leela win a Regional Championship, of course referring to either of us winning the day.

Koby won his match as RP against a DLR Andy and now I am on deck with Leela to stream for everyone’s entertainment. I installed Aaron Marrón and dirty laundry into R&D into a Future Perfect. Stealing the agenda with bids of zero and then installing Tapwrm. After gaining some money and cards, I install mongoose and R&D hitting an angry baby on the top of R&D. I get medium going, but after paying for two runs R&D go down to zero credits. Eventually, Koby installs and scores a Philotic leaving a flooded HQ open. I use dirty laundry to run HQ with only two credits left and access another Future Perfect. We both bid one and I win.

Mark’s biotech won on time against DLR Andy by Mark and eventually lures Koby into a mushin’d junebug. Since Mark had played as corp twice and was 1 for each side, we had a rematch for the grand finals. With Mark knowing the type of SYNC deck I was running he takes time to set-up and I score a Restructured Datapool. He drops Magnum Opus and I start mentally preparing to play Leela. However, after Mark used mobius and had to get get through my tollbooth, data raven, and news hound protecting R&D, which caused him to hit tollbooth after scoring a Priority Requisition since he did the second run. Eventually, I could have Mark float 1 tag, play closed accounts, and then use Barney for restructure. With Mark at 1 tag, I spent enough of a trace from the datapool trace to land the second tag with click 1 and then click, click boom! for an undefeated SYNC deck and win for the regional.

The day was a lot of fun, all the MT players were great, and the event was just an overall great day of netrunner!