Leela - Endless Waltz variant *BABW 4th Place*

Inspired to push back against the Stand Alone Complex http://netrunners.co.uk/articles/perfect%20blue.html, I decided to play Criminal this weekend at BABW Manchester.

Overall I was very pleased with the deck with a few minor modifications to one of Cerberus' decklists. Here are the alterations I made for better or for worse (Dave sent me v6, which isn't on NDB)!

-1 R&D Interface -2 Drive By -1 Corroder +1 Atman +1 Gang Sign +1 John Masanori +1 Datasucker

Atman is a card I decided to implement after seeing a lot of Anarch's adopt the tech. In all honesty I started to struggle against Strength 4 ICE - Viper, Eli 1.0, Data Raven, Lotus Field on Remotes...It was a nice include for the event and even managed to deal with a Kitsune out of Haarpsichord...Datasucker simply as I had one influence and it complements it nicely when necessary. Gang Sign I added as a fun-of. Boy was it fun!

I liked Drive By initially as an economy card against SanSans but other than that it wasn't performing very well for me. Pilots playing with Caprice Nisei were getting wise to it on jinteki.net and rezzing her on their turn. I don't know, maybe I don't understand all of it's uses yet but I felt the deck needed some more card draw and John Masanori does that pretty well!

With five rounds of swiss, the deck went 3-1-1 and 1-1 in the double elim. For those interested, a summary of the match ups below.

Round one - Sam Wicks - TWIY FA

Sometimes, Leela is just Snowball defined. It didn't seem to matter which server I ran, an Agenda was always going to find it's way into my grubby hands! A Flare on a remote slowed me down a little and took out my early Desperado. However, it turns out if you shout 'babies' loud enough when using Symmetrical Visage you pull an Emergency Shutdown off the top...

Round two - Ben Wicks - HB ETF http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/25993/waldemar-back-to-basics-manchester-babw-1st-place

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole 'Wicks' family plays Netrunner and they're stomping Netrunner tournaments all over the world. Unlike my last minute audible to Cambridge PE, Ben stuck with a deck he has been playing with for yonks. A good strategy to be sure!

At some point during the game Leela managed to do her thing and bounce a Caprice Nisei back to hand off the remote on a Legwork, and then access her on the second card to send her to the bin. Powerful turn is powerful. I think this is why I like Leela above any other Criminal at the moment, her ability is so unique and can get you out of some real sticky situations that other runners may struggle to wriggle out of (at Nationals, 'Teemo' bounced a Government Takeover back into my hand with six counters on it after digging five cards deep into R&D over two runs).

Anyway, I digress...This game ended 6-6 with some nail-biting runs on HQ and some very tense draw steps (Ben scored an early Mandatory Upgrades that I mistook for a 5/3 and didn't attempt to run at trying to find an Agenda elsewhere to bounce it back)...

Round three - Alex Bowers - Haarpsichord Kitsune/Mushin build

Vader, Sauron, Davros, Morgoth, Voldermort, Shai'tan, Dave Hoyland...

I don't know what it's like for the rest of the world, but when I think of Leela, I think of this man! It's rare to see a Leela list in a tournament that isn't a carbon copy of one of his decks. Tweaking a well known list with a few surprises can really catch people out.

Someone on the UK Netrunner page also mentioned the whole Kitsune - Award Bait - Beale line and after seeing a Kitsune on R&D there was a lot of a value to be had in holding Atman in my hand for as long as possible.

I ended up winning the game before we got to that stage, but it's the thought that counts! I blew an Inside Job on an R&D access to try and persuade him to go for it...

Round four - Rob Thompson - NEH FastroBiotics

My only 0-2 of the tournament, and I felt like I threw it away. Bankrupted myself down to get to six points after scoring an NAPD giving Robb a window to FA an Astro through a SanSan, but wait! Gang Sign...Into the third NAPD while on 1...Lesson learned! The same NAPD is The Winning Agenda (favourite podcast plug http://thewinningagenda.com/).

Don't worry though, We met again in the third round of the Top 8 where he hit a Pyschic Field, lost the Psi game, drew up, then died to Ronin + a Neural EMP drawn on click 1 on around turn 4. Better lucky than good!

Round five - Mark Mottram - NEH

Both on 4 points except Mark is riding the Astrotrain. I have an R&D Interface out but can't run R&D during the mid-game due to financial issues! All in all he had four to five turns to draw into an Agenda and just couldn't find one.

If you're going to stop the Astrotrain at some point though, the Siphontrain does a very good job as I drew all three copies over the space of the next four turns preventing him from using his clicks to draw into the Agenda's before I find them first.

Top 8 round one - Craig Murtagh - Haarpsichord

So while looking for a Corp to play this weekend I saw a variety of Haarpsichord decks, and the one that stood out the most to me most was http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/25707/liquid-beatdown-polish-nationals-5-1

Something in my gut told me he was on a kill deck just after we shook hands. I can't explain it I just had the read.

Craig mulligans, and tries his best to conceal what seems like an awkward opener and only ICE's up R&D after Sweeps Week & Hedge Fund. Might as well grab a sharpy and write Gutenberg on the sleeve. That's confirmation enough for me to go into this game believing that the credit war is going to matter,

HQ is left relatively weak as he tries to protect himself from an R&D Interface after realising Gutenberg isn't quite holding the fort. A few Legworks and Siphons later and things are looking very favourable.

Craig rebuilds and realises the only way out of this game now as to set up a remote and hope I can't get through as I was still struggling to complete my breaker suite. An additional ICE is added to the remote (three total) followed by an IA'd agenda. Inside Job puts an end to that pipe dream and it's over!

Top 8 round two - Daniel Thorpe - NEH FA

After playing this game I pegged Daniel to win the tournament. I certainly wasn't happy when I found out I was going to have to play him again with the same factions if I managed to beat Sohum in round four...

All I can say is Daniel is an NEH master, he understood the match up and I didn't spot a single mistake on his side throughout the game. I didn't even manage to put up a fight.

Here is my confession...I trashed a PAD campaign when we were both low on money instead of a DBS in the early game. It was much later in the game when I started to draw into Legwork's that I realised what a grave mistake I had made. By allowing DBS to live I'd reduced the effectiveness of Gang Sign, Sneakdoor Beta, Emergency Shutdown and Legwork. Sad face, I'll ever do it again, I promise!

And that was the end of Leela's journey! All in all my opponents were all a pleasure to play against and I learned some very valuable lessons for next weekend https://www.facebook.com/events/421894564667323/

Come on Leela, lets do the Dark Lord proud!