Next Level T'ai Chi Ch'uan

StudentoftheG@M3 19

This was per @locusshifter's http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/13392/t-ai-chi-ch-uan deck. I tuned it up a bit for my local meta and to suit it to my playstyle. I don't quite have the time to rigorously test it on Octgn, but it feels stable and consistent enough against many deck archetypes. So far, I've tested it against big money, fast advance, and glacial decks, and Leela had performed phenomenally well against them. Scoring of at least 5 agenda points per game (and not even on a good opening hand), I feel that my losses had only came from me not having enough time and experience piloting the deck (and to a certain extent, Jinteki damage based deck). Beyond that, I think the deck is good enough for competitive plays. I will give my breakdowns on the changes I've made from the original deck;

  • 1 Emergency Shutdown
  • 1 Indexing
  • 2 HQ Interface
  • 1 Armitage Codebusting
  • 1 Kati Jones
  • 1 Mr. Li
  • 1 Grappling Hook

Total cards cut: 8 cards with 4 influence open. The slots are changed to;

  • 2 Hostage
  • 2 Planned Assault
  • 1 Legwork
  • 1 Kraken (depending on your playstyle and local meta, this could be subbed into a second Plascrete Carapace or Lemuria Codecracker)
  • 1 Levy AR Lab Access
  • 1 Hades Shard

The rationale for changes;

(i) I don't like dead cards in my hand. Normally all the redundancies of the cards in hand make me cringe when I know that Netrunner is ultimately a game of who can setup faster and win before the other player can score 7 agenda points; and

(ii) Leela is a precision runner and her ability very much plays like a chess match and I intend to punish the corp as such by trading each agendas scored/ stolen with every ICE protecting the weakest/ strongest server and just keep on banging the said server with every tool at my disposal. The changes made are really just things that makes her become more efficient at exploiting her abilities.

Minuses:

Emergency Shutdown, Indexing and HQ Interface;

A third Shutdown is not necessarily important, as rarely any corp would leave HQ lightly protected against any Criminal. Two is enough and Same Old Things often makes sure you get to recur it at the right moment to turn the game to your favor.

A second Indexing is not really important as Same Old Things and Planned Assaults are more than enough to get it out at the right moment of the game. Plus, the 3 influence is just too damn valuable to be put on a repetitive card that can easily be searched and recurred by zero influence cards.

I have never been a fan of Interfaces, since it is too expensive, too click munching, and it takes away the element of surprise in pacing the game. Planned Assault + Legwork has always been better at accessing an extra card at the same rate (and cost) as installing a HQ Interface and again, it is cheaper and more efficient to just recur it with Same Old Thing.

Armitage Codebusting, Kati Jones and Mr. Li;

A third AC is not really game breaking as Leela rarely needs more than 10 creds at one time to set up/ make 'precision, evasive' runs. Also, Sure Gambles, Account Siphons, Bank Jobs, and Kati Jones are more than enough to set up a consistent econ to fund the runs and disruptive events.

Singleton Kati and Mr. Li are more than enough as 2 Hostages are subbed in for their respective doppleganger slots. This is considering that probability wise, the draw chance of Kati and Li had not been changed (if not improved as you can get Kati if you already have Li and vice versa instead of probably needing to dig more if you drew a second copy of a thing you already have on board).

Grappling Hook;

A third Hook is rarely needed as you already have Clone Chips and it is a dead card anyways for multiple ETR subs without having e3 in play. So 2 is enough to make the deck leaner.

Notable additions (cards like Planned Assault, Legwork and Hostage have been addressed in above 'Minuses paragraphs' and will not be explained again):

Kraken, Levy AR Lab Access;

Kraken has good synergy with Leela's ability (albeit too situational to pack more than a singleton). I don't normally depend on it unless the opportunity presented itself, i.e: corp scores agenda and triggers Logos for Kraken and you go for a precision agenda stealing run, bounce 1 unrezzed ICE, kill off the next rezzed ICE to thin the server down for your next precision run. Did I also mention that you can always Same Old Thing it? Oh yeah, I haven't. So there's that.

Levy AR Lab Access (or LARLA as I like to call it) is there for a second wind assaults should the corp decides that the game should be dragged to 45 minutes. I packed a singleton because in too many winnable games I had to concede and cry a river because Leela was not good enough in attrition games. Did I mention that you could always Same Old Thing LARLA if it got sniped from your grip? It could you know.

Hades Shard;

locusshifter's initial version of this deck had 1 open influence, and after testing it a couple of times, I noticed that the constant bouncing of unrezzed ICE often made the corp's HQ clot more than their maximum HQ capacity. There's only 2 ways the corp could react to it;

(i) Throw away agendas into the archives; or (ii) Flood the HQ with agendas (which can easily be an easy win for Leela with Legwork run).

Hades Shard gives the deck a new dimension of archive access instead of having to run it traditionally (and in turn, saving precious Overminds and Hooks). It combos well enough with Utopia Shard, it exploits Power Shutdown effects and if you understand the paid abilities window well enough, not even Jackson Howard can stop it.

So that's basically my tune ups for this deck. No Order and Chaos upgrades, and no cards in The Valley worth adding to the current deck setup. Any comments and suggestions are duly welcomed.

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