Core Set Waltz (1st, 19th, 20th at Euro/African Continentals

ChrisFerg 508

[Hilarious .gif redacted by request of Chris Dyer so as to maintain the purity of the "Chris" brand]

This is the reg Leela list I somehow steered to first place in the 2020 European and African Continentals, alongside Nememiah, MikeP, Binarydogs and SlickHenry who were all on the same list.

I believe this list was based on one originally built by master Leela-smith PaulyG, and then put through The Process by Mike, John and Chris D the week before the tournament. The primary focus was teching for Titan (I faced no Titan all weekend!), with the Embezzles and several bad Core Set cards (Legwork, Maker's Eye, and Sneakdoor) primarily for that matchup. Legwork and Sneakdoor in particular were also included for the Asa matchup, which we expected to be strongly represented given how strong we thought it was. Each of these cards did some good work throughout the day (e.g. Maker's finding the third agenda after stealing 2 from archives against Tugtetgut/Ohm's punitive outfit, embezzle sniping the archived memories from Pinsel's Asa) but none of them were MVPs, and if you're not expecting a lot of Titan then you would probably want to change the list up a fair bit. With them the Titan matchup is much more winnable though, so as long as Titan is a serious threat at least most of these cards seems sensible. I managed to avoid any super-glaciers like GameNet, where the missing Falsified Credentials would probably be really missed.

The core draw engine of Aniccam and The Class Act is really powerful once you get set up, as playing your OP crim events just draw you into more, allowing you to keep the pressure up. It took me a little while to get used to playing the deck, as I am used to being a little more agro than this deck requires: Leela and the boomerang/inside job threat allows you to take a turn or so more than usual to get yourself set up, and once you're up and running crim econ is so busto that you become pretty hard to keep out.

On the day, this went 4-1 in swiss, beating Jemison (Ardu), Harmony Medtech (JayRed), Asa (Pinsel), The Outfit (Tugtetgut/Ohm). It lost an amazing game against DoomRat's Mirrormorph (which I think was on the Nisei and Spanish streams?). I ID'd once, then got paired down and swept by DoomRat, so had to 241 in the last round against Odol and corped. In the cut it went 2-1, beating Pinsel's Asa and Tugtetgut/Ohm's outfit, before Tugtetgut/Ohm took revenge in the first final.

Thank you so much to all of my opponents for two days of really amazing, exciting games and good humour. Thanks also to my testing group Mike, John, Chris D and Matt for lots of testing games, telling me what decks to play and how to play them, and for being such great people to chat to in these odd times.

Finally huge huge thanks to the organisers and the jnet team for keeping this tournament season going during lockdown. I left the UK in March with plans to be away for at least 18 months, so wasn't sure I'd ever really play competitive netrunner again. These plans were scuppered and I ended up being "stuck" in beautiful France (hence the access to only a tablet), and the chance to play more netrunner has been a massive silver lining to the whole thing and has made lockdown so much more bearable. You folks are amazing. Shout out also to #UK Slack for providing endless distraction, mutual support, and kind encouragement - even if I tend to lurk a lot, the chat, quizzes, and memes have been another big part of my staying OK in lockdown.

8 comments
27 Jul 2020 paulyg

Congrats on the fantastic result and thanks for the shout-out :-) I am delighted to see Aniccam Leela get its time in the sun and the tech choices seem really smart. Above all, though, I was super impressed with your precise, unflappable piloting in the games I caught on stream.

27 Jul 2020 ChrisFerg

Thanks so much Paul!! I can't take any credit at all for the deck, but am really pleased I managed to keep my head piloting it: I actually wonder if some of that is down to it being held online where it was probably a little easier to put the pressure out of my mind. I would still prefer a meatspace tournament where I get to see you all in person though!

28 Jul 2020 boreira

Congrats you played so well and deserved to be a champion! How do feel about playing this deck agaist your corp deck? :) Can it fallow that tempo or only apoc can do it? Curious to see how your victory will shape a meta for American Continentals

28 Jul 2020 ChrisFerg

Thanks so much @boreira!! In testing, before we added the sneakdoor, it was a pretty close mu (in a testing group that all knew both lists very well) but I think Asa was a little bit up. We didn't get a chance to test the sneakdoor much, but I think it probably tips the mu to being slightly Leela-favoured. It is pretty tight though, and the Leela would need a good start and to know the match up well. Yes I'm really looking forward to seeing what the American continentals looks like too!

28 Jul 2020 ClosDeLaRoche

I see you have 5 slots for Boomerang and Inside Job. have 3 slots for these non-icebreaker ways to get past ice in my 419. Do you recommend 3x Boomerang or 2x Boomerang and 1x Inside Job?

29 Jul 2020 ChrisFerg

Hard to say really @ClosDeLaRoche, but my guess would be to stick with 3x boomerang - boomerangs mean you can land more of your busted criminal run operations, and you get them back to use again.

23 Sep 2020 Matuszczak

Congrats! How did you feel about PolOp? Which matchups did it help most? Do you think 2xEmbezzle is necessary? I don't like including it in the lists as it always feels very hit or miss to me, but there surely must be something to it :)

23 Sep 2020 leachrode

@Matuszczak good spot pulling out those 3 cards as a set, all 3 of them went in in the last few days of testing specifically to buy time in the Titan matchup (embezzle to attack hands that are sitting on tools waiting to atlas for an agenda and polop for the reconstruction contract) - outside of that they're all pretty marginal (polop is kinda handy against Asa to shoot jeeves after advance 2, embezzle is okay against outfit but that's about it).

At this point I personally am quite a bit less concerned about suddenly hitting 30 Titan at worlds and would probably go with something else a little better against Palana or Asa but I'm not 100% sure what that would actually be