20 Gourmands (14th American Continentals 2025)

This is the LEO deck I played to a 13th place finish at American Continentals 2025. It went 4-0 in swiss and dropped a single game in the cut. Chris (Analyzechris) played it to a 18th place finish, going 3-2 in swiss.

Inspiration:

The inspiration for this deck comes from two main areas;

I was looking at the Snarebear LEO discussion channel. Patrick (Rotomappliance) had brought LEO to UK Nationals but was disappointed with it. His deck had several innovations, including playing a 7 agenda suite to minimize agenda density. I started working on it post ban list, with Analyzechris pitching in a ton of testing data. We were impressed with how it did versus the field of runners we expected, and both Chris and I sleeved up LEO for Continentals.

The night before Continentals, I expected to play Tuno Ob. I was a little nervous about the sable matchup for LEO, and the Tuno Ob felt broken. I played some games before bed and then passed out on Friday evening. I had the good fortune of dreaming prophecy, which went something like this:

In this dream, I am playing against SebK, I lose my corp game as Tuno Ob and angrily turn to Chris beside me

Sam: “SebK installed 20 fucking Gourmands versus me, how the fuck do you beat 20 Gourmands?!?!”

I wake up angry and almost roll myself out of bed in my frustration. I decide to hot swap onto LEO, rapidly building the deck before breakfast.

The spookiest part of this is that when I relayed this story to SebK when we played in round 9, he told me that he had been trying Gourmands in nearly every runner, and almost brought 3x Gourmand sable to Continentals. Weird.

Gameplan:

This is HB Glacier. The goal is to make money, rez expensive ice and score 7 points behind ice in a single remote. We’re playing the LEO ID because we can turn our bioroids into ETR in a stick. This does two major things:

1. We can use bioroids on central servers to shut down powerful run events, such as Transfer of Wealth, Finality or Burner.

2. Our bioroid ice now compounds the total break cost of all ice on a given server. If the runner wants to steal an agenda in a remote, they need to break Bumi 1.0, Bran 1.0 and then Bran 1.0 as we use the Bumi to end the run. Mercia allows us to do this without even forfeiting an ice.

Card Choices:

We can sort the deck into four buckets, Ice, Agendas, Money and Tools

Ice:

We’re playing playsets of the best bioroids and Drafter. Hagen also slots cleanly into our deck, not being too cheap for Curuperia to farm counters from us, but providing a nice ETR and facecheck. Ansel 1.0 rounds out the sentry suite. We tried three M.I.C but found that the first Ansel 1.0 was better than the third M.I.C.

Bumi 1.0 is a strange ice. It’s not really an “ice”, I like to think of it as a pseudo border control. I like to get the first Bumi on HQ against criminal and even shaper. Insulating yourself from Transfer or Burner is key. Drafter is traditionally a “centrals only” ice in this archetype, but it’s actually not bad as a remote ice. If they let a drafter on the remote fire, you can install a Mercia from archives in the remote, and then use the LEO ability to end the run, turning your drafter into a pseudo ETR ice.

Agendas:

Okay hear me out, I know this agenda suite looks like a meme. We’re spending 3 influence on Vulnerability Audit and not even playing Offworld Office. Other LEO decks try and play a tempo oriented agenda suite, usually playing 8 or 9 agendas with on score effects.

The issue is that increasing your agenda density is fatal. In the land of Hermes and Reprise, we want to lean into our taxing ice and make the game go as long as reasonably possible. Cutting the density down to 7 agendas was a big innovation for the deck. I would not tinker with the suite at all.

Money:

You have two lifelines in this deck, Regolith and Tranquility Home Grid. The deck has a ton of different cards that go in the remote for the Tranq Grid, and we are quite happy to just spend the time clicking the Regolith to pay for all our ice. An early Regolith can be make or break in certain matchups, especially against decks like criminal where you need to rez a lot of your ice on defense early. Beyond that we play some Hedge Funds and Petty Cash to shore up our econ.

Tools:

We played a lot of 1ofs or 2of “tool” cards to solve specific problems or help in certain matchups. I think a lot of these tool slots are actually up for grabs, and can be tuned for the specific format you’re playing in.

The Anoetic Void isn't truly necessary, but has felt really comfy. It’s a nice answer to the shaper decks that plan to just pinhole your Mercia and run your remote 2-3 times. Being able to say “No, fuck you” is really powerful, and there are so many pinhole targets in this deck, it’s easy to keep this alive.

Sprint is meant to manage flood if you draw a bunch of agendas early. It felt fine in the deck but isn’t mandatory. Mavirus was a concession to virus based strategies and Physarum Entangler. We struggled to fill the last influence, and cards like Predictive Planogram are worth thinking about. Scapenet is your answer to Twinning and other chip cards. It’s really good if you snipe a Twinning, but also being able to hit Devil Charm or Simulchip is nice value. Not essentially but we felt it earned the slot.

Summary:

I was really happy with LEO. I do think 7 agendas is the way forward. Do I think it’s the best corp deck in the format? No, but I do think it’s pretty solid, at least Tier 1.5. It’s definitely the best scoring corp in the format. I am excited to see where people take this deck, and I expect it to keep a spot in the meta come worlds.

Thank you to Patrick, Chris and Jonas for a lot of the key work on refining the deck. It was a pleasure to test this with you and get it shaped up for Continentals.

Thank you to SebK for telling me via dream to play this deck.

Thanks you to Dave (Ghostmeat) for playing against early versions of this deck in paper testing. It informed the direction of the deck!

A big thanks to Andrej and the numerous staff at American Continentals. An excellent event all around.

Lastly, a special thanks to May for loving and supporting me.

Finally, your Moment of Zen: L’il Hagen