Everything is better with Atman (Planet Harry Vienna SC 1st)

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PeekaySK 8148

Leela's been my favorite Criminal for a while (ever since she came out, really) - she has almost Anarch-levels of disruption at her disposal, and a corp that doesn't respect her ability usually ends up regretting it fiercely.

With this in mind, I took her to the last SC of this season I would be attending, and she served me well - going undefeated through 4 rounds of swiss, and then winning a super-tense final game against Grail RP, which saw her show off all her versatility.

Expecting a lot of glaciers, I went for maximum Interface goodness, and also packed my personal favorite piece of tech: a singleton Atman. That thing is so versatile and awesome, it's really scary:

  • Sometimes, it's an efficiency play - setting it to 4 lets you waltz through Lotus Fields, Merlins, Elis and Ichis like nobody's business
  • Sometimes you set it to 6 to completely disarm Archers and reasonably get through huge barriers
  • And just sometimes, you set it to 1 after you lose both your Corroders to a freak Merlin accident and it ends up winning you a shiny plaque :P

Also of note:

The singleton Datasucker is money. I might have been more comfortable with two, but it's not entirely critical to the functioning of the deck, and the third Interface is definitely better than spare Suckers would have been.

Bank Job is a super-solid and very underrated card. The huge econ boost it gives you off of unprotected remotes or remotes where the Corp can't really afford to rez is just crucial. Very nearly played three, ended up putting every single one I drew in the tournament to great use!

The third SecTest is a flex slot. It was a third Bank Job until right before the tournament - still not sure which is better. Three SecTests definitely felt like one too many, but then in some games I had two running at the same time, and the econ flowing in was super-nice.

Earthrise is definitely better than Li here, although it strains the econ a bit more. Quite a few games were won on a razor's edge after taking a significant hit from installing The Hotel.

In closing, Leela is awesome, her ability is amazing, and if you haven't given her a try, go do it now!

(The Corp deck I used for the tournament was an old-school HB Rush/FA hybrid, to be found here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/17423/oldest-of-the-schools-planet-harry-vienna-sc-first-place-)

16 comments
16 Mar 2015 hypomodern

Congrats! Glad to hear you Got There (tm) !

16 Mar 2015 skydivingninja

I'm happy to see Leela winning so many store champs. Love the idea of the Atman splash. Congrats on the win!

18 Mar 2015 Gespenst

Congrats on your win! Shame I didn't get to play against your Leela. Looks really solid!

18 Mar 2015 PeekaySK

@Untergeher I was curious about how I'd do against your HB, but honestly was more interested in seeing your Nasir in action. Serves you right for playing interesting runner IDs :P

18 Mar 2015 Gespenst

@PeekaySK You better watch out for my Nasir during the upcoming regionals ;) I'm not giving up on that ID so easily!

18 Mar 2015 PeekaySK

Pshaw, I'll see your Nasir and raise you a Professor :P

18 Mar 2015 Gespenst

Challenge accepted!

20 Mar 2015 Manticore

I love this deck. Any comments on why you run eleven ice breakers? I've found that to be fantastically helpful in my games with it and I have some ideas why, but it's a little unintuitive at first and I'd like to hear your thoughts.

20 Mar 2015 PeekaySK

@Manticore Thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying it!

As for the breakers, the obvious smart-ass answer is "Because ten was too few and twelve would be too many" :P

A more helpful answer is to not think about the number of cards, but rather the problems presented by ICE and how the individual answers fit into a cohesive whole:

  • Barriers are the easy part: I don't like Breach and am not influence-starved, hence two Corroders it is. Repeated Eli and Curtain Wall runs could end up sucking, but we'll handle that later.
  • For Code Gates, Passport and two Rexes is a setup that served me well in the past. Three different breakers to get me through an early Quandary on a central, better sustainability on central runs as compared to Zu.13 (Passport is the same to install and thanks to its strength of 2 ends up costing the same to break, at worst), good remote pressure (I used to run three Rexes, but it was unnecessary), actually meaningful redundancy (sometimes Rex can save you two credits, like with a Yagura), and it's all in-faction.
  • Sentries are actually a bit tricky because of how much Garrotte blows (should have been either 1 MU or strength 3). Mimic is a must for Architect and Caduceus, Faeries are just brutal - less than three would be a mistake. HB is back on the radar, though, and that means two things: Ichis and Tollbooths. Hence, the Femme - both to bypass one Tollbooth (or possibly a Wormhole, Susanoo or similar) and to not get locked out by fat sentries.
  • Now we come to the Atman - half the reason is all the really good 4-strength ICE that's around (seriously, check out the complete list, it reads like a hall of fame), the other reason is decks with a lot of huge ICE, particularly Weyland and some HB builds, where Atman at 6 completely neuters threats of Archer. Also, sometimes you need to break pesky AIs like Kitsune or Excalibur.
  • Datasucker had good synergy with too many pieces not to include - Mimic, Femme and Atman all profit immensely. Passport likes it for odd-strength pieces, too. If I had 16 Influence I'd play two of them, but three is not worth losing an RnD Interface over, and I like Carapace better than Utopia Shard (I live in a kill-heavy meta). Also, the deck works fine without a Sucker out, so I can get away with having just one.

...and that's how I got to eleven breakers. You'll notice that the price I'm paying for the suite is lack of Sneakdoor (for both slots and memory reasons), but I feel the versatility, resilience and efficiency of the suite makes it worth it.

(There you go, thought process enough for ya? :P)

26 Mar 2015 Watzlav

Congratulations -- what an outstanding achievement! You'll be remembered by future generation as "the guy who started 1337MA!\| archetype". Seriously, gratz on the shiny plaque.

30 Mar 2015 Twitch_City

This deck is amazing. I brought it - unplayed - to a 5-round 23-person Spring Kit tournament, and it won 5/5 games, even with some substantial misplays on my part (I definitely forgot Leela's ability a few times). Thanks so much for sharing!

1 Apr 2015 PeekaySK

Glad to hear you're enjoying the build :)

19 Apr 2015 Humanoids

Didn't you feel like you were out of MU?

19 Apr 2015 PeekaySK

Why would I? 5 MU is plenty for three permanent breakers, a utility piece and one solution to the particular problem at hand. Different rigs for different matches - hell, sometimes different rigs for different phases of one particular match.

19 Apr 2015 Humanoids

It just seemed to me that you would desperately need 6 MU in the late game (if the corp survived to it somehow). 1 MU for barriers, 2 MU for sentries, 2 MU for code gates. If you wanted to install Femme Fatale or an Atman, you wouldn't have enough space. Might just be me being too narrow-minded and dumb, though.

20 Apr 2015 PeekaySK

Femme or Atman is one of the 2 MU for sentries, though ;) Also, don't just think about it in terms of ICE types, but also strengths: there's plenty of common ICE setups where an Atman at 4 gets you through all the problematic sentries and most remote Code Gates.

This is even more true in any particular game, once you take into consideration stuff like ICE positioning, Shutdowns, Inside Jobs and whatnot.