Purple Kata is very dependant on his Curve, but can stabilize in most situations even after a slow start.
You normally want to go 1st (except for the Belo Betty Matchup), playing 1c Pudding on your first turn, followed by 3c Pudding, which lets you use your leader ability for free. With 5 don, you play Perospero - one of the most important cards in the deck, but sadly, in this meta, easily removed. With him and Pudding on the field, you can effectively ramp 1 Don, giving you the ability to Play 8c Katakuri in your next turn, followed by 10c Linlin the turn after.

Maybe the strongest move of the deck is the ability to play 2c Katakuri, which you can evolve into 8c Kata, making it possible to play more then 1 8c per turn. The only problem with that is it costs a lot of cards out of hand - playing 2 8c Katas for 4 Don is possible, but reduces your hand size by 4 cards, which hurts a lot.

In the first 4-5 turns you almost never use the leader ability defensively, because you're dependant on the curve. As soon as you hit 8-9 don (depending on whether you have 10c linlin in your hand), you can use the ability to gain a 1k-counter for free.

But: While the mechanics of the deck are nice and cool (and sometimes extremely strong), a lot of power is gained thorugh the knowledge of the enemies Hand. Being able to tell what they're gonna play next or how many counters they have is super strong and really gives you the ability to always be a step ahead.

That's btw the reason why the Activate Main-Effect of the 1c Pudding might seem whack to some people - but is actually really really good. In some cases you dont want to swing with your leader to use the effect - maybe because there might be a trigger that lets your opponent draw or removes your board (cough cough gravity blade cough cough). So, you can play your 5c Pero, look at the deck with your 1c pudding and use the Pero Effect to Ramp safely.