ControLat (APAC 2022 1st, 2nd, 17th)

Sokka 4623

*As good as “Install Boat; Run the Remote” is, I decided to change the title to my original deck name just because it’s cleaner

The corp deck was Fun for no one but one.

Instead of a traditional write-up, check out this video!

I'd like to highlight my round 4 game against glacier Acme. Turns out running 3 times in one turn against a server protected by IP Block, Hydra, Funhouse, Data Ward, and Anoetic Void is not a concern when your econ engine is busted and you have 103 credits. Don't believe the number you just read? See for yourself.

If anyone finds a corp deck that can put up a reasonable and consistent fight against this busted pile of cards then please let me know because I haven't found one.

Shoutout to Bridgeman for convincing me to play Hyperbaric and Paricia. Huge congrats to iceprisma who piloted this deck to 2nd place and a special mention to AxWill as well who unfortunately lost the 241 against fellow Unband member Odol in round 5 (and ended up finishing 17th).

One small note is that the deck iceprisma and AxWill played has Na'Not'K instead of Ika and this is because Ika is a last-minute change I made and I forgot to tell them. They're both not ideal and in most games the killer isn't installed anyways. Ika is generally better early while Na'Not'K is better late. Doesn't matter too much and it could be either one.

Happy continentals season and see y'all at worlds :)

13 comments
21 Aug 2022 Bridgeman

This deck is a beast :) Well deserved win my friend!

21 Aug 2022 Vale

Congratulations on the well deserved win! Back to back APAC Champion. Best of luck back to backing Intercontinentals as well!

21 Aug 2022 bing005

Congrats!

21 Aug 2022 Diogene

As always, amazing deck. Do you think VirtualBread deck could be a good counter to your deck? The ability to tutor at instant speed Mavirus would seems pretty good to me.

Thanks for sharing!

21 Aug 2022 Murse

This is a monster list. Looking forward to watching the games!

21 Aug 2022 Shent

Monster runner, great content! Congrats on the win

21 Aug 2022 Maëlig

Congrats ! I'm curious about the lack of pinhole have you not missed it ?

23 Aug 2022 NtscapeNavigator

Happy fun boating time!

23 Aug 2022 Watzlav

I'm sorry, but the cabal's committee for naming conventions must insist you call this the Congress Lat. You may use the optional suffix -shop.

On a more serious note, what would your corp pick be going into a tournament where you expect to face a lot of Lat?

I agree with you there is no consistently good Corp deck. So should I try lucksacking with Audacity, or with Neurospike? I assume lucksacking with Data Loop or Trieste is not happening; since the longer the game goes, the lower are your chances.

24 Aug 2022 Sokka

@Diogene Mavirus seems mostly relevant for clot in that matchup and tutoring for it wouldn’t be truly instant speed for FA purposes unless you excavator a 4-cost ice. Regardless, that matchup would likely be a matter of Wake Up Call timing. If the corp can land a good Wake Up Call at the right time then that would be my only concern as the runner, otherwise, I don’t see the matchup being too much of an issue.

@Maëlig I would loooove a 1x Pinhole in this deck. Unfortunately there isn’t an influence that I’m willing to cut for it right now. The use for a Pinhole comes up mainly against Void. If Void PD is a concern then slotting a Pinhole or two would be great. Against Void Acme it seems like the deck is able to build money and just run the Void using hard cash as demonstrated in the Round 4 video.

@Watzlav I haven’t found anything that can comfortably and consistently beat this Lat so I honestly don’t know what corp I would pick right now. In terms of Audacity or Neurospike, I think if you’re trying to win in swiss then play Neurospike. If you’re trying to also win in the cut (open decklist) then play Audacity. With hidden information and unknown threats, an NBN Neurospike deck also threatens econ HHN; however, once lists are revealed then this deck becomes extremely easy to beat. This is essentially what happened with Jai’s Azmari, where I lost against it in swiss in Round 3 because I was playing around HHN. In the cut, iceprisma was able to beat it with ease due to the list being revealed

25 Aug 2022 maninthemoon

Absolutely brilliant deck! Really well played. Every time I caught part of your games on stream I was thoroughly impressed. Congrats on the win! Completely deserved <3

31 Aug 2022 callforjudgement

Ika is generally better early while Na'Not'K is better late. Doesn't matter too much and it could be either one.

I disagree with the last sentence above; the Ika is an incredibly weak spot in the list and focusing on that weak spot is one of the main ways I've discovered to get a >50% win rate against this deck. Given that something like half the players on jinteki.net casual are playing this deck at the moment, I've had a lot of practice against it, and loading up a deck with so many sentries that the boat gets overloaded is a fairly consistent way to beat it (because every time you use Ika, the Corp can trash it on their next turn by overinstalling the ICE, and eventually you run out of Simulchips). "I have 80 but can only make three runs for the rest of the game" isn't an ideal situation for a Runner deck to be in, and although the high points of the games end up really quite interesting, they also have a lot of dead turns where one (or even both) players spend most of their time just clicking for credits.

This deck's killer therefore really badly needs to be something that is powered by credits (which you have in abundance), rather than cards (which you really don't). Changing to Na'Not'K would patch up that weakness, so probably makes sense if you believe the two cards are otherwise similar in value.

2 Sep 2022 Sokka

@callforjudgementthis is a very correct analysis of the current situation given that this deck has picked up in popularity and now we're in a situation where players are looking for weaknesses to try to beat it. My analysis of Ika and Na'Not'K above does not take into account the ability for corps to exploit weaknesses during the deckbuilding phase. With this additional consideration in mind, Na'Not'K is certainly better than Ika and I would definitely recommend that change be made if this deck were to be played today.

However, with this said, a corp putting a bunch of sentries in their deck, especially a bunch of small ones, while excellent against Ika, is terrible against Na'Not'K. So here we have the classic situation where if people shift to Na'Not'K and corps start reducing their sentry-count back to a single large sentry then Ika starts becoming good again