F*** IT - Lets Play Against Lat Decks (EACC Top 17!)

Me: Guys, I've got dinner reservation at 8pm, and round 7 doesn't start till 7.20pm! What do I do? I was expecting to drop by now but I'm currently in 7th! Whatever happens I can't play tomorrow as I have plans and 100% was not expecting to make the cut!

Bristol Metaverse: Just hope for a 241 and play for some sweet prize's

Me: True, That creative playmat for everyone in the top 16 would be a pretty sweet prize...

So this is the deck that got me to 17th in EACC!

Building the decks:

I had spent about a month building, practicing and tuning a Consume Loup deck and a very spicy Jemison Deck fro EACC... until at 10pm on the night of registration I lost all confidence in both and put my final lists together @ hour 0! (big thanks for Orbital for letting me register lists a couple of hours late!

Big thanks to The Drop Bear Lair for their help in testing - especially NBKelly, Vale, Bing, Sir Loathing, Xtreme and Jai!

Thrown Together.

After realising that Lat really is one of the strongest decks around ATM I decided to just play as many counters to that deck as possible. This was my thought process for breaking down the Lat deck's Tools:

Lat Draw:

PD has always been the natural enemy of Lat as matching handsize can be impossible (apparently there is a trigger between discard and Lat draw to pop Stoneship but I'm not 100% on this) - The deck relies on that free card per turn, so lets take that away with our 6 handsize.

We're also going to rely on the recursion a lot for our 3 power events.

Endurance:

The one boat to rule them all icebreaking option that will leave us all pineing for Navi Mumbai City Grid - Luckily we have Navi at home. This will also deal with our anti rush threats from Criminal and [Anarch}(https://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/30004) as well as making it much harder to access with Bin breakers, turtle etc - We'll play 3 Next Activation Command and use them to rush out our first 2-4 points before Lat is set up with breakers.

Tapwrm & Pad Tap - I am purposely playing as poor as possible in this deck - if we have little to no money the Wrms are not a hinderance and we don't play any drip assets like Marilyn or Nico to avoid Pad tap triggering every turn. Because of this the ice is cheap, rush ice (No Fairchild 3's here)

The 3 Card Power Package:

The Core of the deck lies in:

3x NEXT Activation Command - See above

3x Seamless Launch - So all our rushed out agendas can be NA and we can still score Vitruvius with a counter (important)

2x Audacity - to Fast Advance our 4 3/2s, sometimes even a 2/1 after playing Ark for Clot, can even be Seamless launch #4 & 5 if you can jam a win in the remote. - NB. we never have the money for biotic labor!

Honerable Mentions: 1x Ark Lockdown - Obviously its here as an answer to clot, but there are also some lockout plays if the Runner is carefree enough to discard their paperclip as NEXT can make Hagen + Eli impenetrable

Agenda Suite:

Probably the most interesting thing about the deck as its a little wonky but allows some interesting scoring patterns.

Vitruvious: The Key agenda to our deck. seamless this out behind ICE and a NEXT to Pull the seamless back and have instant access to the NEXT for the 'next' jam - the trash cost on NEXT makes this pretty key. Also acts as a 3/2 to FA with Audacity.

Luminal: A busted agenda that can also be FA'd with audacity.

Offworld. Good money and a great early jam if seamless is in hand.

1x Global Food. Double seamlessing this in a remote for the win always feels dirty, but the best thing here is that as oppose to previous PD decks we do not mind scoring this as our second agenda as it opens the flood gates for a swift audacity win!

1x Biforcation: a great card in PD! - We either score this OR the GFI - never both - this opens up extra FA routes to the win as if we draw right we don't have to worry about the remote once we're at 4 points!

A Quick word on ICE.

I'm almost 100% happy with the ice suite - The Hagen's and Gatekeepers are your best bit of ice early, Magnet plays double duty as a gearcheck and Botulus/Ika enemy.

The drafters are unfortunately no where near as good as they are in normal PD lists as they just don't do enough on the Remote. I was worried about money, but I think 2x drafter 2x Ansel 1.0 is the much better way to go.

Games on the Day:

Round 1: Win vs Shorty on Esa:

Always a pleasure to get paired against Shorty! For those that don't know he streams a load of content on his Youtube channel Rosenheim City Grid

He played Esa - which I think is such a fun deck to play - Vitruvious counters and my 2x Spin dr's got fully stretched and I got pretty lucky on sabotage, scoring a luminal with audacity for the win on turn 9

Round 2: Win vs Lost Geek on Hoshiko:

A Slow start with only a luminal scored by turn 9 and me doing my best to keep LG off boat money. They got to 0 to install boat and it opens up a window to score an Offworld using a NEXT to lock up the remote, A steal and a mad dashed GFI brings the game very close but i can safely jam another offworld in the remote, double seamless and put in a spin dr - and next turn just have to dodge the 1 in 6 on Hq and audacity an atlas for the win.

Round 3: Loss vs Osclate on Wu

The only game all day where i got well and truly demolished! - Laura was also on NEXT PD and her runner deck was well thought out to deal with that matchup - Her euler dealt with my Gatekeepers, I mistakenly tried to jam behind a Drafter - wasting a NEXT in the process and losing a second being trashed on R&D the same turn! The Game lasted 8 turns and ended 7-0.

Round 4: Win vs ReinaMorada on Freedom

A Scary Matchup when all of my Power operations cost 1 or 0 to play! A close game where I ended up playing a NEXT on my final turn to dissuade freedom from hammering HQ to find the winning Vitruvius (or both audacitys) - the play worked and I audacitied out the win.

(Their freedom was on Unity which was a real issue when your trying to tax them out with 8 strength gatekeepers and they just break for 4c!)

Round 5: Win vs SN00P1 on Lat

This game went to time after our gruelling 44 min Lat vs Sports Game in the first half. We both played fast and by turn 9 its 6 to me and 5 to SN00P1 - Time is called on my turn and so I out a spin Dr in the remote and Play a NEXT AC, with 2 agendas left in 9 card R&D and 1 in 5 Card HQ - Shorty ITD's HQ for a paperclip, Runs r&D but can't afford to break the 5 st drafter I rez innermost, it fires and allows me to install a Void to stop the run. Last click checks archives with spin pulling the two agendas discarded with Void back to deck.

FWIW - If it hadn't gone to time I have a 3 in 9 to draw one of 2 audacity or the last NEXT all of which should have scraped me the win next turn.

Round 6: 241 Corp Win Vs RTsa on Lat

I go super fast and score a luminal and Vitruvious from the remote with next, then biforcation into audacity Vitru for the win 7-4 before they can find their tools/breakers - denying Lat draw almost the entire game and playing the whole game on about 3c or below.

Round 7: 241 Corp Loss Vs Cobrabubbles on Lat

I get to 6 points by turn 10 before Lat has had a chance to get to Boat money - keeping them poor by forcing them into the remote with Hyperbaeric just to clear out skunks/tranqs etc. I then realise that I have scored 3 of my 4 3/2s so my best route to a win from here is to find the 1of biforcation or the last vitruvious before the runner does or finds their simulchip. (I audacited out the 2nd vitruvious so they know the threat is there)

I bait out their simulchip with an install advance on a GFi i have no plan to score unfortunately they MAD DASH IT! putting them on 5!

Unfortunately it is the last click i play which is the biggest mistake of the tournament. Still no boat in sight and an unrezzed drafter on R&D - I install rashida in the remote, protect with an ansel and then... play Ark Lockdown for the clot.... If i had read this better I could have played NEXT last click - Not allowing the Install boat, stargate R&D, see an offworld on top, trash a differant card and run back for the win.

With a NEXT play here, I could have drawn into a spin with rashida, which would draw me into the Biforcation which i can audacity for the win! :(

It was a loss but it was still a blast I was really happy with my play in general and the decks I brang!

FWIW - I'm almost glad Cobrabubbles swept me in the last round as I would have finished on 4th but been unable to play on the Sunday (I don't usually plan on 'making the cut') so I'm glad someone who was able to play got through!

Thankyou to Nisei and the OP team for running such a great event. And thankyou to all my opponents - all of the games felt really fun to play win or lose!