In My Lat Era (2nd at Worlds 2024)

Hello!

This is the Lat deck I brought to Worlds this year. It went completely undefeated the entire event, I believe one of two top cut decks (The other being, you guessed it, Jai’s Lat) all tournament to do so. It played against every faction, every archetype, almost every testing group, and it remained undefeated (10-0-1 in the end, with a round 11 ID against Jai). To quote Sokka from three months ago: “this deck is very good. But it's not good in the same way that other runners are "good" these days. The deck does not play itself and no wins will be free. Even your best matchup will require hard work and precise plays to get the win.” As a player who emotionally hates losing on the matchup level, and likes to have game in every matchup I play, this Lat is incredible. I believe this deck has equity or greater against every single permutation of cards on the corp side right now, and that is an amazing feeling. In the three years I’ve played netrunner I’ve never seen a deck do that, which is nice.

On Trick Shot, Swift, and Agenda Advantage

Despite being a control player by nature, I’ve never quite been a shaper player before this year. I’ve explored shaper decks before, but I’ve rarely been satisfied with my results with them. It comes down to play style — I believe strongly that stealing agendas early is way better than stealing agendas late in a control deck, because if you have early agenda advantage you completely throttle your opponents ability to take dangerous lines: every control player’s worst nightmare. This is why my favorite control IDs have always been Hoshiko and Sable: they encourage finding agendas in a tempo positive way, while still giving you enough in-faction tools to dominate the late game.

Anyways, this is just to say Trick Shot is the best control shaper card ever printed in my netrunner lifetime. Better than boat better than rezeki better than world tree do not at me (I am exaggerating about one of those comparisons but I’ll let you guess which). I never played netrunner with stimhack in the cardpool, but it has a very similar effect, shifting the vast majority of your set-up to mid-run events, allowing you to optimize a rig to the exact challenges your opponent shows you. See a drafter or a spider, you’ll probably be flashing guns. See a saisentan or tithe you’ll probably be taking to the skies this game. See a cloud eater or an archer, and you probably need to find a way to do both. Overclock already did this to a lesser extent, but Trick Shot doubles the likelihood of finding those credits early, and it has a multiaccess component which can give you that agenda advantage. Swift takes this strength and magnifies it, giving you 4 clicks (instead of 3) as a resource during these runs, to break a Bran, pass a skunkworks, or just feel confident you will survive the snare after you finish the run. While Aniccam has an appeal (I definitely preferred to see Swift to Aniccam from my corp’s perspective this tournament), I think Swift gives you its influence’s worth and more.

On General Advice playing

Mulligan if the vibes are off. Swift, Trick Shot/Overclock, Fermenter, and SMC are usually the four cards I am actively looking for when I keep/mull. But usually I’ll keep any hand with a draw card and some form of money. Do not keep just because a hand has a pinhole, you won’t hit the Rashida and even if you do 2c is a lot harder to recover from in this deck. Early game, you want to build an econ advantage while trying to make sure the corp knows you’re watching. Touch a few assets, pinhole a card, trick shot something and install a limited breaker. Telework is massive for this — I think I like it more as an Econ card in this deck than sure gamble, though both have a place. The big goal here is make sure the opponent doesn’t feel safe.

Midgame I usually push for deep dives, again in order to get that card advantage. Run (or better yet overclock) unrezzed ICE with an SMC just to see what happens — if they flinch you can sometimes happen into 5 agenda points. I actually don’t like Deep Dive late game — you’re not a wealthy deck and by late-game Deep Dive kinda sucks economically, so I’d rather push at the end with Trick Shots and Cupellations. But sometimes that’s the arc of the game.

Specific Cards:

Try to get lat draw every single turn your opponent is at 3 cards or more — Stoneship is amazing at doing this (which is why I run 3x and only 2 diesel). Working Prototype stocks are pretty small right now, so I like to pre-install Nuka or Telework to get to the opponent’s card count and then use it the following turn. If your opponent is going to 1-2 cards they’re probably doing something silly so you can punish them that way instead.

My general rule of thumb with simulchip is the first can do work as a pseudo SMC — trash an early Echelon/Turbine/Gauss/Euler and let the simulchip do the job so you don’t need to pre-install (this is especially important with Gauss which you really want at a high number the first time you see a Bran). The other two simulchips should flicker the most important card — usually SMC, Euler, Revolver, Cupellation, or Fermenter depending on the matchup.

DJ Fenris is a tech card. I installed it in 2 of the 10 games I played at worlds (1x Steve for PE and 1x Sable for R+ Kill), and that’s fine.

Fermenter and Paricia are your two asset spam cards. Prioritize them. Fermenter is better than Paricia against yellow asset spam. Paricia is better against green.

Against glacier, being able to put a Turbine in the bin feels great so you can get it when needed. Try to make sure you only get the breakers out on the turn you need them though, since Euler/Gauss really fall off against the heavy ice.

Other Considerations:

If William Huang is at your event, replace Gauss with Pressure Spike.

If Cat Shen is at your event, replace Bahia and DJ Fenris with Hannah and third Diesel

If an anonymous frog or friend is at your event, replace something with Airblades

If Patrick Gower is at your event, you will not be winning with Lat today.

How to Beat this Lat:

Do something unexpected. Install an offworld without an upgrade protecting it. Protect a remote with a drafter or a central with a Bran. Double advance an unrezzed Charlotte. Chuck an agenda into archives. Run 4x Behold? Shapers CRAVE certainty. If you play by their rules you won’t win.

Final Thoughts:

Worlds was a blast. Thank you to the OP team for running the smoothest and most elegant worlds in my time in netrunner. You make it look effortless, despite knowing how much effort went into this.

Thank you to my opponents for a wonderful set of games. From Turn 1 Snares to Turn 20 psi games I was on the edge of my seat every time. Plot armor was thick with the Lat this year. A special shout out to Aruzan for completing our 3-year arc after I swept him during both of our first in-person worlds. I walked with you a ways.

Thank you to Snarebears and QtM for letting me jam this deck against literally everything — many of my most insightful games came from matchups I wasn’t expecting: from R+ to Earth Station, from Precision Design to SSO (I’ll leave which IDs came from which testing groups as an exercise to the reader).

Thank you to my local community in NJ/Philly for cheering me on all the way. It was such a joy after my finals to see all the words of support. You all make netrunner worth playing every year.

My flight has just landed in Newark, I’m going to be taking my yearly netrunner hiatus to work on transitioning from a graduate student to a member of society, but I’m sure I’ll be seeing all soon.

Love you all DeeRly