Description

Our belgian group was quite impressed by the performance of AlPi's Lat in our belgian nats, and it also worked well while testing it against some decks in the fields (see the awesome write-ups here and here).

I ended up bringing this control shaper version instead, because I felt it has a more consistent matchup against Asa. I was expecting Asa to be the most popular Corp. In the end I think I do regret not bringing the Swift DD Lat, because of some reasons highlighted in ayyyliens write-up: the Swift DD Lat is fast, gameplan is often to try to close out with Deep Dives and playing the deck is just a lot of fun.

In contrast, this deck is very reactive to what the Corp is doing. You have to play at the pace of the Corp. This also makes it quite prone to mistakes on the Runner part, as your gameplan always depends on what Corp you are facing. I lost some games where I made errors in judgement of how I should have played the matchup, mostly because I focused against testing vs. Outfit and Asa but I saw a rather big variety of Corps in the worlds swiss.

The title refers to me making one of the latest changes in the deck before worlds. In testing I often found that I had difficulty setting up my money, so adding an extra Telework would help with that and in testing I was happy with that setup. At worlds itself though, kind of the opposite happened. I was often good on money but struggling to get the cards I need, especially against rushy corps. In round 9 especially, a 241 against PD, I was constantly drawing to find a decoder/SMC to be able to contest the remote against Gatekeeper but PD scored out too fast and I never found an SMC that game. Though, our table might've been cursed, since NetDad (my opponent) also had a very unfortunate clerical error happen to him earlier in the rounds, where the match results where entered incorrectly in cobra but the error was noticed too late to be rectified.

Overall, I am happy with how the deck turned out given the amount of testing I was able to do. There's definitely many tweaks possible to the deck. Potentially dropping the DD/Legwork route for a Twinning angle could be interesting to explore, but then lots of influence needs to shift and the deck would probably also need at least 2x prepaid.

Card Choices

Propeller / Gauss

This was an inspiration from testing the Swift DD Lat, where Propeller turned out to be good. I also wanted more influence so I swapped Cleaver with Gauss. I have been quite happy with this suite so far. It gives a more proactive use to your simulchip as well. The only thing that still sucks is seeing a Drafter first and having to boost your Echelon. But usually you only have to do that once, and then you can break it for 2 afterwards once you get set up.

The breaker setup does require a bit more thinking than just running Cleaver, but being able to get through Brans early without costing your entire credit pool is really good. Plus, Gauss can also be useful late to get through Pharos against Outfit to land a Deep Dive.

No Free Lunch

I wanted to make sure that I had at least an ok matchup against NEH in case I faced it. Because this deck overall struggles a bit in asset matchups. I also wanted to have a bit more safety against tag R+ decks, as it's definitely possible to have to end up taking a bit too much tags when ice is being rezzed for the first time.

Pinhole Threading

Probably somewhat obvious. But, you will draw the pinholes while setting up the board and can pick apart the doom remotes piece by piece to make it feasible to lock the remote.

Pichacao / Deep Dive

The gameplan of the deck is to sit back and lock the remote. This will eventually get you 2-4 points and then you can go for Legwork + Deep Dive to close out.

Miss Bones

Miss Bones is there to help with asset matchups. I'm still not entirely sure if it's better than Paricia as I haven't tested against assets that much. The + about Paricia is that it's tutoriable, the + about Miss Bones is that's a more tempo-positive card. So I'm not entirely sure if it was the right choice.

Thanks

Thanks to all the volunteers, fellow NSG members, fellow belgian players, everyone I was able to meet and all other players attending the event. I had a really fun time in Barcelona!