Palana Food Net, 2nd Vancouver Regionals, BC, Canada

Finally decided to cut the single-ton of TFP from my Tacoma version. Being greedy with the 1-influence was not worth the variance for me. Palana went 5-0 including both the Swiss and Double Elimination games I played. My record of the day was Bye, Sweep, ID, Split, ID. The two intentional draws were with Bluebird503 and Grogboxer from the Seattle/Portland area. It was the first time I tried ID, and was odd playing so few games. Completely made it up in the cut, as I had dropped a runner game and went into the loser's bracket. Played all the way back up to go against Bluebird503 again.

On the day of the regionals, Palana went against Au Revoir Andromeda, Whizzard x3, and Hyperdriver Kate with indexing and Freedom Through Equality. All 5 games were tough, but the Kate match up is the one that worries me the most. My Palana is still played with a rush mind set while leveraging net damage. Origin-wise I took ideas from Josh01's, TheBigBoy's, and most recently Bewnt/Frost-Duty's Palana.

Card Choices: -9 agendas to skip using The Future Perfect.

-Snares and Shock to protect R&D and HQ, with the shock sometimes punishing Datasucker farming on archives. The inclusion of these cards also facilitate the rush plan more, as they are always a big tempo hit to the runner. They're also great when Celebrity Gift'ed out along with any agenda. I would like to keep 2 Shocks, but I cut one to fit in an Executive Boot Camp. Slots are tight unfortunately.

-Executive Boot Camp is the funnier one for myself. I lost to the Falso Echo Ddos Val that Zane piloted in Tacoma, which further solidifies my distaste of not being able to rez ICE. Personally I dislike not being able to Rez my ICE and get Blackmail/Ddos spammed. It is included to up my Valencia match up, as well as a meta call to Indexing and Au Revoir Andy. It could be installed to reshuffle your deck when needed, search out a Jackson Howard, or tutor a Snare to HQ if a multi-access hits.

-Voter Intimidation is the new inclusion from Fear of the Masses, and may solidify Palana's presence as a Rush/Semi-Glacier deck to be on par with other competitive decks. During the double elimination games I used it to trash an early Wyldside against Whizzard; and trash a Same Old Thing against Kate to prevent further Indexing/Stimhack.

-Cortex Lock was swapped in place of my Pup's. Pups are amazing ICE's for their cost, I may be stupid for not using them, but I noticed that I bleed agendas easily with Pup's when I'm rushing. The early face-check punishment that Cortex Lock provides is nice for my own play style. It demands the runner to look for answers. It requires two cards for Faust, or mimic + sucker. Only time it is noticeably bad is if a shaper player has very fast access to 2x Self-Modifying Code, but it could be turned on again for the early/mid game by placing a gear check ICE in front to force the SMC out.

-Tollbooth is still kept to not lose to shapers, as my gear check ICE's (Lotus Field/Cobra) are kind of crummy against a mid to late game shaper that is locking R&D.

Strategy-wise it's fairly similar to what all Palana does: rush, and rush some more. I often look for a hand that has a Corporate Sales Team or just a hand with economy and Snare. The deck wants to go fast, but not reckless. Against Whizzard, I would often install advance an early Corporate Sales Team behind Wall of Static/Enigma/Lotus Field with no upgrades. They are challenged to show me whether they have Faust or not. This could be gauged on their first turn. With Kate and Hayley I would do the same, but against Criminals the game has to be slowed down considerably. An early scoring attempt with no upgrades is risky, but I'm willing to chance it if I could have a Corporate Sales Team scored.

CST has mostly been my priority as the first agenda score as it allows me to keep going. Nisei's will be chosen instead, if the economy is already well-established. Once the corp goes fast enough, the Snares/Komainu/Cobra/Cortex Lock will really shine in their value. Runners will definitely have to take runs that are less ideal with an impartial rig.

I'm quite satisfied with the deck thus far, but will always look for opportunities to improve upon it with newer cards and meta shifts.

My games could be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLizD77nmBM2vJ0jumWRi2Mkc5SIwedX3W

I played on stream on the third round of Swiss, and also quite a few ones on the cut.

(Runner side I used Whizzard)