Pool Party (2-2 (kinda but actually 1-3) at Bristol SC)

I put The Class Act in Val because

1. If you have both it and Liberated Account out it's like there's a little pool party on the table, and
2. What the hell else was I supposed to spend influence on?

But seriously, I wanted to play something familiar and good because I couldn't be bothered to build and practice new decks, and I had a good time with Crowdfunding Val before Crowdfunding got restricted. With a 9 influence hole to fill, I got thinking around new cards and for whatever reason inspiration struck and told me to play The Class Act.

Despite the truly ludicrous 5 influence per copy, the reasoning is fairly sound: Val likes consistency and sometimes has draw problems, and The Class Act provides consistency and really smooths out your draw. It's a nice and sensible enhancement to an already nice and sensible deck.

So I slammed 2 copies in, replacing an Earthrise Hotel and cutting an Aumakua, and started looking to fill the remaining 2 slots before I was wisely recommended to play 1 The Class Act and 2 Hostages instead, both saving 1 influence and increasing your odds of getting it out. This was better in every way so I did that, keeping that Aumakua.

But now I still had 1 slot to fill and 2 Hostages not doing much else! So I looked around for another connection, initially hitting on The Archivist to maybe get some more bad pub and remembering it being a spicy 1-of in the 2018 world champ's deck, but decided against it for being a bit too cute. Kati Jones was my second choice, primarily to smooth out the econ a bit, but between it's slow return on investment (especially after Hostage-ing it out) and seeing that a couple of people were maybe going asset spam on the day (I didn't play them in the end) I switched the slot to Scrubber,

It was fine, it didn't do too much but I didn't hate it. The slot should have definitely been Kati in retrospect, but it wasn't the end of the world.

On the day, I officially went 1-3 with the list because round 3 was a 2-4-1 that I lost as corp, but we played out the 2nd round for fun and I won, so I'm counting that as a victory in spirit (and to make myself feel slightly better)

1. Lose vs Azmari. He took the money lead, I stole a Degree Mill, he had drawn into all 3 Punitive Counterstrikes super early, gg
2. Lose vs The Outfit. Struggled to find a Paperclip or Aumakua for most of the game, and by the time I did he was at 4 points and advancing a City Works Project. Stealing it cost me a bit too much money and left me at 1 card, and I got Punitive'd again. gg
3. Win vs Blue Sun but it was friendly after I lost the 2-4-1 as corp so I guess doesn't actually count. They were also on @Nemamiah's Blue Sun list and it was a super interesting and fun game! Playing 2 Mining Accidents turn 1 was probably one of the deciding parts of that game.
4. Win vs Mirrormorph. Fun game, deck did what it was supposed to do quite cleanly which is always satisfying.

With my corp going 3-1 I finished 14th out of 23.

If you want to play reg Val then this deck was basically fine, just swap the Scrubber for Kati Jones, unless your meta is very asset-heavy I guess. It's a pile of good Anarch cards that just uses its influence in a comically understated fashion. Part of me wants to find space for maybe a third Paperclip (and maybe 3 of each breaker?) because getting locked sucks, but hell if know what to cut.