Damn you Director Haas! ( 7 - 1 at Worlds )

First I should explain the name. It is temping to spin some Netrunner Fan-fic involving Val's endless quest to take revenge on the mother who abandoned her to the cruel streets of new Angeles ... or just the corp that sold her a crappy Adonis. But I renamed the deck this because my Food Coats went 2-6, thus robbing Cowboy Val of any sort of notable finish. It is a fairly standard "Good stuff" Val list. A description I think is now very appropriate, given the visible relief I saw on some opponents faces when I played desperado or clone chip and not fall guy. More accurately, it could be described as "Toronto Val" a deck shell many of the people from Toronto brought and was perfected by Dien Tran (who was 3rd after swiss). My contribution was a slavish dedication to including memstrips until it just looked normal to everyone and made its way into other builds. The others migrated to Turntable but I couldn't give up my criminal-wannabe ways and stuck to Desperado. It's an undeniably good console and turns sucker farming into big-agra. But, most importantly, as a player, I need it as an incentive to run. I've always loved control decks and building big rigs so a major weakness in my runner play style is passivity. Desperado is like a little bribe for me to play better.

Wins were against 2 NEH Fastro, 2 Haarp, 1 Blue Sun, 1 Weyland BABW, and 1 Sync. Loss was to HB FoodCoats piloted by UK Zach who ended up 15th after the Swiss. Clot recursion shutdown NEH and Sync pretty handily. I've had NEH players tell me clot is no big deal and, frankly, they're totally nuts. Val came back from 2 early astros scored with one token and a rezzed san-san she never bothered to trash to win 7-4. Pre clot that was a card scooping situation. Clot also a factor in the Haarp games, but it was really the 2 plascretes and 2 IHW that won those ones. I rarely can win against Haarp without going tag-me (and then you go super tag-me, was up to 21 tags in one game) but once you do with a plascrete down and likely IHW in hand, it's open season on centrals. The Blue Sun game was super close and I timed won on a yolo R&D run on last turn due to time. However, stimhack was a major factor in that one, denying the first oversight AI.

It's only a few cards off the deck I played at regionals so I probably won't change it much if I drag it out again, but a few things I'd consider:

• 2nd D4v1d. With HB Foodcoats everywhere and Archangel popular, high-strength ice is more and more common. With CVS hitting the bin pretty quick now-a-days you need an answer

• 2nd stimhack. With SMC and peddler, stimhack's even better than it's always been. Stimhacking to magically conjure a liberated, corroder, and parasite off a peddler, smc, and clone chip makes you feel like you can win any game.

• Taking out Faust. My toronto meta-mates are sick of me ranting and raving about how over-powered Faust is ( I really think allowing the easy exchange of one resource-type in a game for another at a 2:1 ratio is a big design mistake ). I mean, just compare it to previous AI breakers ... wait, I'm doing it again, I'll stop. Therefore, although Faust is a very strong (coughop) card, I felt dirty every time I saw it in my hand and I'm sure I avoided installing and using it even though I should have. I have no other answer to Lotus Field so not sure what I would replace it with though.

• 2nd Kati. Maybe cut 1 liberated for it, but I've been back and forth on that change many times.

• 3 datasuckers and 2 parasites. Another thing I've flipped-flopped on but not seeing suckers early can really limited opportunities for early aggression.

Thanks to all my friendly, fantastic opponents at worlds (sorry about that last turn top-deck Ran, you deserved that one). Comments and questions welcome.