Yeah, I figured out who you were when you posted about the Chaos Theory/Oracle May deck that you were using when I literally played against you the night before in a store tournament at AOW, haha.
I disagree pretty heavily. Noise does (mostly) one thing very well ā thereās no denying heās on top at the moment, and likely to stay there. But there are reasons to play Gabe or CT, and I think there are a number of reasons to play Reina and Whizzard (and, hopefully, Quetzal). Fewer at the moment, but in terms of Noise counters coming up, we have:
-Hades Fragment for any deck with a 5/3, which makes Jackson much more powerful by helping to recur lots of things/requiring more frequent runs (which can be hurt with ELP).
-Hostile Infrastructure, where having one (or more than one, especially) rezzed greatly hampers Noiseās ability to mill easily.
Whizzard can trash things in play much more easily than Noise can, even if Noise can trash indiscriminately through R&D. Siphon/Denial strategies seem best played out of Reina to keep them both more taxing and also make it harder to recover enough to matter. Itās possible I just havenāt seen good Noise play, but while he seems more powerful he also seems to be much higher variance, whereas the other two can be more consistent.
I certainly donāt think Noise is going to drop to below Tier 1, but thereās going to be more issues playing him, and other strategies open that work pretty well, Iād say. The other IDs have strengths of their own, Iād say.
More expensive to use, too. Going up from 0 instead of 2 ā and, to be honest, Cuj.0 seems the weakest of the three Cerberus breakers (because its strength is lowest to start). Still might be very good for Quetzal though, thereās no denying that. And perhaps with D4V1D one could save Cuj.0 for the smaller-but-still-dangerous sentries like Rototurret.
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hostile infrastructure unfortunately does not trigger off noiseās mill since the corp is the one trashing the card not the runner.
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Honestly with 3 imps in my deck, and Iām always glad to see them, I have no need to run whizzard and sacrifice the bonus R&D accesses. And Reina is just no good comparatively. As for Gabe and CT and the rest, my point was, there are no other good Anarch IDās right now.
I see a lot of Noise players doing what you describe - trashing randomly off of R&D, often at odd points in their turn, and running archives every third click just to see the latest goodies. And that is high variance. But if the runner treats every virus as being an Imp token for R&D and is recurring Imp as well, then honestly I donāt think Whizzard comes close. Reina I agree plays a different game. Quetzal is going to have to learn a different game - I just donāt know what it is yet!
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It seems that quetzals advantages are time and porousity.
They decrease the time required to get running by enabling you to break barriers. However they also make existing ice more porous. Single Bastions, wall of statics, himiās become much cheaper to break.
The corp can, in the short term patch up the porosity by adding non barriers, or barriers in depth.
It would seem that the way to maximize the corp discomfort is to be able to have multiple advantages that key off each server. Bankjob, Imp for remotes. Keyhole, demo run for r & d. Demo run, imp, lamprey? for hq?
Quest completed for the whole thing? Notoriety?
early game yog is a bit of a tempo hit. Iāve been playing with overminds
and ā¦ wyrms. With scrubbedā¦ its ā¦ fun. Not competitve but fun.
I agree it seems ā¦ unfinished.
Was definitely wrong on hostile, thanks for the catch, @Remorhaz.
I disagree heavily on Imp invalidating Whizzard in any real capacity. Even if that was the case, thatād mean Whizzard reads āsometimes, save an Imp tokenā or āsometimes, be able to follow-up run more easilyā in Noiseās case. Sure, Noise gets other bonus R&D accesses, but he has to keep installing things to get them. Whizzard can, in my experience, have a pretty easy time clearing R&D out, double runs on R&D usually see different cards between his ability and Imps.
I mightāve just been seeing people play Noise wrong, from the sound of things, Iāll have to look into that. But I think yāall are selling Whizzard short. Still, Iāll give Noise more of a try myself and see if that changes my opinion on things.
This is just more or less true across the board, though. Noise really needs it, Whizzard and Reina want it, Quetzal really needs it (the Q deck Iād been fooling around with previously pretty much only needed Inject, and prepaid decks want it all the more). Getting the essential hardware/resources/events through the bonus programs is just a thing Anarch wants to be able to do more reliably.
I think the first thing everyone should do is to take Steven Wooleyās Anatomy of an Anarch Reina deck that he made such a strong showing with at regionals and port it directly into Quetzal, removing the Corroders. I donāt think that Wooley had the perfect list, and there are new considerations for todayās meta, but itās a good jumping off point. Getting cute with Darwin/E3 might be a fine way to go, but I think that youāre better off starting with a tried and true method of building Quet before you go ahead and conclude that she isnāt very good. Perhaps itās just your deck that wasnāt very good.
Personally, I think that the best way to go is with no Fracter whatsoever. Knight and Parasite will be able to get you by anything too ridiculous, and a credit denial/archives attacking plan will keep your opponent from being able to stack too many barriers to cancel out your ability. Whether Mimic/Yog is good or Darwin is good or Overmind/Knight is good or if youāre better off splashing breakers, I am not sure, but I think that at the very least she is going to want Knight.
I am leaning towards Siphon variants, which means including all 3 Siphon, because she can so effectively negate a lot of early game ICE. Medium to attack R&D, Siphon to attack HQ, and DLR to attack archives, alongside Parasite, will be the best way to make her ability work more than a simply economy boost, (which could be fine). Ideally, you stretch the corps ICE thin and put them on the back foot so that they canāt necessarily place their ICE where they want to, only where it is feasible, and so that you can punish them for playing, (hopefully) 5-8 useless or severely nerfed pieces of ICE in their deck.
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Medio, I definitely agree. To be honest, after I started this topic last night, this was the conclusion I came too. Although, I would probably also drop the indexing along with the corroders so I could run a 1 of E3, as well as maybe 1 quality time for card draw.
Iāll have to try out the Wooley build with her when I get a chance.
From what Iāve seen, the E3/Knight/Overmind/D4V1D build can get in anywhere at most stages of the game. Thatās surely worth something right? Nothing really stops this deck from accessing once per turn. This hurts HB the most Iād say, but itās clearly not a Noise style deck, and it does have strengths. Iāve been spending influence on Quality Time, E3, Legwork, and Scavenge and using the Deep Red/Overmind/Knight breaker suite. Medium digs R&D, Legwork digs HQ, Same Old Thing to recur Legwork, then Kati/Armitage/Daily Casts/Dirty Laundry econ. Kati works really well when youāre only running once per turn.
Of course, in my limited testing I played only HB and PE, so more testing is warranted. I did find that Parasite is necessary for ice like Komainu and NEXT Silver, but I donāt see the point of Datasucker. Itās not really an ice destruction deck. You get through the ice for fairly cheap and for little up-front investment.
Maybe Iāll start to see more of her issues with more testing?
I agree that I see the same thing youāre talking about. People who trash 1-2 random cards and then run archives. Not a great way to do things, in my opinion. The best noise players are the ones that run R&D then play a virus to get rid of the card they canāt interact with normally. In conjunction with Imp, like you said, can ensure the corp doesnāt get much to help. Between Imp, trashing with viruses and parasite kills, the best noise decks are focused ICE denial.
I tend to agree with @mediohxcore that Quetzal should be slotted in the AoA deck list. I was basically doing that with some small changes, and it was very successful. Knight, Overmind and D4v1d mean you can make costly runs more affordable and keep pressure on HQ with AS and then medium dig when you can. Plus, her ability means the cheap ETR ICE on HQ doesnāt do shit.
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Something else Iām realizing with Quetzal is that itās hard to know when someone just isnāt playing Ice because they know Quetzal will get through it. Swapped sides against my roommate and found that even though NEH kept winning, I was much more heavily pressured than Iād thought Iād been making him.
@mediohxcore has five videos up on his youtube channel of Quetzal games - an intro explaining the build, 3 NEH games, 1 Red Coats game. Spoilers, she does apply a lot of pressure against NEH but Red Coats is a significantly worse matchup.
Bonus: several of the videos have an adorable kitten in them.
Edited for clarification since evidently dogfooding was not as common of a term as I thought. Dan does not literally eat dog food. His or anyone elseās.
A kitten is a welcome reprieve from all this NRDB negativity. 
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what in the literal fuck does this mean
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LMGTFY: 
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He saw you and a pussy and was convincedā¦ We should all be.
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Iām even more confused now, should I be eating other peoples dog food? I always eat my own dog food.
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AS YOU CAN SEE IN THE VIDEOS I AM A CAT PERSON
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