My humble thoughts on Quetzal, and why I don't think she will be very good(Please prove me wrong)

Dragar · September 24, 2014, 12:01am

Himitsu is not best described as vulnerable to parasite!

moistloaf · September 24, 2014, 12:59am

Right? “okay, i’ll bounce back to hand… reinstall”

bblum · September 24, 2014, 1:03am

The runner can kill himitsu-bako with parasite if they use a clone chip and sucker tokens all at once before the corp gets priority.

Ajar · September 24, 2014, 2:08am

You can’t use Datasucker tokens until you’re encountering the ice. The corp has a paid ability window between when the runner can install Parasite with Clone Chip and when they can lower its strength with Datasucker.

bblum · September 24, 2014, 2:15am

Can’t the runner install parasite during the encounter, at 3.1?

Ajar · September 24, 2014, 2:28am

I assume so, but the Corp does get priority in 2.3 after runner paid abilities. So if they see you approaching with 2 suckers and a Clone Chip, they do have an opportunity to pull the Bako before you encounter it – regardless of whether you installed a Parasite in 2.3 or were planning to wait until 3.1.

But yes, I think you’re right that if they don’t pull the Bako, you can Clone Chip the Parasite in 3.1 and then use your suckers (which is the earliest you can use the suckers).

Apo · September 24, 2014, 12:07pm

Yeah, basically the runner needs to datasuck Himitsu Bako first, and then (while still in 3.1) install Parasite for the instant kill.

Arkhon · September 24, 2014, 12:09pm

Yeah the Sucka/Parasite shenanigans is what I was referring to.

But who in their right mind would do that? The Runner wants rid of a barrier that the Corp has bought and paid for, so instead of making the Runner pop a Clone Chip or SMC, pay $2 and use their DS counters you’re suggesting the Corp should pay $1 to simply remove the obstacle on their behalf?

There is a fringe case when that is reasonable: The Runner is clean in on HQ; there’s nothing the Corp can do to prevent access and the winning agenda could be stolen this turn. Reclaiming Himitsu Bako dilutes the agenda density in HQ and might save the day.

Anyway, the point I’m making is that Quetz might want to be killing the small stuff and leaving the big stuff for D4v1d / her own ability to deal with. That leaves a mid-range of strength at 3-4 that will put her to a decision. Quetz won’t be running often if she’s foregoing a fracter, so she won’t be racking up the DS counters like Andromeda can so she can’t just assassinate them with Parasites.

Ajar · September 24, 2014, 9:04pm

Keeping an ETR barrier sub around vs Quetzal seems like it would have value in some cases, but in general I certainly agree that I’d rather make Quetzal use a Clone Chip if that’s the only way she’s getting past it.

I do very much agree with your broader point. I’m not quite sure how the deck comes together, but the concept has a lot of appeal.

karmaportrait · September 24, 2014, 11:59pm

So, does anyone have a decklist they’d like to share?

I’ll start with one variation I’ve been running - nothing remarkable and decidedly just OK.

I am interested to see what the Anarch console looks like, but we have to wait two more datapacks for it. Also wish Astrolabe was only 1inf (and not Box-e) otherwise I’d totally splash it.

Quetzal Crescentus Lucky Find (45 cards)

Quetzal: Free Spirit

Event (8)
3 Lucky Find
2 Quality Time
3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (5)
2 Clone Chip
3 Grimoire

Resource (8)
3 Armitage Codebusting
3 Daily Casts
2 Kati Jones

Icebreaker (6)
3 Darwin
3 Knight

Program (19)
3 Crescentus
3 D4v1d
2 Datasucker
3 Djinn
2 Imp
1 Medium
1 Nerve Agent
3 Parasite

xWZRDx · September 25, 2014, 4:07am

This is what I have been playing with recently, to a decent amount of success. It doesn’t run siphon, but it’s better than it looks I assure you. The one quality time is there to dig through the deck if you don’t get your key pieces(Darwin, E3, Cyberfeeder, Kati), ESPECIALLY DARWIN. Surge is there for when the corp has a false sense of security after purging Darwin, as well as when a corp is waiting to purge for a parasite on a big ice and you can surprise them with it. I chose to include so many maker’s eye’s and legworks because I think Quetzal has one good run in her per turn, depending on who she is facing, so those runs have to count. Versus Glacier/HB fast advance it will cost you a pretty penny to get in, so you better have a Maker’s legwork or a same old thing handy to make that run count. I also considered Keyhole, but that would mean you can only get one agenda per run, which can get very expensive.

Identity
Quetzal: Free Spirit (First Contact)

Event (19)
2x Déjà Vu (Core Set)
2x Surge (Humanity’s Shadow)
3x Queen’s Gambit (Double Time)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
1x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow) •
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) •• ••
3x The Maker’s Eye (Core Set) •• •• ••

Hardware (7)
3x Cyberfeeder (Core Set)
2x Grimoire (Core Set)
2x e3 Feedback Implants (Trace Amount) •• ••

Icebreaker (5)
3x Darwin (Future Proof)
2x Knight (Mala Tempora)

Program (5)
3x Parasite (Core Set)
2x D4v1d (The Spaces Between)

Resource (9)
3x Liberated Account (Trace Amount)
3x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)
3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

Total Cards: 45
Total Influence: 15

moistloaf · September 25, 2014, 3:28pm

Here’s the fixed version of the list I posted above. So far I have only played it twice, to 2 wins, versus PE and ETF.

###[Quetzal Denial 1.1][1] (45 cards)

[Quetzal: Free Spirit][2]

Event (12)

2 [Account Siphon][3] ••••• •••
1 [Deja Vu][4]
3 [Dirty Laundry][5]
1 [Quality Time][6] •
3 [Sure Gamble][7]
2 [Vamp][8]

Hardware (5)

3 [Deep Red][9]
2 [E3 Feedback Implants][10] ••••

Resource (10)

3 [Daily Casts][11]
2 [Duggar’s][12]
2 [Public Sympathy][13]
3 [Same Old Thing][14]

Icebreaker (4)

2 [Knight][15]
1 [Mimic][16]
1 [Yog.0][17]

Program (14)

2 [Crescentus][18] ••
1 [D4v1d][19]
2 [Imp][20]
1 [Keyhole][21]
3 [Parasite][22]
3 [Pawn][23]
2 [Rook][24]

xantcha · September 25, 2014, 6:01pm

To offer a few thoughts and a decklist - with apologies in advance for length - I’ve been experimenting with a couple Quetzal lists recently (drawing inspiration from many folks in this thread and on other sites). I think the Account Siphon variant is, not unsurprisingly, likely to be very strong – and I would love to hear more people’s experiences with that.

Tried an Atman-Datasucker version for a little while, without too much luck – but it seemed like there was some potential there as well (I’m probably too cautious about playing out Atman).

What I’m currently looking at is:

Testzal (45 cards)

Quetzal: Free Spirit

Event (15)

3 Deja Vu 3 Diesel ••••• • 3 Dirty Laundry 2 Scavenge •••• 3 Sure Gamble 1 Vamp

As expected for Quetzal, this is a deck designed to push in the early game. It’s supposed to work better with E3, but not absolutely rely on it for any results.

Icebreakers:
• Knight gets through pretty much anything as needed.
• Mimic is included because the deck likes to start running ASAP, preferably on Turn 1, but does not particularly want to hit any of the nasty Jinteki sentries and lose all its cards. Also cuts through Rototurret, Caduceus, Lancelot, etc. – the things one does not want to see up front. D4v1d and Knight tend to solve the problem of bigger sentries fairly handily.
• D4v1d has been great. It’s just nice to run into Tollbooth when at 2 credits, breaking it for a token and no other cost. Can be reset with Scavenge and Déjà vu, of course.

Engine:
• The deck tends to run on fairly few credits, so Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry and Armitage provide the majority of the economy. Breaker costs are pretty low in general, and Spinal Modem helps. Would really like to work in a few more money cards, though.
• Diesel and John Masanori do reasonably well at keeping cards flowing, and Diesel will likely be Inject as soon as it becomes available.

What didn’t work:
• Datasucker was not particularly relevant. Knight is strong enough for everything but Wotan, Curtain wall and their ilk, and Quetzal + E3 can handle one of those. You need two counters to get Mimic able to break Grim and three for Archer, and D4v1d can handle them anyway.

Strengths:
• Speedy. Quetzal/Knight + multi-access from Medium and Nerve Agent helps keep your speed up, and Imp (if drawn) can knock Biotics or Fast Tracks out of NEH’s hand (though it still wins a lot). More testing is definitely needed.
• Good efficiency overall. I’ve been very impressed with the economic benefits of Quetzal’s ability (e.g. saving three credits on breaking a Bastion). Breaking Heimdall 2.0 for two credits is pretty nice too.
• DLR/Joshua B. have been pretty strong performers at presenting an alternative angle of attack on Archives.
• Scavenge is great at resetting the program that’s most needed at a given moment to keep the pressure on.

Weaknesses:
• Small code gates. Mostly, these are solved with Parasite or Knight – but even an Enigma can provide a scoring window while I wait for Parasite to tick down. Lotus Field is really only solved by Knight. Hope they’re not running 3x Lotus Field?
• Lack of Corp economic disruption. Vamp has been hard to use without the credit boost from Account Siphon to power it up. Maybe try Rook?
• Weak economy. There’s only nine cards that provide extra credits, which means that trashing a lot of assets or stealing NAPD Contract or Fetal AI can be an issue.

Thoughts/Questions
Overmind players: it’s a strong consideration in the place of Mimic, but it seems less relevant in the early game when there’s less memory available, only a couple ways of resetting the counters, and no guarantee of E3. What have other folks’ experiences been? It just seems frustrating to hit Komainu or Tsurugi and have to blow a whole Overmind’s worth of counters…is the best answer to just take the net damage and Parasite it ASAP? Or does that just not happen enough to worry about?

What do folks think about tag/no-tag planning? I’d like to run Daily Casts or Kati to provide a little more stable economy, but it’s nice to be able to drop Joshua B. early and start trading tags for clicks. Just seems like either would be the absolute saddest draw as soon as the second or third tag hits.

Chris_Pedersen · September 25, 2014, 7:20pm

No plastic - how do you defend against scorch?

JohnnyCreations · September 25, 2014, 8:02pm

FYI - if you export in “Markdown” and then just copy and paste, it will preserve all the hyperlinks in Meteor (from a longtime Meteor user, f*ck NetrunnerDB!)

CcharmM · September 25, 2014, 8:04pm

Here is my Quetzal deck
I find this build to have a lot of flexibility. I’m playing an attack all servers game.

Some things I’ve noticed when playing Overmind/knight:
You can get in when you want but less often, that pressure is on from turn one. And you never really lose the ability to access servers EXCEPT komainu/tsurugi are very annoying. I put in a djinn as a 4th parasite (among other things) just to have more consistency vs this ice.

  I was playing deep red, then grimoire, now Box-E. I have found Box-E to help me in more situations than the other two. Both deep and grim are more aggressive but box-e fills in my weaknesses vs discard and allows me to keep more event Econ in hand, and helps a lot with Duggar's. 

  I'm all event Econ to save on clicks and due to DLR. I had in armitage but the. 6clicks for money in addition to Duggar's was too much passive clicking. I prefer the corp not to know if I can actually get into a server since Overmind/knight can be costly in deep scoring servers. Stimhack has been additionally useful in this deck when playing glacier. 

 I put in a hemorrhage and it's very happy as a one of with djinn to find it. It's not something I want in 60% of the games but when NEH is waiting on the last combo piece it's great to use pad campaign to knock the others out of hand. It's been more reliable in those situations than legwork/imp since the accesses are free and consistent.

  This deck is a little slower than a couple other variations I've tested but I fend myself in unsolvable situations less often.

I think the advantage of this ID is not directly in the rush strategy but in the ‘every angle spreads the corp thin’ strategy.

The issue as always is a desire for more money, and more clicks.

Identity:
1x Quetzal: Free Spirit

Event: (15)
2x Dirty Laundry
3x Deja Vu
2x Stimhack
3x Sure Gamble
2x Account Siphon ■■■■ ■■■■
3x Queen’s Gambit

Hardware: (7)
3x Box-E ■ ■ ■
2x E3 Feedback Implants ■■ ■■
1x Plascrete Carapace

Program: (17)
2x D4v1d
3x Knight
3x Overmind
3x Imp
3x Parasite
1x Medium
1x Djinn
1x Hemorrhage

Resource: (7)
2x Data Leak Reversal
2x Joshua B.
3x Duggar’s

WUWU · September 29, 2014, 10:50pm

I ran Quetzal at a 24 person tournament in Seattle yesterday. Sat at the top table through five rounds of swiss and finished with the highest SoS, but couldn’t manage two more prestige against stiff competition to take down first. Ended up third place overall, going 3-2 with Quetzal. Had wins against two NEH astrobiotic decks, and a RP Glacier deck, with loses against (not surprisingly) Making News scorch and NEH scorch.

First off I think people aren’t familiar enough with Q yet, and corps might be underrating her at this point, leading to a subtle advantage that is hard to quantify. Once players have a solid grasp of when and where to stack barriers, or when to toss barriers the strength of her ability might go way down. As the meta stands, with NEH fast advance being the top corp deck, I think she is a really solid runner.

If you look at the typical NEH deck, they are almost always running 3 Pop Ups, and 5-6 barrier ice, in some combination of Eli and Wraparound. Without savvy placement, that’s 8-9 pieces out of the usual 15 ice that you are blowing through without a breaker. That’s incredibly solid.

With that said, I was running an AoA build, and in my opinion, it’s the best archetype we have in Anarch right now, and hasn’t even reached it’s full potential yet. AoA is solid with each identity, all providing their own unique advatages, so it’s tough to say if Quetzal will take the place of Noise or Reina, but I’m definitely going to test a lot more with her. Especially an event (I’m looking at you Demo Run) and resources heavier, program lighter version once Inject is released.

karmaportrait · September 29, 2014, 11:00pm

Third place is great.

Were you going Deep Red + Overmind?

WUWU · September 29, 2014, 11:04pm

I was running 3 Overmind and 2 Deep Red. Honestly, I was disappointed seeing either card in my hand, and (if I recall correctly) only installed Overmind once during the tournament. Most the time I was running without a breaker. I’m going to start testing with Knight, David, and Parasite as my only ice solutions.

jerklin · September 30, 2014, 12:50am

I’ve dropped down to nothing but Knight and Parasite to deal with ice for the same reasons you mention and it’s been doing ok. Still strong vs NEH, and I played some more against Dan playing PE and Masanori helped a lot there (got down to one card left in my grip!). Also had an interesting match last night vs a Foundry build that was able to double stack barriers but ultimately couldn’t keep up with parasite + knight and aggressive running.

I’m sure it punts the glacier matchup hard, but you’re not going to get much done there with Overmind anyway.

Ultimately I think the threat of Siphon is many times more important than the Siphons themselves and I’m going to try and build it closer to Steve Wooley’s “Back to Basics” worlds deck and just focus on running aggressively while getting a lot of accesses and bringing out breakers when needed. I think going Legwork instead of HQI, and sticking with the Special Orders and maybe some Clone Chips should do the trick.

Also curious about how desperado and/or security testing would work out.

My humble thoughts on Quetzal, and why I don't think she will be very good(Please prove me wrong)

Event (15)

Hardware (6)

Resource (9)

Icebreaker (5)

Program (10)