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

Netrunner General
124

You’re too kind, really. The truth of it is that even with all the games I’ve logged with Anarch, a lot of my tendencies and valuations as a player can lead to trying to take the faction in the wrong direction (case in point, all the Quetzal Worlds testing that had to be scrapped right before the tourney). It’s really valuable to get varied perspectives so those tendencies level out, which I think is why we’re all here. Thank you though!

RE: Tinkering - I think it’s a lovely idea. I especially like 4 influence splashes in Anarch due to how much room we need for our in-faction programs, and I especially like events because event recursion is something we do better than anyone else (Deja Vu). My question is - does this solve the Quetzal problem or exacerbate it?

One thing that is mentioned throughout the thread is Quetzal’s ability to get an access but nothing to do with it. Play Medium, run through that Wraparound for a counter, and then sit back. They put another piece of ICE on it. The end. Same kind of thing with Keyhole…but even worse because they have time to get Howard/ICE out before Archives is worth running.

Tinkering doesn’t solve the “one access per turn, no punishment” problem of Quetzal. It DOES potentially get you into a surprise remote by Tinkering the outside, non-barrier ICE, or as you say, the hail mary 3-rung where you tinker a Sentry into a Code Gate, Yog through the Quandary, and Quetzal the Wraparound. It could also be useful for a surprise “you didn’t clear my 2-3 Medium counters” run. In those ways it works kind of like Inside Job, but better in most cases, worse in some. Turning any single sub piece of ICE off for a single run creates some interesting opportunities

The fact remains though that there’s no burst access cards for Anarch yet. Imagine if we had Legwork or Maker’s Eye in faction. Then Quetzal gets much better, and Tinkering with her additionally so. Right now, though, spending a Tinkering for a 1-2 card central access just doesn’t seem strong enough, especially when that influence could be 3x Diesel and 3x Special Order to get in the old fashioned way, with no Quetzal ability needed.

The good news is that we have things like the Breeding Ground and Wanton Destruction that might make Quetzal’s “higher odds of access on a single run” ability worth having. Tinkering wouldn’t play too well with the latter, but there could be nice plays with the former. Still, as a card that Anarch’s should be looking at, Tinkering isn’t awful. I only wish I could get 3x Personal Touch in there as well. And then again, we’re kind of the faction that has the more permanent backup access plans (Knight, D4V1D) so it might be best to splash things that get them when we need them instead of a short term effect like Tinkering.

Agreed about the vanilla/economy argument. I think that’s the only one that can be made. But I know Edward Kim is about to come out, and if I’m going vanilla, Edward is a much more appealing kind of vanilla. Put nearly any build on him and you’ll reap a solid benefit without jumping through any hoops whatsoever.

6 Likes
125

If you really want to solve the inconsistency issue you could simply splash Self-modifying code out of faction, it does cost 9 influence, but it lets you find Medium parasite, Datasucker AND mimic, I don’t have a complete list (and mine is based off of whizzard anyway) but here is a skeleton with 4 slots free, the free slots likely will be earthrise hotel when it comes out and something else, Probably from Order and chaos. It also could be the case that you want to play 1-2 other Techy programs (like Imp), or potentially play Diesel over lucky find (then adding in 1 Kati jones 1 armitage codebusting to keep the econ rolling)
SMC whizzard (41 cards)

Whizzard: Master Gamer

Event (11)
3 Dirty Laundry
3 Lucky Find
2 Stimhack
3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (2)
2 Grimoire

Resource (8)
3 Daily Casts
2 Kati Jones
3 Liberated Account

Icebreaker (7)
2 Corroder
2 Knight
2 Mimic
1 Yog.0

Program (13)
1 D4v1d
3 Datasucker
2 Medium
1 Nerve Agent
3 Parasite
3 Self-modifying Code

126

Don’t forget Hivemind which imo will be a very important support card for multiaccess, burning down ice and forcing purges which buys you more time.

There will also be Showing Off which will allow you to double up your Medium accesses (while not being vulnerable to Hostile Infrastructure like Demolition Run is), making those precious few runs you can make that much more effective.

I’m optimistic that Order and Chaos will have a lot to offer to Anarch.

1 Like
127

If tinkering weren’t 4 influence… man. If Anarchs didn’t need to import so much basic stuff I think we could see a truck-ton of mileage out of Tinkering into cutlery shenanigans.

I tend to agree with @botounami that w/r/t to “what anarchs do”/vanilla builds, Noise/Kim/Reina seem a cut above out of the gate, simply because their ability is guaranteed to be useful (Whiz too, for as long as HB/Glacier/NEH are a major thing).

If it does nothing else, I want O&C to make vanilla anarch “blowing stuff up well” a real, consistent thing.

1 Like
128

Funny you should say that… do you think maybe it’s because Quetzal isn’t really very Anarch? My personal theory is that she’s actually secretly Criminal. All the cards I find myself wanting to use to support a hyperactive, early aggression style that I think really suits her ability come from there: Desperado, Inside Job, E3 and Special Order, in particular. But not thematically, of course… theme is a whole other ball of wax.

While I think it makes sense to compare her to Kit for the early aggression thing, I definitely think they would both be sold short as “one run per turn” runners.

2 Likes
129

Quetzal will have her time to shine, but it’s not now. This is a very long thread so might have been said earlier but in that case it’s worth repeating:

Untill we get a meta-shift either from new breakers and/or new ICE or some serious change in the power-level of the current ID’s there are not enough barriers around to warrant her ability.

Right now we are in the age of code-gates. Currently corps use very few gear-check barriers and it’s against these that Quetzal is very very good.

2 Likes
130

I think I agree with that.

131

From my experience playing her, you actually need to eschew some of the classic thinking in anarch of fully exploiting open servers…or rather augment it. Since she is good for 1 big run per turn like kit, you should be looking to legwork and Maker’s eye.

I combine E3 and overmind with deep red and bishop with scrubbed to make super cheap runs, one time per game, and access a pile of cards. Same old thing with legwork and TME grabbing lots of cards all the time. E3 helps you tear through bioroids in its own right, and works fantastically with Overmind and scrubbed/bishoped ice. You can rot the strength of every ice in a single server pretty easily. Also I include keyhole to give that second wind/long game of heavy hits, creating a form of ineviability. I also slot a hades to capitalize on Keyhole late if I draw Hades early.

The economy package looks like kati jones with some small bursty econ like sure gamble and lucky find, which is definitely a ‘haymaker’ style econ (backed with stimhacks to close scoring windows). With just overmind out you can threaten remotes and make the corp second guess putting things in the remote, and open up a good legwork after a while.

This couples with grabbing a few points early when you’re drawing for cards instead of drawing for corroder to get in. Her ability opens up a smooth aggression pattern over the course of the game, not ramping up into the crazy late game anarchs can get to, but not as efficient as the criminals…its almost shapery. You could argue that any other anarch could do this given the tools I’ve given Quetzal, but she gets even more synergy from the tools. Here is the list that I’ve been using to good effect, having taken out the Maker’s eyes for more econ and HQ access thanks to NEH.

Quetzal Free Spirit
15 influence spent (max 15) •••••••••••••••
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to All That Remains
Event (14)

3x Inject
3x Lucky Find ••••• •
3x Retrieval Run
2x Scrubbed
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (9)

3x Deep Red
2x e3 Feedback Implants ••••
2x HQ Interface ••••
2x Plascrete Carapace
Resource (4)

1x Hades Shard •
3x Kati Jones
Icebreaker (8)

2x Cerberus “Cuj.0” H3
3x Knight
3x Overmind
Program (10)

3x Bishop
2x D4v1d
2x Keyhole
3x Parasite

Before you freak out that I’m not using deja vu, and a million parasites, and running datasuckers at all…these are tested decisions that work because of the AI based suite (overmind). Parasites are for low str ice so you can save counters on OM, and only used on big ice when you can insta it with parasite/bishop/scrubbed (think about it like only running Wyrm).

It is definitely way more shaper than traditional anarch, I recommend giving it a shot, its fun if nothing else, and is very effective against HB and NEH, RP can be a bit of a hassle, they’re why I keep parasites in the deck at all. If RP is too much of a headache, switch cujo back to mimic, that helps some. Keyhole helps against PE a little, especially if you can slip a hades onto the table in reasonable time.

1 Like
132

fyi I wasn’t arguing just voicing an alternative opinion.
fyi I am very high right now so I didn’t really read many more responses

2 Likes
133

This makes me think that Incubator (and Hivemind?) might help her some. Incubator might take some time, but it lets you save up for big Medium runs out of nowhere. That said, might be too slow in comparison to Legwork/Maker’s Eye.

134

Yea, I think if you insist on viruses, grimoire, surges, etc. I played kit for a while, and it feels very similar in the sense that early game you’re running one time per turn effectively, so you you need to be able to capitalize on it…

135

I think there’s a lot of truth here. Anarc’s support cards are built around repeated runs at a soft target. But with the recent hate directed at the fixed breakers, corp’s stronger economies and parasote those soft targets don’t really exist to the same extent. Increasingly the card pool is moving anarch towards “one big run a turn” but with exception of Noise they don’t really have support abilities to make best use of it.

5 Likes
136

I don’t know… many of the Anarch ID abilities play pretty decently with either repeated runs or one run per turn.

Its just that the better game plan has almost always been the criminal MO of run as much as possible. Anarchs can do that, and they have tools that help them blow the game wide open when they do, but cards like Medium and Nerve Agent also work well incrementally. One run a turn while moneying up or powering up a medium or nerve agent isn’t that bad.

I just don’t think the tools are all there to make it truly viable.

137

Well, that’s… the thing? Most IDs can handle either one, it’s the tools that were being criticized, I think.

After all, they’ve had to basically hate out Mimic and Yog to some extent, but both of those are super effective at getting multiple runs in. So while other factions have more money/breaker options to choose from, Anarchs have to import solutions or manage the board very carefully. Along with importing card draw and economy in the first place, often.

The Criminal MO is/was built almost completely on Anarch gear that Anarchs can’t make as good use of by and large, after all. It is – or was – theoretically an Anarch MO as well.

One run/turn, if it’s cheap enough, is fine, slowly building up your stuff. But all too often making that run dependings on them not wiping viruses sooner or later – and when they do, you lose an awful lot of stuff.

This is why I’m hoping O&C has some new, 3-inf breakers that Anarchs can use without having them splashed every which way and then hated out for being too good and too omnipresent. We need options.

3 Likes
138

There’s unconfirmed posts from the usual spoiler source on 4chan that there are no new Anarch breakers bar an AI one (with a weird twist to it, of course). But there are a suite of cards involving ice destruction or avoidance.

Personally I’m hoping for more things that sit on ice and are really bad. Rook on an architect is not good, but Architect is such a pain (and Rook normally not so important) that it’s not such a big deal. But imagine if there were some similar card with worse effects than Rook? Untrashable ice starts to look a bit of a liability for the corp, and it can get rid of non-Parasite targets by just making them awkward to keep sat around. It also forces the Corp into an awkward decision (which is what a lot of Anarch cards are built around).

139

I think we’ve all been there with that exact scenario. And you’re one of the Anarch players I most respect in the whole wide world (that AoA build did work for me in Nationals!). But in’t this the Anarch problem you’re describing, rather than the Quetzal problem?

Stacking barriers (and they have to be proper ETR barriers that a parasite can’t deal with) is not a common scenario because most non-Weyland decks simply don’t run that many ETR barriers, and I don’t think it’s ideal for the corp server structure. It’s a pain when it happens, but then at least you’ve another server where they surely haven’t stacked barriers you can’t deal with via some other tool…right?

Here’s another view: a full rig (fracter, killer, decoder) is a three card combo (in a faction with no tutors). Quetzal reduces that to a two card combo, making her way more consistent in getting a full rig out early. (Yes, it’s a rig that doesn’t break every piece of ice, but so is any three piece rig that isn’t something like Garrotte, Corrodor, Gordian Blade). Rather than early pressure, she’s early rig-assembly. So we should probably be trying to find decks that make use of that rush to the lategame, not trying to leverage her mildly extended early game.

2 Likes
140

Ugh, dangit all. We already have finnicky AI breakers. Darwin is temperamental, Knight takes time to set up and is limited in application – and is stonewalled by Blue Sun in multiple respects. Atman is actually good, so maybe this new thing will be so as well – but almost all AI breakers are massively inefficient or tricky to use or both.

Like, Ice Destruction is nice, but there’s a limit to how many copies of Forked or Immolation Script that you can run in addition to Parasite, because they’re both more limited.

And while something that sits in play and makes their ice worse would be nice, I have no faith in such things being super useful, especially while Blue Sun remains a pretty common deck, unless they’re much faster and more effective than Caissa for even just the one turn.

To be more honest/accurate: it’s a bit of a nuisance as a big fan of Anarch that so many of our good toys have been splashed to the point of being insufficient, so they add new toys we also must run. If the new AI breaker can actually happily replace one of our core breakers, maybe that’ll be fine – but right now Mimic and Corroder/Morningstar both remain pretty vital.

Anarch is unlikely to get the kind of tutoring that makes the fixed-strength breakers with datasucker so useful for Criminal (and Shaper). Adding more programs that they need to keep installed – D4V1D, for instance – helps them, but cuts down further on deckspace in the most combo/synergy-heavy faction and also eats up MUs (that are already hard to find room for in the deck).

Hence my bleh. I might totally change my tune when I see this AI breaker, but if it’s not Atman-level playable I can’t see the problem being fixed so soon.

1 Like
141

That was pretty much my reaction. But it’s just 4chan rumours, so how accurate can they be?

142

Depends on who makes 'em, I guess.

And part of the frustration for me, I’ll admit further, is that most ice destruction stuff we’ve got, while nice, doesn’t really remove the need for breakers or whathaveyou. The ice has to be rezzed or broken, so instant-speed play with lots of virus counters at the ready is almost a requirement. It’s not bad, and it certainly sucks for the corp…

But right now, Shapers do it better, they have instant-speed access to parasites, can recur them so as to get more use out (since the clone chips have other uses), and have the economy and card draw to get what they need when they need it.

Anarchs, though… don’t, really. I mean, with the spoiled things we’ll have up to 9 cards that destroy ice, 12 if you add in Knights and hope they trash 'em, and you can bump that up further with Deja Vu and Clone Chip.

But… that’s a lot of cards for something that isn’t a win condition. It’s helpful, certainly, I’m just worried about fitting all the ice destruction necessary in while also retaining the breakers to be safe from the ice I can’t destroy, the econ to be able to push things out and recur them (though that’s most easily dealt with), and the card advantage to get the stuff I need without binning most of it at the same time.

Certainly not impossible, and with Hivemind and Stim Dealer and other spoiled cards there should be some degree of ability to make this viable. I guess we’ll see if it’s doable enough to stand up against Blue Sun, ETF, RP, and all the other plans out there right now.

1 Like
143

Here’s the thing, I think anarch is designed to rely on AI breakers, with Normal breakers as support. That is why they have or for the longest time HAD the most AI breakers. All AIs have to come with a drawback, or else people would start playing only them, requiring more silver bullets. I think maybe there will be a way to use 2-3 AI breakers in anarch to eliminate the weaknesses, and allow you time to get suckers, and use your trusty efficient breakers where necessary, and work in conjunction with ice destruction. I mean, atman is already a great splash, tsk tsk its high influence, but we can’t have everything.

I believe once we get the big box, anarchs will be very insane. A lot of it is going to be when you sit across from an anarch, you won’t know exactly what to expect, because there are lots of avenues to victory in anarch, we just need the tools to enable it…perhaps they’re developing it such that that ambiguity is a launchpad for victory.