Totally understandable in Chronos. Very different gameplan though.
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You’re amongst friends, tell us more of your desires…
This is the mindset to have with medical imho. You need the creds to get back into the ‘definite threat’ range for any non-rp jinteki deck, and the 3c for the runner makes hardly any difference (unless they are running more than one vamp in which case it can be a bummer).
This article is hosted behind 2 enigmas:
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I wonder what you would’ve said about L4J.
Any chance of retro NRDBiR?
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I’d consider doing it as a favor. I was undefeated with regass whizzard in 2013 regionals though, my opinion of him wouldn’t be the worst.
though it had djinn and easy mark in it, so wtf do I know.
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That’s a good deck though…
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One of the rarer ‘Quality tested’ NRDB front pagers.
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Yeah, this one mirrors what I expected…
This was my train of thought as I saw this on the front page: “Mimic as only breaker? Probably bad… … ABR + e3? Ok, we’re not Adam, right? There’s no way this can work… Hmm… Cutlery ice destruction to go with the ABR/e3, that could be interesting… Human First? And we’re done here.”
I didn’t look deeper to notice that there’s no draw engine at all here, and there’s no support for the Parasite. But yeah, your article is matching my opinions on the deck, and on Quetzal in general… (Stupid Lady, being too good…)
I think you could’ve analyzed ABR a little deeper and noted that it’s only good early, and by midgame you need to have capitalized and either gotten extra clicks, gotten some severe advantage, or destroyed the ABR so it isn’t hindering you. Anyone that isn’t Adam has to click to draw/install ABR before they can start getting its advantages, so they’re already disincentived from using it.
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I’m not going to lie, I “liked” this deck purely in hope that it would hit the front page and you’d have to review it. You did not disappoint.
I am officially undefeated with this deck on Jinteki, 1/1. After slogging through that match (against an Eliza’s Toybox ETF, new meta) I decided to retire the deck while I was ahead. I did get to fork a Janus for three clicks and three credits, so that’s exciting. I’m pretty sure I spent the rest of my clicks on cards and credits, one at a time.
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This deck is funny and makes low-ICE decks sad. Once its parts are out you can facecheck like you have a Snitch with an appetite for clicks. That’s pretty much where the good parts end.
ICE destruction decks are a neat idea, right? Typically the corp pays more to rez than the runner pays to break through the first time. Theoretically that would mean that destroying that ICE is better.
The math just isn’t there though. Say you run into something like a Komainu with this deck. Best case scenario you ABR/e3 to not die and jack out. Next turn you fork it for 2 creds and another 3 clicks. Gross.
There’s a reason why Parasite/Datasucker is the gold standard for destroying ICE - everything else is clunky, situational, and probably bad.
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I’ll admit i sleeved this deck up to actually see if the extreme end of the ABR + e3 combo has any semblance of merit. I can see some improvements that need to be made already (prepaid instead of human first / kati, probably either inject or earthrise) but if it doesn’t work extremely well off the bat i’m writing ABR+E3 at the bottom of the combo list (and it’s still bad in adam).
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Just reread this… what? Please tell me you didn’t use ABR on a janus 1.0 sub.
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Ha! Good catch, I got myself confused. I did fork a Janus, but it was late game. I’m trying to remember what I killed early game, it was some big nasty multi-sub that wasn’t a bioroid. Orion maybe? Wotan? No matter, that game was two one-armed men in a slapfight.
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I actually built a similar version of this deck after D&D came out but I feel I optimized it better. It ran Faust as it’s sole breaker and it ran PrePaid to reduce the cost of cutlery. It ran some draw (probobly not enough), a 3rd e3, and had a mild success rate. However, I bagged it because I could only make 1 run a turn, and I had too. Also, it was mind numbing to play.
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To be fair, looking back at the time L4J was up there, it was followed by Yellow Flash and preceeded by Redcoats 3.0 and Endless Waltz(v5). Decklist of the week being painfully janky every week seems to be a relatively recent thing - in fact there’s a there’s a pretty sudden shift in the type of decks around the start of August, with most decks prior to that having won or placed highly in tournaments. I guess by August the majority of regionals and nationals were done so people are looking at sillier things at this time of year? Will be interesting to see if it reverts to more solid lists next year once SCs start up.
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Since I’ve been playing Surfer Quetzal, this deck was intriguing to me. I came up with this modified list for testing:
I tried to keep an open mind about the original card choices and test with many cards I consider subpar. It was fun, but when your best case scenario is spending three clicks+credits to make a typical run, there are issues. I think it would be better with just Quetzal + Faust, no ABR (making it a completely different deck).
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Redcoats 3.0 was junk.
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There’s this great passage from The Way of Kings. Everything is clearly going to shit. No one has a shred of honor left. Its all backstabbing and a storm is on the horizon that will destroy everyone. Its basically there. And humanity’s last hope basically shows up 5 years late. And to this one of the most elusive characters goes into a diatribe about what people actually want. And its very on point.
What do people value most?
Its pretty simple. Novelty. Something new and unfamiliar. People like to pretend they want more than that. They even strive for it, but NRDB is base. They just want something different from what they’re used to. And they appreciate that which does something novel and is timely about it. No one wants to see another iteration of prepaid kate because everyone knows what prepaid kate does. Its interesting. Its been digested.
I’m cool with you guys wanting more out of the site. Its admirable and it does pull the site towards usefulness, but I will never be surprised to see Quetzal ABR E3 or its equivalent show up on the front page.
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I dont think it’s a typical run by most runners’ mindset though. Being able to trash every ‘good’ piece of ice the corp spends cash rezzing is nice (and obviously it wins at least a few games on variance), and the e3+ABR combo facilitates it, but poorly. Same with Quetzal herself. Honestly eater/keyhole/D4vid would be a much better choice, and out of val you can add 3 blackmails to the list (and replace a few of the weird nonbos like human first w/ prepaid) and have decent remote pressure as well as enough cutlery to decimate your choice of central.
Architect makes the whole idea moot in a lot of games though, as you’re still going to be paying that tax as soon as you hit it, and it’s probably the worst ice to facecheck that doesn’t immediately lose you the game (and even then sometimes it does lose you the game from the tempo).
It’s an interesting concept, and probably could be improved to be an outlier tier 1.5 deck imho, but probably not with e3 + ABR + Quetzal as the facilitator.