Quetzal Trashes Everything - Second Place Chi-Lo Grudge Match

[sydwys8]

As the title suggests, this is the Runner deck that placed second at Chi-Lo in Louisville.

Quetzal was a meta call, and boy was it spot-on. This deck beats HB, Blue Sun, and Jinteki PE pretty consistently thanks to card efficiency and Keyhole. The best way I can describe this deck is that when I draw my starting hand, I have no idea what my "final" rig will look like, mostly because the deck is built around digging through your deck with Inject and using Retrieval Run/ Clone Chip to get important programs at the last possible moment. The only change I can see coming to this deck from Order and Chaos -2 Earthrise Hotel, -1 Dirty Laundry, +3 Steelskin.

I'm not posting the Corp deck because it was a nothing special Tennin No Remotes, and the Corp didn't fair nearly as well in the top 8. This Quetzal deck won 4 out of the 5 games it played in the top, and only lost a total of 2 games all day.

Quetzal: Free Spirit (First Contact)

Event (12)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
2x Retrieval Run (Future Proof)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
1x Legwork (Honor and Profit) ••
3x Inject (Up and Over)

Hardware (7)
2x Grimoire (Core Set)
2x e3 Feedback Implants (Trace Amount) ••••
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) ••••• •

Resource (12)
2x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set)
3x Kati Jones (Humanity's Shadow)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Hades Shard (First Contact) •
1x Utopia Shard (All That Remains) •
2x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)

Icebreaker (6)
1x Corroder (Core Set)
1x Mimic (Core Set)
1x Yog.0 (Core Set)
1x Femme Fatale (Core Set) •
2x Knight (Mala Tempora)

Program (8)
2x Datasucker (Core Set)
2x Parasite (Core Set)
2x Keyhole (True Colors)
2x D4v1d (The Spaces Between)

15 influence spent (maximum 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Source

[eric_c]

Congrats on kicking ass with Quetzal! Super impressive that you took Quetzal that far at such a competitive tournament (felt like everyone toward the top end was just a straight-up murderer with their decks). I was disappointed that I didn't get to play you again, even though I went up against Lucas' very different -- so weird and so awesome -- Quetzal deck. Will definitely be giving this list a try.

How is the Blue Sun matchup? I imagine Quetzal's ability gives you a big edge, but you just depend on out-moneying (and Utopia) to avoid Scorch?

[Ravlin]

I really think that Quetzal is better than people give them credit for.

They walk all over Blue Sun since they run so many barriers that Quetzal just laughs and laughs at. That helps keep Blue Sun's money down and Utopia is pretty good scorch defense. Even when I got hit with scorches yesterday Utopia did its job and pulled one of the kill cards out of their hand, but when the corp has three scorches, or punitives on one turn and sea source scorch on the next there is only so much to be done.

[sydwys8]

Utopia and Keyhole is exactly what gives the Blue Sun match an edge, as well as the fact that they can't Oversight AI any of their big ice (Curtain Wall and Janus). Keyhole was really MVP at this tournament.

[DJhedgehog]

Final game against this deck was super intense. Great game last night.

The card draw and aggression really mount up and you were able to make some very efficient runs with Quetzal's ability and datasuckers. Clone Chip is a great call for this deck.

You never got the keyhole running on me, but that would have been miserable. It doesn't really look like much Econ here but you were never hurting for money in our game. Probably due to the aforementioned efficiency.

[Ajar]

For the peanut gallery, note that this was a meta in which AstroScript was restricted to one per deck.

[Calimsha]

Yeah I looked at the deck and the first thing coming up my mind was " ow boy how this deck can remotely win against astrobiotic?". Then I read your post and understood what happened.

[DonTankMeBro]

Green sweater guy here Wow, one legwork and no SoT? Watching him play this deck I was ready impressed at how tight it was- he was able to make 2 runs a turn (at least one) while still drawing cards and bringing in credits to fuel the machine. Obviously tailored to a meta full of barriers and bioroids, but it was still impressive to watch. Congrats again on 2nd place!

[Ravlin]

I have found with my own Quetzal list that with NEH the ice is porous enough to give you enough time to find what you need against the gear check ice.

Give it a shot before you write it off against Astro-bio.

[mendax]

Quetzal in general, maybe. This Quetzal though would probably fail miserably. Having said that, since you could be sure you weren't going to meet those decks it's a good meta call.

[spags]

In alternate-reality ANR, Quetzal is queen.

[sydwys8]

I have no idea what I would Same Old Thing other than the aforementioned Legwork. I will say that I wish I had room for a second Legwork. Possibly a Clone Chip for a Retrieval Run, but that's dangerous territory.

[Ajar]

Which kind of suggests that the conventional wisdom -- that NEH's prevalence suppresses variety in runner builds -- is accurate. FFG should take note.

[Garbo]

I've grown attached to the green haired wonder and based on my experience, I think you made a great meta call for this tournament. I have a keyhole Quetz deck as well and against NEH it's a total wash, but against blue sun, HB glacier, and RP it's quite solid.

[spags]

I honestly thought that they'd do something about NBN >LONG< before NEH. We thought there was trouble around Gencon/Worlds 2013. But, since NBN won neither of those, everything was hunky-dory, I guess.

Then, Fast Track, NEH, Sweeps, etc. hit. On one hand, it's nice that they are a force, requiring Runners to either be of a certain speed, or have tools to deal with FA (all of which mostly suck, currently). The lack of any kind of restricted/banned list tells me it will never happen in this game. Silver bullets are the preferred method (see: Clot).

[MasterAir]

I think avoiding a banned/restricted list is good for everyone's sanity. I think Clot's existence will be interesting. I think it'll make FA harder, but not impossible and slow down the game enough to make more runner archetypes plausible. I'm quite excited for its existence.