Blitzkrieg Bop - 1st place Card Kingdom Store Champ, Seattle

Corp deck over here.

Quetzal went 6-0 in the day to win Seattle's first store championship on 1/30/16. 20 players entered for 4 rounds of swiss and a cut to top 4. My thanks to Card Kingdom for hosting this tournament.

Incidentally, this tournament was pre-MWL legal, yet both decks I ran (this and Tennin) were post-MWL legal.

Briefly, the goal of this deck is to make runs as cheap as possible. To accomplish this feat are 2 Atman, good stuff Anarch breakers and viruses, and somewhat unusually, Spinal Modem. 3 Inject, 3 I've Had Worse, and 3 Street Peddler ensure that I burn through my deck until I have the cards that I need. Liberated and Kati give me standard econ fixes to supplement Casts and Gambles. Wanton and Utopia Shard provide me with both HQ pressure and a way to dodge around scorch plays. Medium wins games. Memstrips is a relic from my 5th place 2015 WA regionals deck that ran a much larger rig, but I've rarely needed to install it after making my MWL changes. Memstrips will probably be replaced by a third Déjà Vu.

The first match of the day was against Kayla, a relatively new player running Tennin. I consider myself a Tennin veteran (I won this very same store championship last year with This deck, so I thought I knew what to expect, but several Mushin plays and a few Snares later, I was as perplexed as I was terrified. Luckily, I managed to pull 4 points out of R&D and win a Future Perfect without having to guess which 4-advanced remote was a Vanity Project and which was an 8-net-damage Junebug. Props to her for a really interesting deck.

Swiss round 2 put me up against Cspieker and his rush RP deck. He scored out a Nisei, but he couldn't protect his R&D well enough,and eventually I double-Mediumed to pull all the agendas I needs out of R&D.

Swiss 3 pit me against Moxwall's NEH, and after a gruelling matchup of his Maxx against my Tennin that lasted 50 minutes, we were both feeling the tilt. Not sure what to expect, I spent a few turns gently probing centrals while struggling to stay competitive on economy. A fortuitous Wanton Destruction found 2 Traffic Accidents and a Scorch, both giving me some breathing room and betraying his deck's strategy. I pummeled R&D as usual, and with 2 I've Had Worse in hand, I started brazenly running through Data Ravens until I had all the points I needed.

The last match of the Swiss was against Michael running core Weyland. Just like NEH, I sat back, as with NEH, and just built my economy. Eventually, I felt confident enough in my credit lead to start challenging his centrals. Double Ice Wall on R&D fell to Parasite and Quetzal, while the Archer protecting HQ was butter for a 6-strength Atman. Weyland's wealth of barrier ice proved no match for Quetzal's natural aptitude towards tearing down walls.

My first runner match in the cut was against CJFM, who was brazenly playing Stronger Together. Unfortunately, he struggled to find enough ice to protect his R&D as I burned through Viktor with Parasite and broke through Eli with a single click. A face-planted architect over R&D came just a turn too late for him, as the agenda lied hidden as the 6th card in R&D.

The final game I played was against Jared's RP. I immediately face-planted into an Architect, and lacking a Mimic, was forced to install an Atman at strength 3. Spinal Modem did amazing work, essentially allowing me a free run each turn, letting me spend what meager credits I had trashing his Sundews and MHCs. Crisium Grid on R&D made Medium unviable, and ELP further made my turns frustrating, especially after accessing NAPD from R&D without the credits to steal it. Eventually, through single card accesses and absurdly cheap runs, I won the psi game to steal a Perfect Future.

So the question becomes, was Quetzal worth it? Over the day, I broke Wraparounds, Ice Walls, Elis, and Resistors, and I never once installed the singleton Corroder. The ability to inherently invalidate corp ice, even if it's just a click off of Eli, is strong, especially in an aggressive deck like this one.