Quetzal - Top 6 - Wausau WI Regionals @ Johnny Cee Cards

Hello fellow runners! I wanted to take the time to publish the list I brought with me to my first Netrunner regionals event and talk about the card choices I made as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the current build.

First off, lets jump right into the ID. I began playing Quetzal as my primary runner just before the worlds tournament weekend of 2014. I was fairly new to netrunner and Quetzal was the new hotness. Quetzal is one of those weird left field ID's that corps tend to play around a little too much at times. The ability to breeze through most barriers in the early game is pretty nice. It's great getting those free accesses early, providing you with lucky early points or simply crucial information about what you're running into. I've found that a lot of players forego their barriers and just dig for their code gates and sentries to hold me off. Also, being able to spend a single click (or even just 1 single credit) to go through an Eli 1.0 can be nice in the late game (on medium digs) and early game (for that early sucker set up). While it's obvious that Wraparounds cry in my wake, Ice like The Hive and Ashigaru are still plenty taxing to go through (we'll talk about that gameplan later).

Next, I want to talk about my influence spread.

6 - 3x Clone Chip 4 - 2x Magnum Opus 4 - 2x e3 Feedback Implants 1 - Utopia Shard

Clone chips have obvious strengths in a sucker/site deck as well as the ability to install Knights on the run with Deep Red in play. Overall, they are what give me the ability to go nuts during runs with little to no rig.

e3 Feedback Implants was an obvious card for Quetzal. Eli's for 1 credit really hurt the corp. Also, breaking all of an Ashigaru for 4 credits is totally worth... all day. Having this card helps preserve Overminds and allows D4V1D to make GIGANTIC impacts against Weyland when I can bust through a Hadrians for 2 creds. Overall, I can't EVER think of a reason to not be running this card. It's insane value in almost EVERY matchup.

Magnus Opus is the most recent econ engine for this deck. Previous builds were CacheShop and heavy event based econ. Both of which took up a lot of slots and left the card draw wanting. Through the day however, I think Opus was probably just the wrong call. I'm going to be exploring new options (potentially cacheshop again with adjusted chronotype maybe?). Overall I don't think it hurt me however, it's kind of a non-bo with Overmind and that hurts the deck overall.

With just one influence left, I decided on Utopia Shard just to protect against the sea source into scorch combo. It actually saved me against an Argus Security deck early in the tourny when I made him trash a punitive AND a scorch. It's also amazeballs against my room mates Blue Deck since it has the potential to destroy his combo. Probably not gonna ever drop this card since it's got such mad potential against so many corps.

e3 Feedback Implants brings me into the breakers. Overmind is the obvious main breaker for the deck. The whole idea is to get a Deep Red and MemStrips down and make a giant Overmind. The e3 lets that one 6-9 counter Overmind dominate an entire game from start to finish. It also allows D4v1D to laugh at Hadrians and Curtain Wall. Tollbooth for just 3 credits is pretty awesome. Knights and also amazing since I can just install them on the run (via Deep Red and Clone Chip) anytime I see something I don't want to burn money into Overmind (mostly Lotus Field). To supplement the AI's I've always had Mimic (really good in the Jinteki match-up plus Swordsman really hurts me). Yog.0 was a recent include with the release of Turing (interestingly enough I seemed to be the only RP player there who thought it was good enough to make the cut). It turned out to be pretty good for running through Enigmas as well. These breakers combined with Suckers and Sites makes any Ice spread easy access.

In my first iteration of the deck, I was running cache shop as my econ engine. Wyldside was an easy include since I could just pawn it when It stopped being useful. In recent testing, I found that I liked Inject A LOT and decided to move the deck in a direction that allowed me to get 3 Chips in and really take advantage of my heap. Doing so however, made CacheShop a non option.

I'm probably going to move back to Wyldside and maybe look at getting Adjusted Chronotype in here to supplement the click loss. That might actually just bring me back to CachShop but who knows. Those Chips were REALLY baller.

At the end of Swiss, the deck felt really strong. I only dropped one real game against RP in the last round. My other 'loss' was timed against one of my best match-ups. As it turns out, when you start a game with 4 minutes left, NEH is probable going to get a single Astro before you can start your medium dig. I did however, lose both games in the top 8 (second and third round) that I ran. Both were to RP. The weakness of the set-up time really shows with this build.

Feel free to ask question. I open to all comments and criticism!