Zoya the Destroya (G.L.O.W) - 8th @ FL Regionals

I'm a die hard Kit fan that started playing Quetzal roughly 2 months ago after seeing the list Jamie from Emergency Shutdown earned decklist of the week with, Frantic Knife Throwing. Jamie's list, by using Laamb as a primary breaker, basically allowed me to play Kit in Anarch, and I loved the lightning setup speed, the super light rig, and how I barely needed any credits to sweep my way into servers. After heavy iteration, I brought this punchy ice destroying Soviet menace to FL Regionals @ Critical Hit Games, where I actually met Jamie!

Iterating from Frantic Knife Throwing -> Zoya

Frantic Knife Throwing ran the Laamb + Morning Star combo to efficiently break ICE, and it utilized Same Old Thing + Levy AR Lab Access to repeatedly throw knives down every server. When I played Frantic Knife Throwing, I rarely went through enough of cards to warrant using Levy, and I did not use Same Old Thing because it's a card that has never really been my style, as it feels slow to me (3 clicks to recur an event). I found myself not actually destroying THAT much ICE because I personally wasn't using the Same Old Things or Levy AR Lab Accesses.

So my first major change was leaning away from recursion and into fast destruction. Instead of recurring my knives, I was going to have more bombs. 3x Hippo 3x En Passant. Hippo is so good against unrezzed ICE compared to Knifed, because it stays on the table even if the corp doesn't rez. And it makes the corp not WANT to rez outer ICE, enabling En Passant.

Then, with loads of influence freed up, I played around a bit. First I went for Emergent Creativity, to set up my Morning Star + Laamb + Spinal Modem + Surfer rig even faster, and to replace some Frantic Codings that were problematic against Jinteki mill decks.

But my problem then wasn't set up speed or run efficiency. My problem was Hard-Hitting News, Punitive Counterstrike, decks that demanded a decent pool of credits to survive. I replaced Morning Star with Magnum Opus and then Hard Hitting News was no longer a problem. I felt good about this change. Morning Star often wasn't cutting it in a meta dominated by 6-strength Surveyors, and Laamb + Quetzal were perfectly good at slicing through a Hortum or preventing a program trash sub on the face check. Laamb can break anything for no more than 7 credits, and I didn't NEED to be more efficient than that if I trashed the ICE on the first or second encounter. So I freed up some slots dedicated to making my runs efficient and replaced them with card draw and generic credit economy.

But Magnum Opus...when I focused on making that the first program I installed, corps scored early agendas. They lived a happy disruption free life for too many turns. I became too slow. I needed to be faster. Leading to the most important changes to the deck: 2x High-Stakes Job 2x Employee Strike 3x Laamb 3x Imp. Now, I was a properly menacing destroyer of corporate dreams. High-Stakes Job is a lot of influence, but it gives so many credits, combos with your Hippo run, and is an excellent recursion target for DJ Steve "Fenris" Cambridge. Imp aggressively trashes expensive assets, more ICE, and vital combo pieces.

Jamie was also iterating on Frantic Knife Throwing with the runner they brought to the Regional, but they leaned in a different direction. Whereas I moved away from recursion and rampant discarding, Jamie kept the Levy and moved into Nathaniel "Gnat" Hall: One-of-a-Kind as a starting ID, with Patchwork for interesting lines of play alongside Retrieval Run, Ice Carver to crush Surveyors with that efficient Morning Star rig, and Rebirth for the options to switch back into Quetzal, destroy operations with Edward Kim, or sometimes even become Null: Whistleblower for maximum Morning Star support late game. Zoya, however, sacrifices that rig efficiency for early game disruption, dedicating more slots to destruction like Imp and disregarding gear checks with the Quetzal ID ability.

Regionals Breakdown (~21 Participants)

Game 1 WIN vs Palana Foods: A quick win against a corp with too many early agendas. After the game, my opponent informed me that, when they saw Quetzal, they reasoned I was a slow Zero + Clan Vengeance deck that wouldn't make too many runs, so they kept a hand with several agendas and jammed a Nisei into a remote. Unfortunately for Palana, I started the game with Laamb in hand, so I stole that first Nisei, checked and stole an unadvanced Philotic next turn, Imped an Obokata Protocol from HQ, and then drew up before running archives for the win. 10 minute game.

Game 2 WIN vs Brain Rewiring Cerebral Imaging: Imp is SO GOOD. Trashed a Contract Killer. Trashed an Ikawa Project accessed 4th click. Trashed a crucial Ultra Violet Clearance while the corp needed more cards & credits. DJ Steve "Fenris" Cambridge allowed me to trigger 3 High-Stakes Jobs, and the corporation's fairly non-taxxing ICE (Najja 1.0, Gatekeeper) did little against my hammering of centrals for a relatively painless win. If Architect was ever installed, this would have been a much more obnoxious match-up (Architect costs 7 to break with Laamb and can never be trashed).

Game 3 LOSS vs Jamie's The Outfit: I played against Jamie! I had so much money, making me feel very safe from the obvious Hard Hitting News + High Profile Target threat. Ran a double ICE'd remote with an outer Bulwark on click 3, trashing it with Hippo and then finding that the inner piece was another Bulwark. With a Knifed in hand and now 4 bad publicity on the table, I went for the value play: Used Quetzal's ability to break the trash a program sub, jacked out, then Knifed Click 4 to break the second Bulwark for cheap and access an unexpected SNARE! Got High Profile Targeted next turn for game. The sad thing is, if I simply had an I've Had Worse in hand, hitting a Snare here would have been reasonably safe. Might have not worked this game as Jamie had 2 or 3 High Profile Targets in hand but, it still would have been a reasonably safe play. Afterwards, we talked a ton about Quetzal.

Game 4: I.D. My opponent was running Engolo Kit, so that was a fun similarity to Laamb Quetzal and we had an excellent chat before the cut. Check out their deck, Queer Carpool Kit, here

Top 8 Round 2 LOSS vs Red Tree Mti Mwekundu: This was a high energy close match with interesting lines of play. Early on, I struggled more than usual with economy, so Red Tree was able to score 2 lightly protected Nisei's uncontested. After that, ICE started flying into Archives. En Passant. Hippos. Knives. I would run servers to intentionally bait Mti Mwekundo ID ability triggers before playing High-Stakes Job. Towards the end of the game, with me on 5 points from RnD accesses and the Corp on 4, I was running myself out of gas hammering centrals with Imps on the table, Knifing HQ and then Imping a crucial Surveyor in the same run. Corp was struggling to get ICE for a remote, RnD was unprotected, but I ran myself out of gas/credits diving for my last agenda. With a single advanced card, 2 nisei tokens, and a double power countered MCA Austerity on the table, all unprotected, I clicked for credits and allowed the MCA to fire, thinking "Ok, I can let him score this third Nisei and then start hammering again after." But the installed card was an Obokata Protocol, and the corp scored that for game. It was a decently safe score for Corp: They had a sandstorm in hand and used MCA Austerity to give me only 3 clicks that turn, so running the Obokata or MCA would have been Sand Storm to archives, then Nisei then Nisei. I did see the Sandstorm on RnD, and I wish I had installed my next Imp from grip a click earlier to trash it.

Flexibility / Card Choices

• Spinal Modem did not see much play here. I've taken several brain damage online because of this card. Now that I'm off Morning Star / Mopus I don't need the extra MU. Patchwork is good alternative econ console, and Turntable synergizes with this deck's insane aggression. Don't NEED the MU, though, so this could be replaced with Immolation Script, Stimhack, or other economy.

• Retrieval Run also isn't as good without Morning Star / Mopus, but it helps recur Imps and get Laamb off of an Inject that trashed it. This could also be replaced with more econ or Clone Chip now that it is off the restricted list.

• High-Stakes Job is SO GOOD but so much influence. It's the card to remove if you want influence for something else. Jaime is going to use Guinea Pig for econ, but you need to lean into Patchwork and recursion for that to make the most sense. Stimhack is a decent replacement.

• If you want to try Zoya with a more efficient rig, try 1x Morning Star, Datasucker, or D4v1d. I'd lean towards D4v1d or Datasucker to keep things punchy and save MU for Imp. Otherwise, look at what Jamie's doing in the other direction.

ENJOY!