I Suf, You Suf, We All Surf for Yusuf! (2nd Place & Unbeaten

' I hated every minute of that'

• Anonymous Weyland player I tested this deck against the day before the tournament.

This is my Quetzal deck that took me to second place in the Iberian Lockdown #3 Online Tournament. The Original Inspiration behind this deck came from Andre @ The Metropole Grid (or more specifically I believe a player from his meta but i don't know their name! - edit: player in question here is ‘is44ru’ on NRDB’)

This was a really fun tournament with restrictions on ID choices and a handful of banned cards chosen by previous winners - Details here

I have actually been working on a version of this deck for a while and it needed a small amount of tweaking to make it legal - Mainly taking out Rebirth (which was banned) which i replaced with a Deuces Wild for extra Draw.

General Gameplan: This deck has a simple game plan - Stargate or run a server, Change the ice to a barrier and surf through, breaking for no money with Quetzal or Yusuf (with Paperclip as back up for emergencies) Use knob to stick a counter back on Pelangi and go again next turn.

Card Choices:

I've Had Worse, Gachapon & Peddler - for draw and getting your engine out as fast as possible - only 7 events means a 3 event peddler is just not gonna happen and 22 potential targets with Gachapon means it hits every time.

Progenitor: Is a Key Card in this deck as it stops you getting locked out after a purge - Dropped from x3 to x2 and am happy with that - It should almost always host a Pelangi

VBG: Great protection against Purges as they gain tokens at the start of your turn - 1 is usually enough but 2 is extra safe (especially if you expect big ice) Use to pay for Yusuf or to charge back up your Pelangi/Imp

Misdirection: Is your only protection against the HHN/False Lead Combo and can sometimes be found clicklessly with a Gachapon

Buffer Drive: The MVP of the day considering 4/6 matchups were against Jinteki. Vital against Kakugo decks or Builder of Nations also very useful recursion and can be a pseudo Simulchip when combined with Gachapon

Imp is there to deal with Defensive Agendas and Asset Spam match ups

Taka is drip econ to use for Surfer and Turning Wheel is Multi access for HQ (& Sometimes R&D) and combines great with Stargate

Gamble, Liberated and Cast is all the econ you have - but also all the econ you should need

Potential Changes:

I would love to get a Dreamnet in here for the extra draw - It may well be worth dropping a Peddler to include one.

Playing standard you 'could' swap rebirth back in to help with assest spam - but to be honest i don't think I'm going to - This is a Quetzal deck - and should remain that way. If anyone can think of anything better than Deuces to fill this slot please drop me a note in the comments!

Matchups on the Day:

Game 1 Vs Theoneakaneo Playing P.E.

After a quick first game where Null walked into a Snare with 2 Cards in hand this was much longer and went right to time. Genuinely hilarious end as i made after a discussion with my opponant about how much damage i would take from the Obo & Fetal AI in the bin i needed to win I made a Death run on archives as time was called knowing that I was 2 cards short of surviving - and only as Jnet proclaimed me the winner did we both read ALL the text on Fetal AI (a card i also had in my corp deck) including the bit that says the damage does not fire from archives! :D

Game 2 vs Steff Monkey Playing Saraswati

If IL3 taught us anything its how under-rated Saraswati currently is with all manor of different builds doing strongly throughout the tournament (Link to my Saraswati deck in the comments). This was a really cool build using Tranquility Home Grid to jam for money every turn. I challenged the remote with a double advanced card and managed to imp an Obo into the bin (luckily I Imped it as a second upgrade turned out to be a prisec and i had exactly 4 cards in hand) At this point with only a worthless cortex lock on R&D I went for the balls out Double Stargate install so i could stargate twice a turn - It was then a case of trashing the rest of the points needed and grabbing them out the bin.

Game 3 Against Chronos Knowing what chronos is likely to be up to i realised early on that i would have to steal everything i needed for the win in one go (at least staying below 3 points). Buffer drive could have cost 18 credits and it would have still been worth installing here - with the only ice on the table being 3 kakugos which i ran through every single turn for free. eventually I had all the points I needed in archives, drew up enough to steal the obo and ran.

Game 4 vs Odol playing Building a Better World These were my shortest games with both our Corp decks giving us up - Mine gave me no ice whatsoever except the kakugo i put on the remote turn one to jam a rashida behind and Odol won off R&D. His deck flooded up with all but 1 agenda in the top third. Hit double SSL with stargate last click so knew he had one in HQ next turn - Ran the remote to find an SDS, Trashed stargate - and hit HQ for the win.

The Cut

Game 5 I Corped against Cpt_Nice and lost to his excellent Akiko deck.

Game 6 Against Arminfirecracker playing Jemison another game with a lot of flood for my opponent - Trashed 6 points worth of hostiles, false leads and GFI's and knowing I couldn't run the City Works in the server without a million cards in hand i poked HQ to find another GFI.

Game 7 - I Corp against Cpt_nice for the rematch - this time winning off a Snare into Fetal AI multi access blunder

Game 8 vs Internet playing Saraswati. A super tense and really enjoyable game with strong play on both sides - I steal an early SSL whilst money is in my favour. Knowing Internets playing a punitive list and not having an imp yet i allow him to score an SSL that i could have stolen but would have left me on 2 only cards. He also scores out an Obo That i know i cannot contest - but at this point i have a pretty solid lock on R&D - running is cheap and i trash anthing that isnt just a money card for what seems like forever until I hit an Obo and then a Fetal - not enough cards for the fetal but i havnt seen any recursion yet so grab the AI planning to draw back up next turn. Internet plays an Archived memories that he has had in his hand since turn 1!!! Sarawati installs something (defo the obo) into server 1 behind a Data Loop and advances again... I have 2 cards in hand (and no imp) I think for a long time for any possible way i could get in an steal coming up with no solutions so Decide to stargate - any agenda will give me the win... I whiff. With 3 clicks left i draw twice (leaving me with 4) and run HQ using my turning wheel to see 3 cards just in case he's jammed the Gene Splicer i know he has instead... And hit an SSL for the win! A great Game which went down to the very last click of the last turn!

Game 9 - I Corp against Internet - another nail biter of a game! See my Corp deck (link in comments) for details.