Quetzal's Pretzels - Glen Burnie Store Championships, 3rd

This is the runner deck that I ended up taking to the store championship at Glen Burnie, MD. After 6 rounds of swiss, it finished 4-2; after elimination rounds it was 5-3, and ended 3rd place out of 33 people.

Before I try to horribly explain how this deck works, I should probably warn you guys now: This deck was built in anticipation for the influx of Weyland that I predicted would be in the tournament, given that there was an entire big box expansion that came out 5 days beforehand. I ended up being mostly correct, as half of my swiss rounds involved a different Weyland identity. Weyland decks still play a lot of barriers, and being able to use Quetzal: Free Spirit with e3 Feedback Implants not only makes a barrier inert for a turn, but it also disrupts any sort of Oversight AI play. It also took advantage of people not necessarily knowing what all of the cards do; quite a few people weren't prepared for Wanton Destruction to completely disrupt their entire hands.

That being said, I still had to play against the Big Two: Near-Earth Hub and Replicating Perfection. Those matchups went around as well as I expected; Quandary was very good at making Crypsis a nightmare to play, Near-Earth Hub could still be fast enough to not care what you ever did, and the taxing style of Replicating Perfection even made Eater, a normally fantastic card for this engine, cry in pain at all of the taxing ICE they continued to play. While I ended up having a losing record against both identities, I feel like it's more an issue of the current build of the deck, and maybe even on how I currently play it.

In a nutshell, this deck primarily tries to pressure the central servers, with R&D being hit by Keyhole, while HQ pressured by Account Siphon and Wanton Destruction. After using either of these cards, Archives would be accessed normally through Crypsis, backed with Stimhack if necessary.

If troublesome ICE got in your way, 1 of each cutlery card (Forked, Knifed, and Spooned) was there to soften up the servers. I ended up enjoying each of them except for Spooned; as much as Quandary is a problem, there weren't that many other code gates I came across during the tournament that I had a problem with.

Here are a couple thoughts I had on the deck as I was playing it in the tournament:

• I think we've all realized at this point that Wanton Destruction is a very good card. Anarch needed something that posed a legitimate threat to HQ without either paying influence (Account Siphon) or coming at a severe cost (Vamp). I never had a problem playing it on first click, and spending my turn making them trash three random cards. 90% of the time, I hit at least one agenda. Other times I hit cards like Fast Track and Sweeps Week.

• Vigil on average drew 5 cards a game for me. Even if they're playing around it and keeping 4 or less cards in their hand, it sets up Wanton Destruction, and at the very least they have less answers in their hand. I understand Grimoire being a choice if you're running more of a Datasucker and Parasite rig, but the draws I made with Vigil seemed to pay for itself.

• I have absolutely no idea why I wasn't playing 2 e3 Feedback Implants, considering my identity has perfect synergy with it. It's probably worth cutting the Account Siphon, as I only got to play it repeatedly in one game against RP.

• You have to carefully pick when it's safe to Day Job. While gaining 10 credits is amazing, you can never really make up for the tempo hit, and there were times I had to bite the bullet and let them score an agenda, just to make sure I had credits for the following turns.

• Inject is bonkers. There was never a "bad" inject; the worst one I had made me pitch Keyhole and Eater, and gave me Lucky Find and Déjà Vu. I'll take that any day. My best Inject was Vigil, Prepaid VoicePAD, Lucky Find and Sure Gamble, and quite honestly that was almost the average. If pieces get trashed you have Déjà Vu to get them back anyway; I'd much rather be power-drawing more economy.

By all means, feel free to yell at me and berate me for some of these card choices, as well as any suggestions or questions you might have to change/streamline this deck (I already have some ideas, but the more the merrier). This deck was a blast to play each and every round, and it was a much more refreshing deck to play than all of the Andromeda: Dispossessed Ristie and Kate "Mac" McCaffrey: Digital Tinker decks out there.