G-Mods love their crazy hairstyles.

I am entirely unimpressed by this Runner Identity. Just weak.

If it said "Once per turn, break 1 end the run subroutine"...now _that_ would be something, even if influence were reduced.

she's SUPER good early game,

Opening hands for the Corp are totally different when going against her.

Opening a hand with Wall of Static, Wraparound, Bastion, and other cheap Barrier ICE is so useless in your hand.

she's SUPER good early game,

Opening hands for the Corp are totally different when going against her.

Opening a hand with Wall of Static, Wraparound, Bastion, and other cheap Barrier ICE is so useless in your hand.

Her ability only works once per turn, so the ice is hardly useless.

Also, early game ETR ice tends to be a mix of Quandry (code gate), Guard (sentry), Eli (barrier w/ 2 subs...but bioroid so whatever), Enigma (code gate), Wraparound (barrier with 1 sub), and maybe Paper Wall (totally useless vs Quetzal). And that's just the basic stuff. If you allow Lotus Field to be counted as "early game"...etc.

So, yeah, if you open the game with Ice Wall on HQ and Paper Wall on R&D, Quetzal can get into one of them and you'll be sad...but just differentiating a deck's early game ice so that it relies less on low-strength ETR barriers mitigates the impact.

Personally, I liken Q to Kit. Now, I like Kit. I made a KIt deck that I really enjoyed playing, even though it was janky and even though her ability, though strong in the opening stages of a game, pretty quickly became irrelevant. And experienced players know how to play around her gimmick. True, the fact that it usually forces the corp to react and change up their optimal preferred approach has some cachet, but ultimately it isn't as strong as the less dramatic but more practical abilities of the more competitive Runner identities.

I hope to be proven wrong, as I like having as much diversity in viable identities as possible. But, I won't be building a Quetzal deck until we see more new Anarch goodies that might push her over the edge.

She's actually pretty fantastic. Sure her id doesn't break some early game ice, but she makes heimdall 2.0 breakable with clicks, gets past rainbow, and most barriers people actually use (or turn wall of thorns into an 8 credit investment for 2 net damage). I think she's powerful even without e3 or paintbrush!

I don't see much Heimdall in the decks I play against, but sure I guess if that's prevalent enough in a meta Quetzal saves money getting thru Heimdall.

True, she can break one Rainbow per turn...saving 3 credits. I guess that's something.

So...ok, fine. It could be argued that in the early game Q can put some aggression on the Corp if they only have a single ETR barrier on a server, and then it turns into a roundabout situational econ ability after that ceases to be true. That's a lot of variance and dependence on card and install decisions made by the Corp player.

Compare that to Whizzard who has a similar situational econ ability that depends on card and install decisions made by the Corp player. Whizzard can be fun, and he goes up and down in the rankings as the meta shifts, but he usually seems to come in behind Noise and / or Reina. And I do think Q is better than W in many match ups, but "better than Whizzard" is not the highest thing to aspire to.

So, yeah, I just don't see it. But the rankings will reveal the truth one way or the other soon enough.

A lot of the strong identities (e.g. Kate) have an ability that's worth one cred a turn if you jump a low hurdle. Quetzal fits that mold and gives you 'gimmicky' Kit-style early accesses on top.

I regard this ID not as a one around which you have to build your deck, but just as an extra.

Same as Reina: if you play an overkill deck with too much emphasis on the ID (Rook, Xanadu, FAO...) you may run the risk to forget that Anarch only has its own game plan.

I'm trying to understand how putting E3 on her and walking through Hadrian's Wall for 1 credit is a bad thing. Maybe people like spending 7+ credits on Corroder, but it seems like she's great at cleaning out big remotes, or just saving you 6cr on a run. That's some decent economy.

It also makes many corp approaches have to rethink on the fly, which is never a bad thing. Do you rez? Do you not rez?

There's a lot to explore here, without just considering Quetzal plowing through a barrier a turn, which is not exactly nothing. How does she help "Overmind" or "D4v1d?" Seems like she could get a lot out of expose cards and "Cyber Threat" too.

Quetzal is worth a go.

I personally really like her so far. Splashing 2 E3's is easy, and it makes large barriers next to worthless unless you have multiple on the same server, which is difficult to accomplish, and can leave your other servers open. Furthermore, the E3's you are splashing synergize really well with D4V1D, which makes it even more difficult to use big ice to keep you out (Also, E3 makes Knight better, and has the obvious benefits against bioroids). Combo that with the standard Anarch suite which excels at breaking low strength ice....

I find this type of deck really good against Blue Sun because they are going to have a really hard time oversighting anything when you are all over them with E3's and D4V1D's from the get-go. Plus, Blue Sun tends to rely on large barriers like Hadrian and Curtain Wall as their primary defense, which this type of deck laughs at.

She is also going to be able to use the new silverware events that are coming out. 

I think she's amazing. Just a very good complement to most other anarch strategies. Saw someone play with Eater/Cutlery/Keyhole as the only rig, and used Quetzal's ID to get extra accesses without having to use Eater.