Second Edition North Carolina Masters winner Michael Van Breemen
Title: Small people - Pile of Death
Headquarters: Earth, Cradle of the Federation
Deck Size: 40 cards
Deck Archetype: Speed solver
Dilemma Pile Size: 32 cards
Dilemma Pile Type: Kill pile
Victory Correctly Predicted By: Worf Son of Mogh, Hoss-Drone

Michael's Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
I chose it because I hadn't won with Data yet (which the achievement required the deck to be TNG.). Originally, the deck was going to do Wolf 359 instead of the cadet mission but I talked myself out of it and went with instead.

I was thinking about GQ Romulans with the usual shenanigans. I made it to fit the escaping detection achievement but not really the focus. Dilemma pile would've totally different though which would've been interesting to try out. But that'll be some other time.

Prior to this tournament, did you have much experience playing this deck (or decks like it)? Did you learn anything new about it when you played it this time?
I've played just about everything before with varying degrees of success but this is more my jam - trying to solve two missions and avoiding dilemmas whenever possible. I didn't learn anything new about the deck specifically although the notion of playing Homn on my opponent only to play Shankar right afterwards popped into my head while writing this which sounds quite hilarious in my head.

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
Decks hoping to face - decks with no counters or death prevention.
Decks hoping not to face - decks with kill prevention, counters and most importantly, avoiding random selections.

Did you use any situational cards (cards that you wouldn't expect to be useful in every game)? Are there any whose usefulness exceeded your expectations? Were there any that you wouldn't include if you played the deck again?
Cards I would include - at least one Tacking and St. John Talbot to get the achievement for him. Also, Miracle Working would've been right at home in this deck but completely forgot about it.
Cards I wouldn't include again - Homn (only used him once and while 7 cards drawn was nice, didn't really get as much out of him as I wanted.

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
MVP of the deck was the team as a whole - Bridge Officer's Test won me my first game, skill-tracking won me the second game, forcing my opponent to slow down to deal with the shenanigans and sheer dumb luck (Lwaxana hit Aftereffects, Tolian hits Adopted Authority, etc.) won me the third game and me doing bad match cost me the win against Scott (along with the worst dilemma shuffling ever). Apparently Lady Luck doesn't like it when you assassinate Neelix, who knew?

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
That's it for me other than thanking Scott for running the tournaments and for everyone who was able to make it out.

My Commentary:
When Michael won Worlds last year, I spent some words talking about his dilemma pile proclivities. Today, I will expand on them, because once again he has paired a speed deck with a kill pile. What's his goal here?

Using very broad strokes, the choice between a kill pile versus an attrition pile hinges on whether you're more concerned about speed solvers or control solvers. Speed solvers rebuild more quickly than control solvers after getting an attempt wiped by a kill pile, while control or midrange solvers tend to have more tools to deal with the stops dealt out by an attrition pile. Of course, there are tools like Escape or Emergency Transport Unit to specifically deal with kills, but in general you play a kill pile to beat slow decks, or an attrition pile to beat fast ones.

In pairing his kill pile with a speed deck, Michael is leaning on his pile to beat other slow decks, and is relying on the speed of his deck to contend with other speed solvers. However, there is likely another, more important factor in his dilemma pile choice: he is good at using kill piles. He is not just a good skill tracker, he is a good personnel tracker, which allows him to target just the right personnel with All-Consuming Evil and The Clown: Guillotine. Going to a bigger tournament and winning it is not just about playing a deck that has good match-ups against the field, you've also got to be comfortable with the deck you're using.

Speaking of Michael's comfort zone, this isn't an ordinary Cadet deck. While we've seen a lot of the Preposterous Plan/Guinan combo in the last year, usually it is fueling things like At What Cost? or Jaresh Inyo. Here, as in his TOS two mission solver, he uses those points on Field Studies, making what would normally be a two mission win deck into more of a one and a half mission win. That's how you take a fairly standard deck archetype, and change it to be something you're more comfortable with. Looks like fun deck, and Michael got a good result with it.

First Edition North Carolina Masters winner Ryan Sutton
Victory Correctly Predicted By: None (though, to be fair, he didn't preregister)

Ryan's Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
So to start things off this tournament was really a blast with familiar faces and some new faces for me. The passion and enthusiasm from the Northern North Carolina players was amazing! They all came down with unique and unexpected deck types. The theme of the day was "That is 1e for you!" and that is one of my favorite phrases in the universe! There are infinite deck types in 1E and infinite types of interactions and this tournament was a great example of that.

Why did I choose my deck? -- I played a draw deck very similar to this one at Atlanta Masters last year almost a year ago. Michael Van Breeman got the best of me in the final match that determined the winner and I finished 2nd. Michael is one of my favorite people to play against as literally STCCG is literally written in genetic code. I love that kind of passion for the game. In that game, I failed Quantum Incursions at-least 6 times on 3 turns. That one card stood between me and the championship. The deck performed very well that daylat year, other than its inability to get past 2 of the requirements for QI. I set out to fix that inadequacy of the deck for this tournament.

What other decks did you consider using? -- I started to consider playing other decks for this tournament but Scott commissioned me to make a deck for him for the tournament so I didn't have time to build a deck from scratch. He had not played TNG Romulans before so that is what he wanted me to build.

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
Really, I just hoped to face decks that my dilemma combos would be effective against. There were a couple of affiliations that would have made short work of my dilemmas but it was a calculated risk and luckily it paid off.

I really hoped not to play against an Assimilation/Lockout Borg deck (Staring at you Dan Hamman because I am still in pain from GenCon 2016 from that game.) Matches against that deck are very difficult no matter affiliation you are playing on the other side of the table.

Did you use any situational cards (cards that you wouldn't expect to be useful in every game)? Are there any whose usefulness exceeded your expectations? Were there any that you wouldn't include if you played the deck again?
The best situational card ended up being for a situation that I had not intended it for. I used Transport Inhibitor for not blocking Assimilation but for blocking an opponent from attempting a mission we had duplicated.

I was very happy with the deck but I think I putting this one in the retirement home.

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
Starangely, it was Cytherians. I have hated this card since 1996 when I started playing. Everything would be going well... and ... Boom! I would hit it and take the long journey to the end of the spaceline. The trip would almost always lead to losing the game. On the flip side, I have seen it used against me where people would purposely send themselves on a short journey to score the points for themselves. Which is ingenious however very frustrating to watch when sitting across the table watching someone score 30 points off 2 Cytherians in the same turn.

Cytherians would send 2 of my opponents on trips to the end of the Spaceline that ultimately helped me to win with little to no worry of them scoring points for a few turns.

Also, I am going to add to your question by saying overall what I saw to be a new MVP card from other decks that worked well! Attack of the Drones with the download of Transporter Drones. When I built Scott's deck I included it but unfortunately no one ever hit them. However, with Dan's infiltrator deck it was brutal! One aspect you don't expect is the drones stay at that location. That can have effects for multiple turns after they make their first appearance. That is a card to watch out for in the future from certain deck types!

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
I had a blast playing against the variety of decks.

My first game was against an amazingly complicated infiltrator deck that was literally designed to cause absolute turmoil to my ships, outposts, and missions. The deck really kept me on my toes. There were so many moving parts to the deck. Our game went to time and there were only 6 turns in the game. The game was full of Personnel Battles with Strike Three & Krajensky Founder, Strange yet thematic Infiltrators, Remote Interference interference from Raptor One, Capturing via Attack of the Drones & Transporter Drones and his missions were all planets.

My second game saw a deck with all 40-55 point missions which was scary due to the ability to solve 2 missions for a very quick win.

My third game was against a familiar and very-very fast and unique Starfleet deck. It was piloted by the talented GooeyChewie. He encountered Cytherians which was lucky for me. His speed with that deck is truly impressive. (I had been witness to it before)

My fourth game was almost a mirror matchup. We duplicated 3 missions. I have always had trouble with duplicated missions. What strategy do you choose? Seed your intended cards under there? Split your cards up and leave only a couple of the intended dilemmas under there? Don't seed at all and race to the mission? I took a calculated risk and decided to put a combo under that mission that I knew I would be able complete pretty quickly. Chris decided not to put any cards under there and place the other dilemmas else where. Another potential risk that I took was that I could potentially block his away teams from beaming down with my Transport Inhibitor keeping him out of contention for that mission all together. Luckily I drew into the Transport Inhibitor very early. I beamed down a single person with the Transport Inhibitor to keep my mission safe until I knew I was ready for my dilemmas so I could sail right threw them. Chris started with really good personnel and solid turns. He was keeping pace with me. He ask me a strange question as I moved my ship that would later make sense. He ask me if I was going to attack him. I said, "No I am Federation why would I do that?" My weapons at the time were mediocre at best. I knew his weapons were at that time about 9. I could easily with stand that type of attack. It was a really strange question. I continued on with the game completing a planet mission not seeded by both of us where the great new dilemma Jol Yichu'! was seeded by Chris. It caused me a little trouble as I had no Transporter Skill. Luckily I drew into Macias which allowed me to grab B'Elanna Torres which I had been discarded or had been killed earlier (I can't remember). I solved that mission and moved to the Mission where my TI was beamed down and attempted the mission with my crew which contained Maquis due to the skill requirements necessary of the dilemmas I had placed earlier. Chris was waiting on a Friendly Fire countdown. He at that time only had one dilemma under that mission left. I knew that it was Cytherians and he only had one ship out so I waited for him to attempt to clear and I headed over and completed that duplicated Space mission that he cleared my dilemmas out of. After that I returned to the previously cleared mission to solve for the win. Chris is a good player and I predict we see him win a regional this year and possibly a Masters event too.

My Commentary:
Continuing with this week's theme of playing decks that you're comfortable with, we have Ryan Sutton winning with a sizeable Alpha Quadrant federation deck. The free play engines he uses have changed over time, but if you look through his tournament history, you'll see that when Ryan goes to a major event, he sticks to the familiar. And it is hard to argue with his results: 3rd at Gencon Masters, 2nd at Atlanta Masters, 1st at North American Continentals, and 1st at Orlando Masters, all in the last two years.

Ryan's story above contains a great example of why it is valuable to be very familiar and comfortable with the deck you use at a big tournament. He mentions that he's never certain of what to do when multiple missions are duplicated - and it isn't a very common event, so even an experience player like Ryan probably hasn't had to deal with it very often. But he knew the tools he had available well - Transport Inhibitors have been part of this deck for quite a while now. Protecting against mission theft is almost certainly not the reason why that equipment is in his deck, especially considering his missions are not stealable without duplication. Yet his familiarity with his deck helped him repurpose an anti-battle tool into an anti-theft tool.

Given that this series is a deck analysis series, I do focus heavily on match-ups and bringing the right deck to beat the decks that everyone else brings. That's important too, but we shouldn't lose sight of the effect of player skill on the outcomes of these tournaments. I've interviewed the same people a whole bunch of times here, and it isn't just because they keep bringing the right decks. It's that they play those decks well, and part of that is that they know their decks inside and out. They play decks that play to their strengths. Michael likes fast decks that avoid dilemmas and use kill piles. Ryan likes big decks with lots of answers that he can Handshake through. Both players made good deck choices for themselves, they played the decks well, and it paid off.