First Edition Munich Molestation winner Stefan de Walf
Title: Munich Molestation II: The Holes of Kahn
Deck Archetype: Speed Solver
Play Engines: I.K.C. T'Ong, New Arrivals, Halkan Council
Draw Engines: New Arrivals, Study Divergent History, Pride of the Fleet, Process Ore: Mining, Temporal Investigations
Bonus Point Mechanics: Assign Mission Specialists, Reap All the Glory, Fear Will Keep Them In Line
Victory Correctly Predicted By: Armus and me.

Mr. Rohr's Commentary:
Why did you choose the Quantum Incursions that you used? What other Quantum Incursions did you consider using?
I mostly used 2 Empathy, which was quite good against Kaisers deck, but failed against Ausgang. I wanted to switch to 2AU for that matchup, but did not have enough time to practice my dice rolls.

What sorts of Quantum Incursions were you hoping to face while playing your Quantum Incursions? What Quantum Incursions did you hope not to face?
I was good against most, but due to the inconsistency of my deck I really wanted to face 2 AU since that is the one I get personnel for the most reliable. I ran into Empathy only once while having none out, that was the worst roll for me most of the time, having only a few number of empaths available.

Prior to this tournament, did you have much experience playing this Quantum Incursion (or Quantum Incursions like it)? Did you learn anything new about it when you played it this time?
Yeah, I keep practicing my QI skills for 4 years now since it pops up every tournament and almost every match. The meta for the last tournaments looked like the pros would rely on rolling 5 (2 Navigation) more often, but I think that has settled and we are back to 3 (2 Empathy). That is interesting and will most certainly affect my future deck building.

Did you use any situational Quantum Incursions (Quantum Incursions 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 Quantum Incursion again?
I think I alternated between the middle numbers (the Empathy ones). As I said, I wanted to get 1s and 2s (the AU ones) against Ausgang, but failed.

What would you nominate as the MVQI card from your deck?
Still number 3, locked out Kaiser and won me the tournament in the Kaiser-Ausgang match.

What do you think of the Doorway, Quantum Incursions?
It is a really annoying card that is really bad for the game. The requirements are just too strong for most affiliations to reliably have all 6 requirements times 2 in order to safely go through. While you can get 2 Empathy and 2 AU in any deck, this either slows you down or leaves you really fragile against an opponent filtering those skills. And then this thing becomes "roll a die, stopped if 3, pass otherwise", and there is hardly anything more stupid then having this decide games.

The most common defense of Quantum Incursions that I've read is, though it uses a QR code, it's not that functionally different than other random selection/wall dilemmas (particularly Medical Crisis). What sets Quantum Incursions apart from those dilemmas?
This randomly selects requirements, this is not a standard random selection of personnel like on other cards. With all other dilemmas, you pretty much know in the second attempt what you get and can tech against it. Medical Crisis is bad if you are week on Biology and have some of the Biology personnel also be Medics. But even if you would do this, a bad selection on Medical crisis just turns the requirement into 3 Med + 3 Bio in the worst case. While 3 Med + 3 Bio is a really strong dilemma, any deck should be able to beat it. You should ask yourself if every deck should be able to get through "2 Empathy + Science" reliably (also against Opponents interaction like Brain Drain, etc.), or more precisely against the dilemma "2 Sec + 2 AU + 2 Science + 2 Empathy + 2 Physics + 2 Nav". If a dilemma with this requirement is too strong so you need to 'take chances', then this becomes a dice rolling contest for the weaker wall. You can even play around stuff like Chandra + Fire/Linguistic (did this couple of times), or Duty/Fire, which are some of the most random selections out there. It also takes away from the skill of bringing the right dilemmas or seeding them well because with this one it just comes down to luck whether it is a strong wall or gone in one turn - with other dilemmas you can sometimes get a good grasp in the seed phase what dilemmas your opponents affiliation might have more struggle against.

Do you think something should be done about Quantum Incursions? What, if any, changes do you recommend for the card?
I would just ban it or make the requirements really easy. If the combination of all possible outcomes is a too strong wall, then you make passing the dilemma roll of a die. It doesn't matter whether the chances are slim, but edges between players are quite small and having games and tournaments come down to getting the correct QI outcome makes the rest of the game just noice. I also saw a nice suggestion on the forums where Se7enofMine proposed a QI side deck where the seeding player could download a card to replace QI - a Disrupted Continuum on steroids so to speak. I would really love that, it would also allow for some meta-policing dilemmas and matchup-dependent dilemmas thrown in there, making the game more interesting.

My Commentary:
This looks like a fun deck that, and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: does not have any drones in it. I've seen T'Ong decks floating around before, but often those decks focus more specifically on Klingons. I suspect the reason why this deck includes a Federation treaty is that Mr. Rohr wanted to use the shiny new Lenara Kahn. This wormhole theorist costs a card play (unless she enters play by reporting with crew as in this deck, I could see using Nanoprobes too), but her special skill makes it all worth it. At interrupt speed, at the cost of just one Wormhole interrupt, the ship Lenara is aboard can move anywhere you want. Want to get 15 Cytherians points? Lenara. Want to get your personnel that you lost to Quantum Leap back quickly? Lenara. Want to hide from some Drones? Lenara!!

T'Ong decks, like Nanoprobe Resuscitation decks, are fun because they let a bunch of personnel see play that don't normally show because they're expensive to play. The new Katherine Pulaski shows up here; in many ways, she's an upgrade over the old version (I'm particularly thinking of the beaming restriction), but the lack of U.S.S. Enterprise in lore means she still hasn't shown up much (despite the perennial popularity of TNG Federation decks). And it isn't every day that you see a Pulaski in the same deck as Tom Paris, Captain Korok, and Martia - the combinations that can happen in this type of deck are very fun.

This deck is also one of the last winning decks to include a Backwards Compatible Second Edition card. There are several in the decklist, but only Nel Apgar, Temperamental Researcher remains unconverted. That 7 cunning for 2 cost attached to an incredible cycling ability bought him space in many Second Edition decks (he's less commonly used now, but I still dig him out of the binder any chance I get), but in First Edition, the cost of your entire turn's card play was too steep. Still, that cycling ability is pretty sweet, and the need to dig for wormholes (and their theorists) bought him space in this deck, on the eve of the removal of Second Edition cards from First Edition.