Nathan W (Naetor) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Risa Regional 2012-04-21 - 03:00 PM Timed Game Superstars Introduction With all the talk about big decks lately -- I wanted to build and play something that would be blazing fast. If nothing else, I wanted to put people on notice that you don't have to build a 70 card deck filled with downloading and every verb you can think of to win a competitive event. For the draw deck, I updated Kris' TOS Integrity deck from last regional season. I also received a lot of good advice from Kris about versions of his own dilemma pile, using the combined power of McCoy and Shran. Unfortunately, two of my games went to time -- I f*cking hate timed games -- and that ended up being the difference between winning the regional and taking second at 3-0-1 and decided by SoS. Round 1 Rogue Shindler FW (+95) Rogue was playing a version of the cadet, two mission win deck that has been going around. I blew him away right from the go, attempting on turn 3. Meanwhile, I don't think he got out until turn 5. That's the problem with the big cadets deck, in my opinion. It essentially sacrifices speed. When he got out, I ended up killing off all of his Leadership is space -- including both Enterprise captains. Meanwhile, I was almost two missions in and pulling dilemmas back with Shran and McCoy. He conceded after Shocking Betryal took Picard, Preventative Repercussion killed three (one being Riker), and McCoy said "HERRO!" the second time leaving him 0 dilemmas under his missions. FW: 100-5. Round 2 Matt Kirk FW (+100) I don't know why it says I played Charlie. I played Matt Kirk here. Anyways, Matt was playing some wild deck to avoid TCS and Insurrection. I had played a version of it a few days ago. While it can work, it can be REALLY slow -- and it was in this game. I ended up solving 3 before he even attempted one. FW: 100-0. Round 3 Johnny Holeva TT (0) This game ended up being for the tournament. Johnny won the right to go first and dropped Fourth and two Quintessences on turn 1. I'm not sure how many cards he downloaded throughout the game. 20? 30? (Edit: If I calculated this right, he used Quintessence twice every turn for all 9 turns *we only played 10 turns!*, Fourth downloaded events three times, and he played 1 YHABMF. So he downloaded 29 cards!). If you want to read my blog about games going to time, in part, because of downloading, you can read it here (http://www.trekcc.org/forum/blog.php?u=2003&b=199). We probably lost 15 minutes of game time, or so. Meanwhile, I was moving good. I could have attempted on turn 3, but elected to wait a turn to drop Sisko and keep him honest with the powerful Borg interrupts. Anyways, he ended up re-downloading Fourth after bouncing her with 7, and dropping two AWC? and the Borg event that lets you download 5 cards -- powered by his 3 downloaded Annexation Drones. So he caught up a turn or two behind. When he attempted, I couldn't draw either of my Secret Identities in conjunction with Dignitaries and Witnesses, or Telepathic Deception (he didn't have the skills for either). This would've been huge, as the Queen lets you work around my dilemma pile too easily. But I couldn't. I ended up burning one Unexpected Difficulties on his first attempt just to stop him -- and on his second attempt I burned one again but still couldn't get anything to stick and he solved. Then, to make matters worse, he stole Secret Identitied Kirk. Dukat where were you?! About that same time, I solved so we were pretty close. At the planet, my dilemmas were hammering him. Assimilated Kirk got SI'd. I think he got Clowned + ACE two or three times. Meanwhile, I had a decent crew and was pulling dilemmas back pretty consistently now. However, time got called knotted at 35. He went at Restore Errant Moon, but his stupid Alvera Tree Ritual wouldn't let keep my Clown on top of my dilemma pile. Yay Ritual! It didn't matter since I drew an ACE and Clown and two more people died. On my turn he buried my mission, so we true tied 35-35. Could've/would've: I think had we went to 100, I would have been in a good situation. I think he had ~4 or 5 people left and I had 10-12. Round 4 Charlie Plaine MW (+35) Johnny and I both had not played Charlie (who was 0-3 at the time). It ended up being that -- had we both received the same outcome in this round (say both FW) -- whoever got paired with Charlie would have a lower SoS. I won the roll. The game started out fine for me. I was going fast and Charlie was not playing anyone with the skills on my bouncing walls. However, he eventually got a few out -- and I became nervous as he had VO Sisko and Bashir with savior Ezri. I was really going to have to play my dilemmas around them to get it to work. I mostly breezed through two missions. Kirk was Holding Cell'd but I was sitting good. Then I tried to get cute, which probably ended up costing me the full win -- and by result the tournament. Track Survivors had Insurrection on it. Two games earlier, I cheesed around this against Matt by solving the Cunning requirements. The problem, this time, was that Harriman, Jaeger, and Evans were no where to be found. So I made the mistake and went to solve Transport Crash Survivors. Well, long story short, I got hit by some big filter dilemma -- probably any of the dilemmas that work against TOS without Kirk -- and finally Temporal Conduit! This ended up being very bad as he started pulling out dilemmas from Track Survivors as well! I eventually found my Geology guys and did the smart play by heading back to the planet. Time ended up getting called on me, up 65-30 with 4 dilemmas under Track Survivors -- with me having 14 personnel in play to double attempt. Unfortunately, on the first attempt Charlie pulled Zero Hour -- and even this made the attribute requirements impossible to reach for either mission attempt (the first crew had to solve the Integrity requirements counting Insurrection already, and the would-be second attempt of 6 could just squeak under the Cunning). I didn't have 16 skills with those six, so I couldn't solve TCS -- and I passed the game over to Charlie knowing I'd autosolved my last mission next turn if we had more time. Going to time was partially was my fault as I had to be pretty intricate with my dilemma plays to get around and eliminate Ezri and Bashir. Charlie ended up playing Krim to eat my ACEs (nicely done) -- playing for the win. He had 3 dilemmas under his second mission. At this point, he also had a decent feel for my dilemma pile (although I never even played the Clown on him) -- but I had since vanquished Ezri and Bashir. He ended up attempting with 6, I used one Uninvited to destroy Holding Cell (I had planted a Driven on my previous turn), and the second to fetch Timescape -- foiling his would-be double attempt. I knew he had 1 Geology (and no Arch) remaining (plus Security Drills). I ended up drawing and playing both Secret Identity and Captain's Holiday (he had seen this wall 1-2 times before). But on this attempt he didnt' bring Geology, and didn't fetch one with SI (I actually don't think he had any left). So I ended up with the MW: 65-30. It turns out that Johnny had received a MW against Rogue, so had I gotten the full win against Charlie, I would've ended up winning the event! But I didn't and did not. A decent event though. I would have liked to win and put a 44 card deck on the regional winners list, but it wasn't meant to be. Johnny was a deserving winner, but I'd really have liked to see what would've happened if we were given more time. Borg downloading takes up so much gametime. Download, shuffle, cut, discard, repeat. I've now played against the Alpha quadrant Borg variant 4 times in competitive matches. Each game has been decided at time: timed wins for me over Neil Timmins' twice at continentals last year, a timed win for me over Eric Robinett's at continentals, and the one today vs. Johnny. Take that for what it's worth.