Barry was back! We missed him. Hopefully this marks a somewhat permanent return from his far-too-long hiatus.

Still rocking his MQ Terran Empire deck from last year, the main things that mattered to ME about it were these: (1) his turns took longer than mine, because holy cow there's a lot of Objective manipulation involved in playing Original Series Terran Empire, and (2) my Let's See What's Out There copies were almost dead draws. Oh, also, (3) I gave up on Soran points by putting the Nexus in Barry's Mirror Quadrant, hoping he would trigger it.

A fairly nasty Quantum Incursions + The Higher… The Fewer dilemma combo ensured that I did need Stone of Gol points this game, even with a three-mission win. And Barry’s Mission Debriefing plus general strategy of “stall me with the dilemmas” worked out well for him. The Terran Empire required some setup before it could dominate its universe, and these tactics supplied him with that time.

In the end, though, it was tough to keep up with all the spaceline hazards my dilemmas were throwing onto Barry’s compressed spaceline, and Mission Debriefing is a double-edged sword. On the decisive turn, Barry was trying to maneuver around The Whale Probe while solving three missions (he knew I would win next turn). This led, however, to the play of the game. Probably the play of the month.

Coaxing the I.S.S. Enterprise to the limits of its substantially enhanced RANGE, Barry was able to solve the first of the three and headed for the second. (The third had only one dilemma left and he knew what it was; passing would be trivial. The second mission was decisive.) He struck a Cytherians, with all his personnel aboard, and, as I said, this was the last turn. I sat back in my chair, thinking I had just won.

Barry clearly thinks the same, and he looks frustrated. But he soldiers on anyway, just in case he gets another turn. He discards one of his two Space-Time Portals to return I.S.S. Enterprise to hand, with virtually his entire deck aboard. I continue sitting back in my chair, thinking I’d won.

Then Barry says out loud, “Hey, wait. I have two Space-Time Portals, don’t I?” (Yes.) And I am startled to realize that there’s no “once each turn” limit on Space-Time Portal. And I had no Q’s Tent, no Ref Cards, no nothing.

So he discards the SECOND Space-Time Portal and reports the ship and crew back where they started. Of course, he lost some mission specialists and whatnot who weren’t [AU] and couldn’t come with, but this didn’t just get Barry past Cytherians… it also restored all his RANGE!

Unfortunately for Barry, the next card was a Garbage Scow, and he did not find enough RANGE to move it and get to the third mission in time. The turn passed to me, and I notched the victory with a quick solve.

...but, next time, Barry won’t be playing me with a deck that’s a year old.