Jeremy Huth (9of24) Tournament Report - 1E - Trek Masters 2019-09-09 - 12:00 AM Ahab's Whale Introduction It was a return to Stop First Contact for me in this online event. Seems to have remained a fine choice in the age of 22nd and 23rd century prevalence. Round 1 Austin Chandler FW (+100) First game and Austin also seeds Earth with what looked like Fed or Starfleet missions. This is something I like to see, since it usually makes Earth that much easier to get through and SFC can be devastating to the opponent. The play phase started as normal, got the SoG Queen to start with and an FC Queen to swap into. Was up and rolling turn 2, got Locutus early. Then hit a bit of a hiccup, went for A Change of Plans to download Assimilate Homeworld, but couldn't find it and got an Eliminate Starship instead. Thought there must have been an issue when deck building, didn't know what exactly but carried on. I didn't draw into a Maximum Firepower on my attack and Austin auto healed at his Spacedock. Battle didn't seem the way to go, so I went digging for Assimilate Planet. As I was looking I finally found the Assimilate Homeworld, it was the alternate image which I was overlooking as Assimilate Planet while sliding through the deck. The rest of the game went as planned. I stopped first contact , Austin removed his deck from the game and conceded. Round 2 Niall Matthew FW (+100) While Niall is a well known Borg player, he also plays many other forms of interaction so I was a bit anxious going into this game. Turns out he was playing Dominion personnel battle, fortunately for me I didn't get to see that part of his game. On turn 2 he moved to the Alpha Quadrant, getting stopped coming through the wormhole. I guess he misjudged the range on my cube and I flew over to the wormhole, downloaded Eliminate Starship, and blew up his ship. He said no further ships were coming and conceded the game. Round 3 Stephen P FW (+100) Normal start to the game vs Spectre. Got my Queens/Locutus and all the goodies. Spectre jumped out of the gate early and attempted a mission. He hit my Edo Probe and chose to continue, next was FLI/Scow and I flipped Mission Debriefing. He caught me off guard though by Uxbridging it and continued the attempt but got stopped by Spatial Rift. So I took the opportunity to blow up a ship with a few crew members and then switched to Assimilate Homeworld. As I was working through dilemmas at Earth, Spectre rebuilt a force and attempted a planet mission and hit the Murasaki-Alien Parasites combo. Which caused the loss of the majority of his personnel at that mission. It was at this time which he chose to concede the game. Round 4 Greg Dillon FW (+50) Greg was playing Starfleet/Vulcan treaty, so I was settling in for a long game. Standard start for me, with a one turn delay because I didn't get a nebula at the end of the spaceline with my ship. I considered battle, but ultimately decided against it since Greg had multiple ships in play in different locations and I couldn't really cut him off moving around the spaceline, or timeline in his case. He was attempting before me, but I got a couple 'kills' with Spatial Rift in his initial attempt and he lost points from Edo Probe. Then, in an effort to get through Spatial Rift, he attempted with Syrran, who had Seek Hidden Reliquary on him. He had cleared the Spatial Rift, but at the cost of Syrran. In hindsight, this was the turning point in the game. The point losses , and loss of access to Surak really slowed him down. I stopped first contact, he lost most of his Starfleet peeps and ships. I cleared Wolf 359, but forgot to move away at the end of turn. He came and battled me delaying the probe a turn but I moved away the next turn and he had nothing to stop me from getting the probe and the win. Round 5 Michael Van Breemen FW (+100) This game I had a bit a of slow start, with only unique personnel and the FC Queen in hand. This meant I only had 4 personnel in play on turn 2 and couldn't move my ship. MVB had express some concern that I was playing Borg, so I was hoping my slow start wouldn't hurt me. I managed to get out to the mission he was attempting and had gotten stopped by Crisis. I attacked his ship on the following turn but did not get a Maximum Firepower so the Enterprise survived, for now. Next turn he made it through a couple dilemmas and got stopped by In the Pale Moonlight. I finished off his ship and headed for Earth. He spent the rest of the game trying to dig for Going to the Top to get Admiral Riker, but it didn't come in time. I stopped first contact and with his deck removed, he conceded. Closing Thoughts I had a lot of fun in the event. Stop First Contact is my favorite deck to play. But I'll probably have to tuck it away for a little while, but I'm sure it'll be back in the future.