Second Edition Austrian National Championships winner Peter Machovits |
Peter's Commentary: A temporal deck was my first choice, but I've played that too often. I tried a Terok Nor Deck but I didn't like that either. What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? 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? 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? What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck? |
My Commentary: DS9 speed decks are becoming pretty refined these days, but players are also adapting to them. Cards like the aforementioned Rapid Progress are part of that, but so are basic anti-weenie cards like In Development and Slightly Overbooked. That's why I'm happy to see the increase in deck size here. Peter has largely opted to add stall cards like Uninvited and Surprise Amity, which can do a lot to help cancel out those lost turns you get when you slam into a wall you can't pass. It does sound like Surprise Amity didn't quite perform up to Peter's expectations, but that's (in a way) reassuring to me. Games where Surprise Amity doesn't do much are ones that you're winning anyways, and since he continued to win those games where it wasn't impactful, I'd say it sounds like the inclusion of a come-from-behind card at least wasn't harmful. The dilemma pile has a facet which is pretty unique to Austrian decks (okay, I guess I've only seen it in Stefan Slaby's decks). Most people treat Chula: The Game and its related dilemmas as the focus of the entire dilemma pile. After all, if you're using mostly Chula dilemmas, you're more likely to draw The Game along with something that it affects. Here we're seeing it used as more of a module that can be added to an existing pile. In practice, The Game ends up as a dead draw more often, but the pile stays well-rounded. The Game can always be placed on a mission for use against future attempts without risk anyways.
|
First Edition Austrian National Championships winner Stefan Slaby |
Stefan's Commentary: What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? 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? 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 new Security/Archaeology Alpha Mellis looks good in theory, him and Hajur (downloaded by Penk) walk through Quantum Leap. Unfortunately, both require Defend Homeworld's Security download to get out reliably, which only worked out in one of my games. In the future I might include 2-3 copies of the more versatile Madam Guinan instead. What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck? |
My Commentary: Quantum Incursions (which appears twice in this deck) virtually guarantees most decks that don't use an AU-icon heavy faction (like TOS or Starfleet) will still include a decent number of AU-icon personnel. And, if not, they'll have a great deal of difficulty passing a third of Incursion's requirements. Of course, there are many popular decks that use Time Locations, and you'd think that Temporal Investigations wouldn't hit much against those decks. But reporting flexibility is very important, and most Time Location decks have some way to get their AU people out to a non-Time Location place - in practice, Investigations may be more likely to net you draws against Time Location decks. I definitely need to start running it myself and keep track of how many draws I average with it per game. Before you run and put Temporal Conduit in all your deck to use as your AU reporting/seeding permission slip, consider what you might be replacing. A delta quadrant deck like this one can more easily afford to drop Space-Time Portal in order to use this doorway - the spaceline is shorter (and The Gift grants additional Cytherians protection), and you're less likely to be staring down an armada (not that this deck is defenseless in that scenario). It may still be worth seeding both, especially considering how popular both Quantum Leap and Time Locations are. You may find yourself in a situation where you can rescue all those stranded officers. That benefit is not insignificant when you consider that Quantum Leap is only getting more and more prevalent. |