2023 George Masters Draft Results

by Ross Fertel, Mistified

7th March 2023

Georgia Masters was a couple weekends ago. We ran a draft so it is time to look at the decks played at that event in the lead up to Worlds at Yorkshire. At the time of this writing, four decks are publicly available.

Scott Baughman went for the Klingon approach with Brute Strength. Based around the eponymous mission, this deck will get the personnel out to solve the missions. While there are some unoptimized cards in there such as Karmock, Martok, Welcome Presence and the I.K.S. Chontay, on the Hunt, this deck uses them more for their attributes and skills than gametext.

Will Raiman brought Voyager into the mix with Tacking Into the Win MkIII. You'll find old favorites in this deck like Running a Tight Ship and Seven of Nine, Efficient Analyst along with newer cards like Chakotay, Steadfast Commander and Chell, Incessant Chatterbox.

Raiman's deck being the third in a series, we can compare it to the previous version and see what has changed. Orlitus Cluster, Astronomical Survey has been swapped for Plasma Storm Depths, Search for Missing Vessel which fits more with this version of the deck and was not available in prior interations. Two planet dilemmas are out in favor of Alternatives to Fighting. While the Dilemmas got a bit smaller by two the draw deck increased by that amount. The main additions seem to be Code of the Ushaan and William T. Riker, Surprised Witness.

Nathan Miracle's Next Generation Telepathy deck is aptly called Georgia on my Mind. While there are some telepathic heavy hitters in the deck, both Federation (such as Lwaxana Troi, Extravagant Ambassador) and not (such as Kes, Experienced Ocampa), there is a Principled theme as well from Heroes and Demons. This is an excellent use of both themes which make use of the non-aligned support in more ways than one. Miracle also used Talos IV, Investigate Distress Signal to avoid a good deal of mission requirements not typically found on a single personnel in favor of a double dose of Telepathy.

The day went to Michael Van Breemen who played Ferengi Blitz, a Ferengi Speed deck. You don't frequently hear about Ferengi winning Second Edition games, especially a high level one and that was one of the reasons for this deck choice, along with it being the year of the Ferengi. One of the keys to this deck is Treasured Collectibles, offering ways to use your Alien Gambling Device, hopefully reduced in cost by Martus Mazur, Listener, for an extra seven counters. While there are support cards, this deck is more aimed at just getting the personnel out to solve missions, though the assistance is beneficial such as Levin to download Tullaberry Wine. Plus, the newest Ferengi, Lurin, Heartless Profiteer is there and while his skills are not clustered on any one mission, they are necessary for all of them. You can read more about how this deck works along with the matchups in Van Breemen;'s tournament report which is an excellent read and recommended as always.

While the event was very much a success, no one got a perfect score in the draft. Keep an eye on the tournament page as we head into world at Yorkshire later this year.

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