The Road to Worlds: First Edition Winning Deck Analysis, Week 10

by Lucas Thompson, Ambassador

4th June 2014

Ahhh, another one-deck week, I'm getting spoiled now.

The 6/1/14 1E Andoria Regional in Roseville, Minnesota was won by Kevin Jaeger. He used a Dominion Capture deck titled "We have bunny. Give us a million dollars. No funny stuff.". His tournament report can be found here.

 

Deck Stats:
Play Engines: New Arrivals (15% of the deck), Dominion War Efforts/Assign Support Personnel (15%), Remote Supply Depot (13%)
Draw Engines: New Arrivals, Deyos, Obedience Brings Victory
Percentage of deck that plays for free (or is downloaded reliably): 55%
Bonus Point Mechanics: Victory is Life, Ultimatum, Interrogation
Unique Dilemmas (to be updated as the season progresses): Berserk Changeling (1)
Non-Dilemma Seed Cards: 18

 

Kevin Jaeger's Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
First off, thanks to the Minnesota group for hosting and running another great event. Justin Kaufman did a great job. Was a great weekend and I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shoutout to all the trek players in the Land of 10000 Champions for the boatload of fun and quality competition they provide; 1e and 2e both.

I have two favorite affiliations in 1e: Borg and Dominion. I had this deck and a Borg deck built, and decided that this deck was the more interesting deck to play since it included cards in it that I have *never used* - and that's going back a long way to 1996. I already played the Borg deck in an online event, so it really wasn't a hard decision. Plus the fact that I love to bring the curveball and I thought there was no way anyone would be teched for this.

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
I wanted to face Hirogen, alpha Borg, and dedicated Bajoran Resistance/Son'a so I could see if it's got the legs to swim in a continentals/worlds Meta. I really didn't want to face DQ outpost Borg with the ability to quadrant hop better than me, where my success is dependent more on drawing luck.

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?
I've played a lot of Dominion decks over the years so the nuts and bolts were second nature. But since I've never ran capture in this dedicated a way, I didn't know how well I was going to execute. The captured incident was an old favorite of mine, but back in the day I didn't run it with any punishment cards (since games didn't last that long for them to matter).

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?
Outgunned! I tried hard all day to set people up for a surprise, but it happened only once and only when I stopped trying and almost missed seeing the opportunity.

I knew that Quantum Slipstream Drive was a solid card since it was my ace in the whole for combatting Hirogen or some other random DQ deck, but in four straight games I was flying around the AQ doing the LA drive-by shooting. Kris really, really had me flying around since his outposts were intentionally on the far ends of the space line. The truly shocking part was how well it allowed me to stay on pace with mission solving late game and just "swoop in" to go after Find Hidden Base for the win late game in all four rounds. Otherwise, I probably would have been a mod win fiend all day instead of full win.

I don't think there is a card in the deck I wouldn't use again. The deck does rely a bit on dilemma surprise, so the next time I play the deck the twelve dilemmas will probably be different. Can't have opponents digging for and protecting their security and having most of my dilemma pile whiff.

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
Invasive Beam-In. This deck is only possible because it allows you to drop the hammer on any outpost, homeworld, or station crew while the game is young so you can take the huge tempo advantage before a solver deck blows through your dilemmas. (Not to mention allowing for the hossman Deyos to torture three people in one turn move.)

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
It helps to have soldiers who value their lives less than the success of the mission. Right Omet'iklan?

 

My Commentary:
First thing I noticed: no equipment seeds with the Primary Supply Depot. It's not like he had any room for them, with a whopping eighteen non-dilemma seeds already, but that means no early White Deprivation protection or VR Headset benefits. So let's look at what the first turn is likely to look like.

There are two mission specialists, but they have no mission skills, so they're probably there for staffing primarily. There's a Spacedoor, that fetches a ship, and normally I'd go ahead and guess that it's the Dominion Battleship. However, Spacedoor eats the card play and there are only ten universal Ketracel White icon personnel in the deck, so it isn't likely to be staffed on turn one. There are a bunch of Breen Disruptor Bursts in the Battle Bridge Side Deck, though, so maybe we're getting the Breen Warship instead. We need a Breen for the attribute boost, so Lam can show up through Dominion War Efforts/Assign Support Personnel. Move through the wormhole, and we're stopped. On turn two, DWE/ASP for a Dominion Engineer, and we've got our equipment play engine (Remote Supply Depot, via Ultimatum) and two downloaded equipment (probably Ketracel-White/VR Headset).

The Dominion Battleship is likely to come in to play fairly early still, since we can see a seeded Make It So. VR Headset with a Vorta (Deyos via Defend Homeworld) can get a Crew Reassignment early, and allow Kevin to play his various KW-icon personnel directly to a powerful ship, bypassing the quadrant rule. If Kevin sees an opponent who isn't using Q's Tent: Civil War, he can more comfortably go for this ship first over the Breen Warship. Why, you ask? Well, while White Deprivation isn't the most popular Referee-icon card out there, it is popular enough to reasonably often find a slot among the thirteen face-up cards in a QT:CW side deck. However, it is not popular enough to generally find a slot in decks that uses the older Q's Tent, so he doesn't have much to fear in those match-ups.

Now, with only two personnel play engines (New Arrivals and DWE/ASP), this deck isn't going to win any awards for getting a ton of personnel out. Sometimes, though, you don't need to. The Jem'Hadar have huge printed strength, and all those free hand weapons add up. Invasive Beam-In will get them present with the opponent's personnel, and the mortally wounded stack-up quickly... and that's before we take the 4 copies of Captured that Kevin seeded into account. There's 12 Security in the deck (and many of them are Support Personnel), so having more of that skill should be easy. There's even a whole mission in the Mirror Quadrant that he seeded just for early access to a hand weapon (I suppose that planet could always be subjugated though)! Worse, once a Kazon Bomb goes off and leaves the more powerful personnel behind, they become easy pickings for those incidents.

Once Kevin's got some captives, that's where the real fun starts. The only Cardassian card in the deck is a copy of Terok Nor, though I imagine Kevin would be happy to see his opponent seed DS9 first - that way he can Commandeer it instead and use it as his own. Either way, it is going to have three Security Holding Cells aboard, primed and ready to start downloading Interrogation, Torture, or (if the captive has some skills Kevin needs) Brainwash. While the captives are having their humanity crushed, why not send Coutu shopping too?

One thing this deck does not stock, and in the right meta may need, is an answer to Transport Inhibitors. IBI may get you through an opponent's shields, but if there's an Inhibitor there, you're still blocked. Inhibitors have been showing up in several of the recent decks with heavy free-play advantage, so even if that Bomb hits, the Jem'Hadar may find themselves unable to capitalize on the situation.

 

We're in the home stretch now, June is the last month of Regional season! I'll be back next week with the winning deck from the Risa Regional. Go watch the podcast!

 

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