First Edition Swedish National Championships winner Stefan de Walf
Title: Mr Meeseeks, give me a Pustervik!
Deck Archetype: Interference (battle)
Play Engines: Protect the Timeline, Smugglers' Rendezvous, Drone Control Room
Draw Engines: Temporal Shifting, Temporal Almanac, Finally Ready to Swim, Remote Interference
Bonus Point Mechanics: Assign Mission Specialists, Holographic Camouflage
Victory Correctly Predicted By: LORE, monty42, Hoss-Drone, GooeyChewie, and bosskamiura.

Stefan's Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
I expected a lot of 22-stuff, especially decks with minefields. Since I had some part of this Romulan deck already printed from the last tournament, playing an updated version which includes the other time location also meant minimizing the work required on Friday morning

Other decks included a take on dissident lockout (which really underperformed in testing, though) or some other form of Romulan deck.

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
I was hoping for peaceful 22 decks. Since in the end I somehow messed up my doorways in the last minute and decided against Temporal conduit I was quite weak against Borg or other heavy interference-so hoped not to face that.

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 don't see anything special here. Deck is quite standard.

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?
HQ: Defensive Measures is important against other Romulans, Orbital Bombardment is good against campers, I also included a Kukalaka for some help against dissidents, but that was more because I had the tent space anyway-I doubt that would have sufficiently helped me.

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
Camouflage, there are other cards which did more in some games, but Camouflage delivered hard throughout.

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
No, but I want to give a big shoutout to Jörn for organizing this awesome weekend for us. Everything was perfect.

My Commentary:
Oooh, this is a fun new one. I remember thinking that Holographic Camouflage looked pretty fun when it was spoiled, I'm happy to see it used successfully. Droning around was already pretty useful, with the draws from Remote Interference, and adding some bonus points to the mix for battling makes it even juicier. Decreasing all hits to one flip hurts, but you're already getting a lot out of each interaction. And a Battle Bridge side deck full of 35% hull tactics means that you're still likely to be blowing up ships, especially with dilemmas like The Cloud and Gomtuu Shock Wave floating around.

Smuggler's Rendezvous, on the other hand, is a card that I didn't give a second thought to after it was spoiled. It seems really good at first, what with all 22nd century personnel being native to it and all, and you also get a free outpost there (which gets UFP: One Small Step), and you get to seed a ship there. But then I got to the part where your personnel cannot report to other time locations, and I wrote it off. Turns out, I was wrong! The flexibility to use all those skill-dense 22nd century personnel is clearly worth the restriction, and a battle-based deck will always be happy to have a seeded ship - in addition to the Husnock Ship that we also see here.

One thing I've noticed in the last few winning decks is the absence of AU dilemmas. The prevalence of Timepod Ring (thanks to Temporal Benefactor) has lead to a precipitous drop-off in AU dilemma use - only Jon Carter has used one in the past six weeks (Quantum Leap). Now, given how much we were seeing Quantum Leap before Temporal Benefactor came out, I'm not exactly heartbroken to see it fade away, but I'm also a bit concerned that all the other AU dilemmas are disappearing too.

I'm seeing more prevention cards (typically Quinn and Kevin Uxbridge) showing up these days, and Stefan runs a couple Kevins here. After quite a few years of every important event sporting the "Immune to Kevin Uxbridge" tag, we've seen several powerful events without it. Everyone's favorite Romulan Minefield can get evaporated (not that this deck has much to fear from it), as can my nemesis from last week, Disrupted Continuum. Maybe it's time for me to run one or two Kevins.

Second Edition Moscow Regional winner Nickolay Korotya
Title: Future is here! v1.7.5
Headquarters: Prevent Historical Disruption
Deck Size: 82 Cards
Deck Archetype: Control Solver
Dilemma Pile Size: Attrition
Dilemma Pile Type: 42 Cards
Victory Correctly Predicted By: monty42, LORE, GooeyChewie, Latok, The Ninja Scot, and Marquetry.

Nickolay's Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
This time I had very little time to prepare due to IRL stuff, so I grabbed literally the only complete deck on hand - and that was my trusty Relativity deck (the version I've played in Koblenz last fall).

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
I was wary of fast decks (like DS9) or capture decks - same as last time we spoke about Relativity back in 2016. And two of the decks I played against this time were fast ones - Oleg's DS9 and Alexey's Bajorans. However, both of them got surprisingly bad draws and were much slower than expected, so their pressure on Relativity was relatively light.

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?
This is my "main" deck for a few years now (back from 2013), so I know it pretty well. This time it performed quite well, absolutely as expected.

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?
Yes, Exocomp & B’Elanna, which often stay unused, were quite useful when Andrey managed to put 2 damages on my ship (1 on space and 1 on planet missions). Luther Sloan, who usually stays in discard pile, was quite busy this time, too - I think I played him like 4 times over two games.

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
It would be Kirk OT this time, who help to overcome many dilemmas - and motivated opponents to give me more dilemmas than needed every game.

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
Relativity rocks :D

Follow up question: I don't often see Historical Research in Relativity decks. Who are typically your targets for the download?
For Historical Research, I really like to add this mission to big decks to offset possible bad draws. It's even better in Relativity due to Braxton's download ability. Anyway, in this tournament I went first in all three games. Usually when I'm going second my typical targets for download are Braxton/Seven/Data/Revised Chakotay/Kirk OT/any other good personnel.

My Commentary:
I hadn't played with Emergency Transport Units for quite a while when I included them in my Android deck the other week, and I've refreshed my respect for them. I imagine some people might balk at seeing them in a Relativity deck: "But you can just get the dead back with Temporal Transporters!" That's true, but Temporal Transporters is a pretty expensive tool to use for the task. Every time you play it with the replicate, it costs two counters + two counters worth of draws. With the Emergency Transport Unit, you just pay the two counters, and you pay them up front. The personnel's still in play, ready to go for the next turn, and you can just replay the Unit directly to the ship with all your personnel. And if your opponent isn't killing (spoiler alert, they probably are, at least a little bit), well that's when Grav-Plating Trap comes in.

Now, of course, Charlie would remind me that the discards from Temporal Transporter's replicate cost shouldn't be counted strictly as one counter each, because there are more ways to get cards into your hand than by spending a counter to draw them. Well, there aren't many decks where that reminder is quite as true as it is for this deck. Nickolay is not just running Historical Monitor with a bunch of Temporal events (Relativity loves those for fueling Naomi's ability) - he also has a bunch of equipment and Fajo's Menagerie. They're both Order phase draw engines, which make them just a little awkward to use to fuel Temporal Transporters, but that's just a matter of developing experience with the flow of the deck. And with five years of playing the deck under his belt, that's certainly something Nickolay has in spades.

Sometimes in a deck with a bunch of interrupts, you'll find yourself with a hand that's full of cards that you can't play, and Nickolay has an app for that situation too. He's running both of the 4-cost "discard and interrupt" kill dilemmas, which should help out with just that sort of situation, in addition to thinning out the opponent's personnel. Then, once those interrupts have been played, they'll be sitting in the discard pile, fueling Divide and Conquer. Even just three interrupts discarded will boost Divide's attribute requirements above the level of most mission requirements, but I suspect that in most games the total reaches much higher levels.