Weekly 1E Roundup - 14 AUGUST 2019

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

14th August 2019

Welcome to the Wednesday 1E Roundup, a weekly column looking back at the past week in the world of First Edition as well as a preview of the week ahead. If you've got an event coming up and you'd like to be featured in this column, feel free to contact me at cplaine@gmail.com or on the forums via PM to MidnightLich.

The Big News

Peter Ludwig (martok88) is your 2019 First Edition World Champion, earning the title for the second time in his career. In Day One, Peter played a Bajoran deck with a somewhat naughty name to 3rd place, earning him a great seed for the single elimination Day 2 bracket. There, Peter piloted a Starfleet/Vulcan deck to victory over one of the toughest fields of players in recent memory. Congratulations to Peter and all the players at this massive, well-executed event. We'll have an interview with Peter and an in-depth look at his decks in an upcoming edition of this column.

This Day in Trek

Today would have been the 66th birthday of James Horner, the Oscar-winning composer famous in Star Trek circles for his scores for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock. Star Trek II was his first score for a high profile motion picture, and helped contribute to his career. He would go on to score epic films such as Aliens, Apollo 13, and Titanic. His life was cut short on June 22, 2015 when he died in a plane crash. Though I don't think he thought too fondly of his early work on Star Trek, would the showdown between Kirk and Khan have been half as good as it was without his intense music backing it? Take a listen to "Battle in the Mutara Nebula" while you read the rest of this column and appreciate his work.

Tournament Reports

Aside from the two-day major event of the World Championship, there were seven (7) other side events taking place this past weekend in Wien, Austria. The first was Thursday morning, an OTF Complete Constructed event that was part of the Chair's Global Challenge series, "The Best of Both Worlds." It looks like several of the twelve (12) total players took the challenge of playing a themed deck, but tournament winner Meinhard S. Rohr (Mogh, Son Of Worf) stuck with a familiar favorite, Kazon, to win the first event of the weekend. Justin Ford (Resistance-is-futile) was the runner-up with a deck.

At the same time, an Open Sealed event took place with six (6) players. Based on the affiliation spread, it looks like this was using some variant of the starters that saw Gerald Sieber (Ausgang) win with a deck. Alex Dixon (alexd) took 2nd place, the only player with a deck.

Later in the evening on Thursday, a Virtual OTF tournament took place that drew six (6) players. Paddy Tye (KazonPADD) won the event with a deck using all virtual cards (and reprints); his deck, Virtual Vienna - Dirty Devidian Augments is a cool example of what can be done with Devidian Door in the modern game. Gerald Sieber, fresh of his sealed deck victory in the morning, came in second place with a Virtual Vulcan deck.

On Friday, Day One of the World Championships drew twenty-one (21) players, all vying for one of the Top 8 places that would advance to Day 2. After five (5) rounds of tough competition, Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser) emerged undefeated and took the top seed, playing an deck titled Istopher Ike ist ein Urensohn. European Continental Champion Alex Dixon took 2nd with a Klingon/KCA deck, while Peter Ludwig took third and Greg Dillon (Latok) took fourth, with Bajorans and respectively. Greg wrote a quick report talking about his Day 1 experiences.

Rounding out the Top 8 were Justin Ford, defending World Champion Michael Van Breemen (The Ninja Scot), Stefan Slaby (Winner of Borg), and Meinhard S. Rohr. Justin and Michael both played (making four out of the top eight to do so), while Stefan played / Hirogen and Meinhard played an unknown / deck. Out of the top eight, four (4) were previous World Champions and all were high caliber players. All of the Top 8 decks except Alex's and Meinhard's are posted on the tournament page as of the writing of this column.

Naturally, when one is in Austria and has a lot of steam to blow off after a world championship qualifier, one plays in a Biermeister. If you aren't familiar with this format, it's a tournament in which players are encouraged (but not required) to drink often and in abundance while playing Trek. It's a time honored tradition and usually involves a lot of laughter and some very, very drunk players. No doubt Ken Tufts (Worf Son of Mogh) was one of them, as he claimed victory in this event. Meinhard S. Rohr had the honor of being the runner-up.

Saturday began with a Reflections-sealed event, with each player being given a box of Reflections from which to build their decks. Jorn Engstrom (admiral-mogh) made Sweeden proud with his undefeated victory; happily, relative newcomer to our site Suden Käpälä (SudenKapala) took 2nd place. Hopefully, the players will come back around to let us know what they played and/or link their decks.

Later on Saturday, before the finale of Worlds, fifteen (15) players participated in the "Cool" tournament. In this, one of my favorite events of all time, players aren't trying to win as much as they are trying to pull of a really cool deck. This was a staple event at GenCon for years, which saw such infamous decks as Quark's Tiki Bar, a deck with no nouns, and my favorite - a recreation of Star Trek 2009's plot, including sucking Vulcan into a Black Hole with Amanda Grason on the planet. Sadly, there aren't any decks linked to this tournament, but congrats to Ken Tufts for having the winning deck - hopefully, it was cool.

Late Saturday evening saw Day 2 of Worlds, where Peter Ludwig would ultimately claim his second World Championship. This was a single-elimination bracket with players paired up by seed. In the first round, 1st seed Johannes Klarhauser defeated Meinhard S. Rohr (8th seed) while Peter Ludwig (3rd) knocked out Michael Van Breemen (6th), denying him a repeat championship. However, 5th seed Justin Ford upset Greg Dillon (4th) and Stefan Slaby (7th) upset Alex Dixon (2nd).

In the semi-finals, (1) Johannes defeated (5) Justin to earn his place in the final, while (3) Peter held (7) Stefan at bay to set up the epic final of Johannes vs. Peter. Johannes was playing his now familiar deck, but it couldn't stop the power of Peter's / ; no doubt Peter's twenty-four (24) copies of Barclay's Transporter Phobia had something to do with it.

Finally, on Sunday, after an epic four days of Trek, six (6) players gathered once again to play Sealed. And Suden Käpälä (SudenKapala) won the day with a deck called Laren And Riva Come Of Age Among Mercenary Bridge Crew, which has been posted with detailed notes. Thanks for that!

Whew, that was a lot of Trek! But it wasn't the only 1E played all weekend, as three (3) players played in an OTF tournament in Roseville, Minnesota. Jason Tang (Pants o.t. Tal Shiar) won with a deck called The Unstoppable Finest Crew: EZ Mission Version 1.4, while Ben Johnson (mindmage) took 2nd with an unknown deck and Matthew Hayes (karonofborg) came in 3rd with a Hirogen deck. Looks like fun, gents!

I'd love to feature all of the types of games in this column, not just tournaments! Just send me an email or a private message, and I'll be happy to advertise your event or games to the world in a future column. My contact information is at the bottom of every column each week.

In order to promote all forms of play, we're launching a new program designed to encourage everyone to play 1E the first weekend of each month. We'll be starting officially the first weekend of September, from Friday, September 6th through Sunday, September 8th. You can play a tournament, a casual game or games or just get together to build decks and talk trek. Stay tuned for more details, but start making plans now!

Tournament Previews

We've got two tournaments coming up this weekend, both in the midwestern United States. On Saturday, August 17th in Livonia, Michigan there will be an OTF Legacy tournament, in which non-banned backwards compatible cards are allowed. Currently, there aren't any players pre-registered, but it's in the neighborhood of David and Andrew Bowling, who are no doubt looking for more games after GenCon. Hopefully they'll get a turnout and can sanction the event.

On Sunday, in West Fargo, North Dakota, Matthew Hayes will be hosting their entry in the Chair's Challenge event. Matthew is the only pre-registered player, but I don't doubt he's secured a few of his local players to meet him on the field of battle. Will any of them accept Maggie's challenge and play Borg or Enterprise-E? We'll find out next week.

Short Takes (In Other News)

• Our market research survey is still going. There's just about another week left in our market research survey. Thank you so much to everyone that's already taken it, but we could really use your help getting as many participants as possible. The survey results will help us plan out the next few years of First Edition, so please take ten (10) minutes to fill it out.


• Barbara March, the actress that brought Lursa to life, has died. Lursa, one of the Sisters of Duras, debuted on The Next Generation before making appearances in Generations and on Deep Space Nine. She lost a battle with cancer at sixty-five (65) years old. Join us in a yell to warn the dead.


• The 2020 World Championships will be in Chicago, Illinois from August 6th through 9th. In an effort to give as much notice as possible, we announced the 2020 World Championships at the end of the 2019 event. Kris Sonsteby (LORE), our Director of Organized Play, announced the location on Sunday.


• A small set of rules clarifications was posted in early August. Rules master Jon Carter (pfti) was abroad in Europe, and didn't post an article; however, he did post about the clarifications on the forums. None of the changes are major, just clarifications and fine tunings of existing rules.


• Enabran posted a list of objectives that can be downloaded with Taking Charge. Forum user Enabran put together a post listing all of the cards one can download with Taking Charge. This handy list has been added to the list of player resources on our Gameplay (1E) forum, which is well worth a look.

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That's all for this week's roundup of First Edition news and events. For more news, you can follow The Continuing Committee on Facebook, Twitter, or bookmark our front page. News about upcoming First Edition projects can be found in the most recent Project Status Update from March 2019. My next office hours will be in mid-August, with the exact date to be determined. If you've got an event coming up and you'd like to be featured in this column, or if you have comments about this column's content, feel free to contact me at cplaine@gmail.com or on the forums via PM to MidnightLich. Until next week, may you expand your power in the universe and live long and prosper.

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