The Klagenfurt Regional

by Johannes Klarhauser, Staff Writer

26th May 2010

The tournament season will be a short one for me this year. Due to work commitments, I won't be able to participate in the German National Championship and the European Continental Championship, and it looks like I will only be at Worlds for two of the four days. All the more reason to try and get to as many big events as possible. So I decided to make the four-hour trip down south to Austria and play in the Klagenfurt Regional.

I got up early and drove to Salzburg, just behind the German-Austrian border, where I met with Josef Lemberger, who had kindly offered me a ride to Klagenfurt. After a much needed coffee (as usual, deckbuilding was only finished in the small hours of the morning), we headed off over the Alpes. We arrived with ten minutes to spare and got drinks, then got ready for the first round.

Round 1 vs. Gerald Brunner
Deck: Gerald was playing a deck with four missions worth 40 or more points.
Game Summary: I lost the coin toss and saw Gerald play Jonathan Archer, Unexpected Difficulties and U.S.S. Enterprise-J on his first turn, but I was lucky to find Silarin Prin (Between Darkness and Light) in my opening hand and immediately played him, naming Nathan Samuels (Earth Minister) with Prin's Order to delay the avalanche of cheap non-Human personnel I expected to see. Gerald drew many events and interrupts in his opening hand, but not many personnel, so it took him a while to get ready to attempt missions. In the early game, my focus was on playing six personnel as soon as possible to play both Evek (Agent of Cardassian Justice) and Ensnared, the two cards that were supposed to get both my point engine and my dilemma strategy going. When I played Evek on turn four, I revealed Daniel Leonard (Cautious Admiral), Brennan Scott and Hoshi Sato (Captain's Woman). Daniel Leonard was huge here, because his 2 Navigation would work well with Broken Captive, one of my key dilemmas, and also because it meant that my opponent would have one Admiral and one Leadership less for Dignitaries and Witnesses, another dilemma I had three copies of in my dilemma pile. Soon after, I Set Up a Labor Camp and started attempting missions, but Gerald managed to stop me quite well with two or three dilemmas each time. When Gerald finally had a ship and a crew of eight out, he was well prepared to tackle missions: Watch Dog was stacked with interrupts like Standard Punishment, U.S.S. Enterprise J meant his personnel would be attributes +1 at each of his missions, and Optimism allowed him to attempt with no cards in hand, triggering all those nifty abilities. However, it also meant that I was able to stop him cold with a Broken Captive and Psychological Pressure in my core, so his first attempt in space left only one dilemma overcome. On my turn, I played two copies of Ensnared to capture Jonathan Archer and Lorian (Displaced Captain), to prevent Gerald from scoring extra points with Archer. I completed one of my missions, then moved on to the next where I got stopped. Gerald played more personnel, but had to fly home to get reinforcements. On my turn, I was stopped, too, but by now I was at 70 points, so even if Gerald was able to destroy my Labor Camp, completing the last mission would still give me the win. Gerald played Charles Tucker III (Competent Engineer) and another personnel, then went back to attempt again with no hand. I drew into another Broken Captive and stopped him again. On my turn, I finally drew into The Central Command, which allowed me to keep enough personnel going so that Gerald's dilemmas couldn't stop the mission attempt.
Moment to Remember/Forget: The turn after Gerald had played Charles Tucker, I killed one of my captives to destroy an Unexpected Difficulties, only to be reminded by Gerald that he had no hand cards, so his events were safe. Ouch.
Game Result: Full win 110-0.
Tournament Standing: 1 win, 0 losses.

Round 2 vs. Jeronimo Mitaroff (Kangaxx)
Deck:Jemo played a deck with four missions that required Diplomacy, using the Klingon Guidance of the Council engine and K'Tal (Senior Council Member) to download anything he needed.
Game Summary: Jemo got his download engine running early on, and had Korath (Duplictous Tinkerer) on the table by his third turn. This meant that, thanks to his ten (!) non-Hand Weapon equipment cards in the deck, he was able to destroy my events, like Unexpected Difficulties, Labor Camp and Psychological Pressure at will. I thought I had a chance to kill Korath by flying over and using Toran (Ambitious Brute) to assassinate the tinkerer, but I couldn't draw into a personnel with a matching skill. On his next turn, Jemo realized what was going on and played a ship and beamed Korath out of reach of my assassin. While we were building crews, Jemo used Alexander Rozhenko (K'mtar) to download and play Sabotaged Transporter and Energize (a card each of my five opponents that day would use). On both sides, our dilemmas were working well, stopping attempts with only one or two dilemmas overcome. Jemo completed a mission first and put the pressure on me, but then my second Evek (the first one revealed only non-personnel cards) hit the jackpot and put Gorkon (Visionary Chancellor), Morka (Intelligence Agent) and Benjamin Sisko (Outlaw) in my brig. Soon afterwards, I made sure I stopped Jemo's Navaar (Experienced Gift) during a mission attempt to capture her afterward with Ensnared. Taking away her ability to dial any skill was huge for Broken Captive, and her skills in turn were the ideal fuel for the dilemma (2 Acquisition and 2 Treachery are hard to come by in an Integrity-based deck). However, Jemo's remaining personnel were still very powerful, and when I couldn't draw into any playable walls, Worf (Governor of H'atoria) allowed the Klingons to dodge some stops and complete two missions. While my crews were constantly being decimated by two copies of Sabotaged Transporters, I was able to play two copies of Prison Compound to put me at 40 points. I finally managed to complete Eliminate Harvesters, but Jemo was already working on his last mission and had a Horga'hn out. My dilemma pile didn't let me down, though, and I drew a Timescape to prevent subsequent attempts, and An Issue of Trust to stop his personnel (luckily, Klag (Second Officer) was still at Qo'noS, as Jemo only had one ship out and couldn't pick him up on that turn). Now I was off to Commandeer Prototype and attempted the mission with eight. Jemo played The Clown: Go Away to make the next attempt harder, followed by Breaking the Ice. I had neither Geology nor equipment in my team.
Moment to Remember/Forget: Breaking the Ice should have stopped me, but thanks to two copies of Means of Control, I was able to copy Morka's skills (including Geology) and conveniently give them to Parek (Privileged Legate), triggering his own gametext to gain another Geology and be able to complete the mission.
Game Result: Full win, 100-70
Tournament Standing: 2 wins, 0 losses.

Round 3 vs. Julius Melhardt (Clerasil ToB)
Deck:Julius played a deck using easy Integrity missions and personnel with a cost of 4 or more to benefit from Horga'hn, and James T. Kirk (Original Thinker) for added fun.
Game Summary:Like all my opponents that day, Julius quickly played an Energize to make all his personnel more affordable. After he had three cards on Energize, he destroyed it with A Royal Welcome to make me name a skill to hopefully download a personnel with that skill and place it into play. The logical choice against his Integrity deck would have been Treachery, but I feared that it might only lead to Lore (The One) making an appearance. With Spock (Experienced Officer) already in play, I named Archaeology. Luckily, the only other Archaeology personnel in Julius' deck was Gav (Diplomat), who he had in hand, so the interrupt fizzled. Nevertheless, Julius soon had a huge crew, and with Kirk in play, he forced me to play three dilemmas on his first attempt at Investigate Alien Probe. I stopped him, and retaliated with an Ensnared and an Apprehended to capture two personnel. After one more captive thanks to Evek, I had three captives and some points, but my missions were still untouched. I then bluffed Julius into using Kirk at Investigate Alien Probe (the only dilemma I drew and played was an overcosted Occupational Hazards), but he completed the mission and went on to one of his planet missions. I stopped him, and went to work with Odo (Impartial Investigator). I tried to capture as many Diplomats as possible, since both the planet missions required 2 Diplomacy. After I had finally completed Eliminate Harvesters, I struck gold by stopping Julius again and discarding his nine hand cards with The Dreamer and the Dream, including his two remaining copies of Original Thinker. I made sure to remove them from the game with Dukat (Pah-Wraith Puppet), so he couldn't bring them back. Julius had already shuffled his Horga'hn back into his deck, so with three overcome dilemmas under my space mission, a Prison Compound and Apprehended in hand, and Odo on the planet, I felt confident that if I could stop Julius one more time on a planet, I would be able to lock him out by capturing his remaining Diplomacy personnel. Unfortunately, I got too excited here and accidentally picked the wrong dilemma: I had drawn both Fesarius Bluff and Excalbian Drama (together with several other dilemmas that would have stopped the attempt), and played the Fesarius Bluff. Wrong card, stupid. (Probably because the image on The Last Outpost shows a starship and looks like space mission – Julius had even announced that his personnel beam down and attempt, but apparently I'm useless at this game.).
Moment to Remember/Forget: Apart from the dilemma misplay, I also wasted five points by stopping Odo at Julius' headquarters mission early in the game. I had momentarily confused the text on Odo with that on Toran (see game vs. Jeronimo)
Game Result: Full loss, 55-100
Tournament Standing: 2 wins, 1 loss

Round 4 vs. Stefan Slaby (Winner of Borg)
Deck:Stefan played an 80-card deck, using Unimatrix Zero, lots of unique personnel, and the infamous Energize/Fifth/Locutus' Borg Cube combo to download events every turn by bouncing and replaying Fourth (Neonatal Drone).
Game Summary: A game I'd rather forget. Apart from having a very bad opening hand consisting mostly of mid-game cards (Ensnared, Prison Compound, cheater interrupts), I lost this game primarily because I completely misjudged my opponent's strategy. After he had discarded The Will of the Collective and Knowledge and Experience among the first four or five cards with Quintessence, I thought I was playing against an assimilation-heavy deck that would try to reduce my resources with a Tragic Turn-pile and massive assimilation. That is why I decided to stay at my headquarters for much, much longer than usual, waiting for Stefan to make the first move so I could hit him with Endangered. Unfortunately, it turned out that The Will of the Collective was (apart from Assimilate Resistance) the only assimilation card in the deck, but by the time I finally realized this, Stefan had already built a massive core consisting of three copies of Unimatrix Zero and two Unyieldings. Without any captives (I had Four of Nine (Heuristics Drone) in my brig briefly, before Stefan reclaimed it with a well-timed Rescue Captives), my wall dilemmas were useless, and my stoppers were inefficent no thanks to Unyielding. So Stefan was able to complete Assimilate Resistance on his first attempt, assimilated Silarin Prin from my discard pile, then flew back home to the Delta Quadrant. On my turn, I desperately tried to catch up with him, attempting Commandeer Prototype with eight personnel, but I was stopped. On his next turn, Stefan burned through Historical Research (skills adjusted to popular Borg demand by Expand the Collective) and Restore Errant Moon on his first attempt each, using the a massive array of cheater interrupts he had downloaded with You've Always Been My Favorite.
Moment to Remember/Forget: Adding insult to injury, Stefan hit me with a perfect storm of dilemmas at my only mission attempt that game: The Dreamer and the Dream, followed by Accelerated Aging and Tsiolkovsky Infection, killing three, and ending in Where No One Has Gone Before. I ended the game on with 0 points, three overcome dilemmas, and my only ship in my core.
Game Result: Full loss 0-100.
Tournament Standing: 2 wins, 2 losses.

Round 5 vs. Helmuth Auberger (Aubi)
Deck: Another deck, see above
Game Summary: Aubi was using the same mission selection and core engine as Stefan, though this time my draws were much better and I decided to hit my mission early and hard before the Borg could get too much support out. I captured a Three of Nine (Tactician Drone) with Evek, then attempted Eliminate Harvesters where I got stopped and had to place all four interrupts I had in my deck on top because of Swashbuckler at Heart. Aubi, meanwhile, had played three copies of Distant Exploration and completed Assimilate Resistance soon after, scoring 50 points and assimilating Enabran Tain (“Retired” Spymaster) from my discard pile. At his space mission, I stopped him with The Caretaker's “Guests”/You Vant to Go Back?, then captured the Borg Queen (Guardian of the Hive), Locutus (Voice of the Borg) and Enabran Tain with Ensnared on my next two turns. Also, I removed the Drones that can interlink Astrometrics from the game with Dukat to make Restore Errant Moon harder to do. I completed Eliminate Harvesters and started working on Commandeer Prototype (Labor Camp had already put me at 70 points by now). After a first attempt was stopped, I bluff attempted with five aboard the Aldara. Aubi fell for the bluff and used the text on Transport Crash Survivor to draw and spend six more, getting a sure stop, but also putting two more dilemmas underneath. I then stopped him one more time at Restore Errant Moon with Back to Basics (luckily, he had no Bridge Officers Test in hand). On the next turn, I finally drew into Corbin Entek, and used him to kill off three captives to destroy all three Distant Explorations (so Aubi would have to do another mission or score 15 points some other way). I attempted Commandeer Prototype again; Aubi drew a dual dilemma he could play, but I used Telle to exchange it with the harmless Swashbuckler at Heart and completed the mission for the win.
Moment to Remember/Forget: When Aubi attempted Restore Errant Moon for the second time, I used its gametext to look for a Consume dilemma, even though I had no such card in my deck, but it allowed me to shuffle my pile anyway. On the attempt before, I had to put two Back to Basics on the bottom of my pile because I didn't have 14 personnel/ships in my discard pile yet and couldn't use them. Now, two Ensnareds and ten discarded cards later, one of those cards would be all I would need. Sure enough, I found a Back to Basics as my third card after shuffling and cutting the pile.
Game Result: Full win 110-0.
Tournament Standing: 3 wins, 2 losses.

My record was good enough for fifth place out of eleven players. Nobody stayed undefeated that day, with Peter Machovits taking the win with a deck, followed by Jeronimo Mitaroff and Stefan Slaby . Thanks to all my opponents, and especially to Josef Lemberger for the ride, the coffee, and the high-quality set of Allegiance V-cards he game me!

-djl-

Tournament Record:

• Constructed - Regional (2010-05-23): 5th place

This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:

• Cardassian Player
• No Crutches II
• Good Casting: Armstrong (Danar)

Decklist

Print Decklist • Print Checklist • Copy Deck • Download Into DeckPADD

Missions Headquarters 1 U 153 •Cardassia Prime, Hardscrabble World Planet 8 U 56 •Escape Gulag 1 U 163 •T'Lani III, Eliminate Harvesters Space 1 S 148 •Risan Approach, Abduction Plot 14 U 52 •Sector 21396, Commandeer Prototype

Draw Deck (70) Equipment 21 V 10 1x Hypospray Event 4 U 38 2x Apprehended 4 R 49 1x Endangered 17 V 27 3x Ensnared 6 P 23 3x High Command "Motivation" 1 U 93 2x •Labor Camp 4 R 68 2x Prison Compound 0 VP 39 1x Prison Compound 3 R 49 3x Psychological Pressure 2 C 69 3x Unexpected Difficulties Interrupt 7 U 42 2x Means of Control 20 V 12 2x The Central Command Personnel Bajoran 12 R 98 1x •Dukat, Pah-Wraith Puppet 0 VP 43 1x •Dukat, Pah-Wraith Puppet Cardassian 4 U 116 1x •Aamin Marritza, Honorable Patriot 1 U 229 1x Ari 1 R 230 1x •Corbin Entek, Undercover Operations Supervisor 13 R 52 1x •Damar, Cardassian Liberator 1 U 232 1x •Danar, Irascible Gul 5 P 25 1x •Elim Garak, First Officer of Terok Nor 1 C 237 1x Emok 6 P 44 3x •Enabran Tain, "Retired" Spymaster 19 V 9 3x •Evek, Agent of Cardassian Justice 6 P 45 3x Goran 11 P 16 2x Jasad 1 R 242 1x •Joret Dal, Patriotic Visionary 2 C 116 1x Jural 4 R 119 1x •Kira Nerys, Iliana Ghemor 18 V 22 1x •Korinas, Observer from the Obsidian Order 1 U 243 1x •Kovat, Public Conservator 1 R 246 1x •Makbar, Chief Archon 4 U 120 2x •Mila, Trusted Confidante 2 U 117 1x •Natima Lang, Professor of Political Ethics 1 R 248 2x •Ocett, Dogged Rival 4 R 121 2x •Odo, Impartial Investigator 12 R 50 1x •Parek, Privileged Legate 14 U 69 1x •Silaran Prin, Between Darkness and Light 7 R 59 1x •Tekeny Ghemor, Prominent Official 16 V 33 1x •Telle, Macet's Aide 4 R 124 1x •Toran, Ambitious Brute Ship Cardassian 2 R 170 2x •Aldara 1 C 384 2x Galor 1 U 387 2x •Prakesh Non-Aligned 13 R 120 1x •Phoenix, Risen From the Ashes

Dilemma Pile (42) Dual 8 R 1 2x Agonizing Encounter 10 R 2 1x An Issue of Trust 14 R 1 3x Back to Basics 4 R 9 3x Broken Captive 1 C 16 1x Chula: Pick One to Save Two 6 P 2 3x Dignitaries and Witnesses 15 V 4 1x Instigate Dissension 14 C 7 1x Moral Choice 17 V 9 1x Occupational Hazards 18 V 5 1x Polywater Intoxication 12 R 17 1x Swashbuckler at Heart 18 V 6 1x The Captain's "Guest" 0 VP 35 1x The Caretaker's "Guests" 11 P 6 2x The Caretaker's "Guests" 13 R 20 1x The Dal'Rok 4 R 27 2x The Dreamer and the Dream 2 C 25 1x Timescape 17 V 18 3x You Vant to Go Back? Planet 12 C 5 2x Excalbian Drama 1 S 33 1x Kolaran Raiders 18 V 2 1x Lending a Hand 14 U 8 1x Neurogenic Field 14 R 16 2x Sylvia 4 R 30 1x Whisper in the Dark Space 1 S 17 1x Command Decisions 12 C 6 2x Fesarius Bluff 14 U 9 1x Night Terrors 4 R 28 1x Tsiolkovsky Infection

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